To thing school need to radically rethink their offer

[BlooDeBloop]

In lockdown everyone understood that schooling was optional. Everyone understood that missing a day or week didn't matter in the grand scheme of things

During lockdown students learned that rules could be arbitrary and not make sense

Lockdown taught parents that school was critical as childcare to enable them to work

Since then, kids are back in school. They are challenging the rules on an unprecedented scale. Parents are laughing at the SLT. Kids are cheering when they clowns are removed from class. The kids know there is no real punishment, no real consequence for deliberately, chronically disruptive behaviour.

Teachers are breaking down and leaving in droves, more than ever before. Leaving young, inexperienced colleagues in the trenches.

After having to educate their own children parents understand that Shakespeare, French, geography and more have no modern relevance in the UK. The curricula are unimaginative and disconnected from the future world of work. There is no longer home support for the suck it up attitude with which kids were once sent to school.

Once upon a time there was an understanding that the kids would go to school, get an education, leave to pursue training or higher education. Today, that understanding has broken down. Under the scrutiny and transparency that SM provides, we collectively understand this is not true. Schools are failing, not through lack of care or competency but a lack of relevance. Further, the social mores that governed acceptable behaviour have softened to such a degree a good 10% of every state secondary class will seek to destroy the locus of power in the room (teacher, SLT, whoever). To compound the issue, students are all seeing for themselves on SM how to disrupt and then go about emulating their heros.

This is a cluster fuck of gigantic proportions.

AIBU in thinking that there needs to be a big scale conversation (revolution!) around what schools offer in this new world? For starters, moving with the times to offer skills that are actually needed and valued in the workforce and in further ed (e.g. IT at all levels, from typing to programming, and not shoved into one hour a week). Real alternative curricula for non academic kids (let's not pretend these kids need Chaucer in their lives).

And when students are persistently disruptive over a long period of time, borderline encouraged by their parents, they should be sent home. Permanently. To be educated (or not) by their parents. That would sort out 90% of poor behaviour overnight.

Ahhhh. That feels better 😁. Thank you for reading if you got this far.

I do think it is very important for kids in Britain to have a really good knowledge of Christianity, likewise I’d like to see Greek and Roman mythology taught. It’s all very much the foundations of western culture. It doesn’t have to be taught in a “this is right” kind of way. I think understanding these things is important to both protect and understand culture in Western Europe.

And I think the classics - Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Coleridge etc should be taught as the have seeped into the British culture and everyday language.

Yeah, because when a child’s outward behaviours are the result of poor boundaries at home, unmet learning needs, social deprivation the answer is to send them home. Exclusion doesn’t work. It isn’t a deterrent and it does it improve matters in any way. It pushes the marginalised further away. Makes them vulnerable to exploitation. And these are the children who will become adults who will go on to lives of violence, substance abuse, criminality…. Exclusion will not improve that. It will exacerbate problems. I know this because this is the field I work in.

Katherine Birbalsingh was on X (formerly Twitter) opining that "most parents can teach better than teachers" - I do wonder what it is like working in her pathetic excuse for a pretend grammar school as a teacher. She has previously opined that she expects teachers to be at the school by 7am and people who expect to work less than 80 hours a week should look elsewhere for employment.

This goes down well with the kind of mouthbreather who thinks teachers should be beamed direct from the 1950s (but absolutely not discipline their own children)

"I do think it is very important for kids in Britain to have a really good knowledge of Christianity" - does that include the brutal oppression in the name of Christianity worldwide ?

Thought not

What about non-religious contributions to the island's culture and history - or the contributions of religions other than Christianity ? There's a certain breed of Christian that wants Christian primacy "because we are a Christian nation" - we absolutely are not. The kind of Christian who wants all children in state schools to learn the Lord's Prayer and/or sing hymns, irrespective of what religion they are (or aren't)

Bankers who crashed the global economy in 2008 had all got bonuses in the years leading up to it - even though they knowingly packaged up crap products and housing loans to sell onwards! Where I work - it's the biggest ar*e lickers and the most political who get the biggest bonuses - while doing v little work! So big bonuses are no guarantee of doing the right thing!

It works to protect the other children and the teacher from their behaviour, obviously enough. But if that's not your goal, then sure, it doesn't 'work'.

Goodness, @riceuten Where do I start?
You are right - We are not a Christian nation - but our culture is based on Christianity. Our morals are based on Judeo Christian teaching - beginning with the Ten Commandments. Perhaps learning the Lord's prayer isn't such a bad thing, and learning the teachings of Jesus isn't exactly going to send anyone down the path of theft, adultery etc is it? What did he say that would be a bad influence on our children?
Most of the national curriculum is non religious. Many teachers are kind and love the kids in their classes, but most are not Christians and so, deliberately or not, influence their pupils in non religious, secular ways.
Religious studies in schools has included studies of other religions for years - and rightly so. We live in a multi cultural environment. Personally, I think it's important we understand one another and each other's beliefs and attitudes to life.
Brutal oppression - I'm not sure how far in time you want to go back, but does that include current atheistic Chinese brutal oppression of Uighurs, Christians and anyone else of any faith at all? And Mao? 'Brutal' and 'Oppressor' were his middle names.....Or before Mao, the cruelty of the ruling classes in Chinese culture is eye watering. And what about the current brutality of atheistic North Korea? And Putin? What about Hitler? I strongly suspect Hitler wasn't a Christian..... It's easy to look back in British history and see cruelty and murder disguised as religion. That's taught, too - haven't we all been taught about Bloody Mary?

Easy way to fix schools -

and this would 100% remove disruptive behaviour, make class sizes smaller, less stress for teachers and parents, reduce youth crime and reduce the skills shortage -

Once they get to 13/14 kids can choose to continue their education ( eg to go to uni etc) or to leave and learn a trade.

'Tradees' will get paid, learn a skill and, best of all, if they get into trouble from being in a gang etc they lose their work privileges and get sent back to school.

Not all kids are academic and school bores them. They don't want to go to uni so why stay on and learn Shakespeare?

So long as they have a certain level of maths and English and certain life skills (economics, woodwork, housekeeping, computing etc) then why not let them learn a trade, whether at college or in the workplace. Strict rules around pay and conditions for under 18s, practical exams to show they're taking it seriously etc

But yes I agree with OP - our educational system is way out of date. We should start with getting rid of uniforms and stupid rules about hair and makeup. Kids should need to dress appropriately (and learn how to) and that's enough.

So what you are saying is that everything looks the same while apart from white boards, you have totally failed to recognise the massive impact of technology in the last 30 years...

How many SEND kids did they have in that school? My money is on "zero, because there would mysteriously be no places left whenever a SEND kid applied".

That's what isolation units are for. Not for kids whose parents bought the wrong skirt or shoes.

Eh?

Sounds more like a prison than a school.

A persistently disruptive child should be put in isolation to protect the other kids from the disruption whilst safeguarding the disruptive child's education.

Ok - how???

I don't know where you are OP, but your description bears no relation to any one of the 3 different schools my DGCs attend.

What a post of ill-,informed ramblings.
(Now there's something school didn't teach me: when to stop reading a post because it's not worth bothering with.)

Many schools have isolation units where the troublesome child can be placed to do their work.

Thankfully she seems to have crept off.

No doubt rather red faced!

I mean, sure, sounds nice except that the child would be isolated for their entire education if that's all that happened. Meanwhile, back in the world we actually live in...

So we are to scrap languages such as french and german on the basis that kids may never ever visit those countries or get to work in them - wow what a depressing world to bring kids up in - no point teaching you french as you'll never get to go anyway - you can live your life working in the UK and going to the UK polluted beaches and never ever cross the channel. I didn't grow up with money - but learning French took me out of my small parochial world and reminded me that the world was a great big place and that if I got a good education and a half decent job - I'd get to see it - I used to dream of Paris and Provence while studying french..... and now I go to France several times a year - own holiday homes there - and still love the language and culture of the country....... the point is sometimes by studying a subject you can dream bigger - and this can lead to changes in ways you may never imagine.

And how would we police that - kids from council estates - can skip french as we assume that kids from those backgrounds will never get to visit France or Germany? So no point in learning it - how can you rule out a language on the basis that you might never go to that country?

How can you decide when a child is 11 that they may never get to work in a foreign country? Do you have a crystal ball to know that? And what sort of message would that give? Surely it should be - to learn french to learn german because one day you may grow up and go there to study or work?

Pollyputhekettleon but they will continue to go on disrupting others as soon as they move to a new setting. But is that OK because then it’ll be someone else’s child and not your problem.? The point is children have to be educated somewhere. You can move them on. Sure. But the problem just moves somewhere else. As a means to tackle the issue, exclusion isn’t effective.

And in fact the more failed moves a child has, the worse their behaviour seems to become. So what shall we do instead? Keep shunting them around until they’re old enough to leave school..? They do go on to have children of their own. And so it continues. Shall we just send those ones home too? Maybe education isn’t for “those” people at all. Let’s just exclude them. Maybe we could sterilise them too!!!!

Why would a child who's been excluded from school for violence be allowed to just move into a 'new setting' instead, unless that setting is actually appropriate for them? That would be such a bizarre thing to do. I don't know what you mean by 'they have to be educated somewhere'. If you mean the government is legally obliged to provide them with a suitable education place, sure. But, as I said, meanwhile the real world stubbornly exists and we have to live in it.