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.

There are something of the order of 300 reported pupil-on-pupil boy-on-usually-girl rapes committed on school premises and reported to the police every year across England and Wales. Assuming typical underreporting rates, that's at least 3000 per year. 3000 children, mostly girls, violated in this way, and that's not including non-penetrative sexual assaults.

We could end these rapes and near-eradicate the risk of all forms of violence towards the female half of the school-age population by making all schools single-sex. This would also mean more girls going into STEM as girls in all-girl schools are more likely to take Maths and Physics than those in mixed schools.

I think you were replying to me. I totally disagree. Let’s take say “et tu Brutus.” Commonly used to talk about a friend having utmost disloyalty. You can only fully grasp this by studying the play. Coleridge - when someone has an albatross round their neck -you really need to understand the Rime of the ancient mariner to truest grasp what it means.

it’s not just a really gifted pupil who will grasp it. The majority will understand if that type of literature is read frequently. The trouble is we don’t have high enough expectations. Kids aren’t taught to push themselves outside their comfort level.

Read Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and you will appreciate the absolute beauty of the English Language.

@haXXor So? What's your point?

But how many other boys and girls benefit by learning to respect and be friends with members of the opposite sex by being in a mixed sex school?

Why is it important for girls to go into STEM over and above all other areas?

That if we cared about pupils being safe in schools, there is a trivial way to make 50% of them a lot safer that could be done as early as next September by making 50% of schools male only, 50% female only, and shuffling kids to the appropriate school.

This addresses your point "the immediate problem is that children should be safe from violence at school" for 50% of children.

At a mixed school, I learned to fear the boys. They were terrorists towards the girls.

Girls in mixed schools are deterred from going into STEM by comments like "that's a boys' subject". They are not coerced into STEM in girls' schools, rather it is that the barriers to going into STEM are removed. Why is it important to you that girls continue to be deterred from going into STEM?

I’m sorry you experienced that. In a mixed school, I saw boys and girls mixing well. I don’t recall any fear of the boys, some of my best friends at school were boys.

I think girls should go into any area and study what they like. I’ve never heard anyone say STEM is a boys subject, my female friend did Maths and physics at a level (and physics as a degree).

That's incredible. Are you seriously suggesting that converting every school in England to single sex is a solution in any way similar to excluding individual children who have been violent?

When I said 'the immediate problem' obviously I'm talking about the problem we're discussing on this thread, which is that persistently violent children are not being removed.

So we'll get rid of all the boys, and now the SEN girls can only get beaten up on a regular basis by other girls, SEN and non-SEN alike? Problem solved, beautiful.

I've been teaching 20 odd years. Can't say I've ever heard 'that's a boy's subject' in school, oreven from people in my local community. I would, however, like more boys to do my subject. The drive to channel all the bright kids into STEM really pisses me off.

I do think there is a general problem with the way boys are around girls, but I don't think segregation is the way. Especially as I have a ds who would be eaten alive in an all boys' school.

It's important to her that girls continue to be deterred from going into STEM because she hates women, believes we should all be barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink, that STEM is not ladylike and girls are no good at it, and also that we should reintroduce witch burnings. In fact that's probably not a woman at all but a male terrorist out to get you again. Surely this is clear?

Totally with you on the Stem situation. There seems this narrative that they’re the only worthwhile subjects, I’d say the liberal arts are just as, if not more important to humanity. We need intelligent pupils in these areas now more than ever.

Definitely not advocating for witch burnings as I’d be one of the first to go🤣🤣🤣🤣. The contents of my bookcase would be the end of me.

Mind you I have a shelf of Shakespeare, Blake, Rabelais, Coleridge, Poe and Yeats so got condemned a long time ago on this thread😂

All-girl education makes girls up to 85% more likely to take STEM subjects. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-girls-single-sex-schools-advanced-stem.htm

All-girl schooling makes girls more confident, do better academically, and more likely to take STEM subjects https://ie-today.co.uk/news/girls-who-attend-girls-schools-more-confident-research-shows

Over 90% of violence is perpetrated by men and boys. Single-sex schools reduce violence towards girls enormously.

Especially as I have a ds who would be eaten alive in an all boys' school.

It is not the responsibility of girls to be human shields to protect boys. Especially when the girl in question is SEND and is not only "eaten alive" but sexually assaulted in a mixed school.

In fact that's probably not a woman at all but a male terrorist out to get you again.

You make fun of my experiences of physical and sexual assault. Of having my cunt groped, my stomach punched, my knickers pulled down, my eyes blacked.

Your opinions are now worth zero to me. Someone like you does not deserve the courtesy of being listened to.

You misrepresent someone's views this blatantly, calling them sexist: 'Why is it important to you that girls continue to be deterred from going into STEM?' and this is your response when called out? An apology is the appropriate response.

I didn't say she was sexist, I pointed out the logical consequence of her stance. Girls aren't pushed into STEM in all-girl schools, they are pushed out of it in mixed schools. It's the truth, I provided evidence.

You didn't "call me out", you mocked my use of the term "terrorist" without even stopping to consider why someone would call her former fellow pupils that. And when I called you out on it, you went on the defensive.

It's not me who should consider apologising here.

Don't bother. The apology that must be asked for is never sincere.

I;m sorry you experienced that, but it isn't the standard.

I attended a 1000+ pupil mixed secondary school, we certainly didn't fear the boys, they feared US. Any time there was even a SNIFF of a rumour of one them abusing/harassing one of the girls sexually, they got 'pervert' and 'rapist' yelled at them when they walked down the corridors, alongside being tripped, shoved, punched...etc.. there were a couple that the school had to step in to protect.. (that didn't go down well at all either) because they just got their asses handed to them from the moment they stepped foot in the school in the morning.

All it took was to make an absolute example of one of them once in a while and the rest learned to stfu. I've taught my daughter the same attitude.

Well that sounds toxic tbh.

Oh we’re on witch burnings, are we????!

And actually we were discussing children who exhibit disruptive behaviour, not just those who perpetrate violence.

im very sorry for your experiences, but you must know that these kinds of experiences aren’t common in mixed sex schools.

Have you managed to receive any help for what went through?

It's never too late - plenty of opportunities out there for lifelong learning, and you clearly have the interest and the passion.

I was very happy in my mixed-sex school and so were my DDs in theirs.

Only experiences of being 'attacked' in any way were when a boy tripped me up in first year, and a so-called friend hit me in the face with her art shirt in 3rd year. My girls experienced nothing like that.

Girls can be vicious towards each other too!

I think it would be a huge backwards step to segregate boys and girls.