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.

So you punish the child for their parents' actions? You think that's fair?

did the OP stick that through Chat GPT because its a load of waffle.

“Everyone” did not understand that schooling was optional during lockdown. Schools went to a huge effort to teach during lockdown under very difficult circumstances. Parents tried to support their dc while working - sometimes from home while supervising babies and toddlers at the same time - sometimes out of the home in jobs that were suddenly a million times more stressful. As a recognition of how that impacted children’s education, vast sums have been spent on catch up tuition and the 4 nations all changed their examination policy to help dc at the end of ks4/5 move on to the next stage. Nobody thought education didn’t matter and not going made no difference to anyone.

I really like Chaucer - I would never have heard of him if it hadn’t been for y9 Eng lit. I also love Shakespeare. What exactly is wrong with putting on plays and reading and talking about books when you are a kid? Why should that be dumped in order to teach “skills” which can quite easily be taught by employers in industry? I don’t want my dc funnelled into manufacturing or IT jobs. That’s not what I want education to be. I want them to love learning and see that there is a great big world out there to explore and that the arts are valuable, history is valuable, geography is one of the most employable degrees and you need an inner life just as much as you need to work to put food on your table. Education is not irrelevant even if you happen to not actually use your lesson on Shakespeare or the Cold War or ox bow lakes or javelin because you are an IT consultant who hates the French and doesn’t watch television or visit museums, theatre, cinema etc.

You don’t get an educated population who value education and encourage their dc to engage in education by stripping it back to typing, compound interest and changing spark plugs,

The OP seems to be very supportive of this destruction of the 'locus of power' (!) .

Yep! Don’t think my kids schools are like this at all! Geography was boring when I was at school. Now my daughters geography curriculum more closely resembles international relations in my opinion and they are studying some very relevant topics. I hate to say it but Macbeth will always be relevant so not a waste of time. Covid was a blip that caused a lot of upheaval but time to move on.

Don’t they have music as a lesson in schools anymore ?? Choirs, music theory ( there’s your maths) composers, Orchestra, it’s not just learning an instrument ( I’d like to think most schools can organise some simple instrument instruction such as recorders )

I'm not quite sure what you think will happen to all these permanently excluded badly behaved children if they're just sent home to be educated (or not) by their parents. Many such children are highly vulnerable for a multitude of reasons and are much much safer in an institution where caring professionals have contact with them every day, than they would be at home. Or not at home, who would know where they are? I don't think you know much about schools or safeguarding children OP.

Vocational subjects are more expensive/can't usually be taught in a small room with 35 children and no equipment. Therefore this is unlikely to ever happen, sadly

its certainly not anything i recognise from my school, or the one my kids go to.

I actually think the discipline style of the schools currently is a joke, and too strict, and causing backlash. They're being treated like prison inmates, and i strongly object to the current trend towards isolation booths and strict uniform rules that are getting kids sent home.

They don't NEED to be in shirt/tie/blazer and office shoes to be educated properly.

I do think the curriculum needs to be looked at, i do think there ought to be more focus on education for the modern age, more skills based learning..etc... but not to the detriment of the academic students either.

Remember if a teacher pulled you up? No regard. Why? Because Parents have abdicated their accountability.

And they are also the sort of 'parent' who will be down to the school to sort of that teacher, how dare my child be exposed to any discipline?
I always remember my brother being home late from the grammar school becuse he'd been in detention, the conversation with Dad went something like
this
Dad What did you do to get detention?
Bro Nowt!
Dad What should you have been doing then?

That's a supportive parent, supporting the school and knowing his son's penchant for being economical with the truth.

OP why do you refer to the class clown as a "he"? Gender stereotyping much?

Mrs Gradgrind changes name and welcomes you to the new world.
Chaucer and Shakespeare ditched in favour of coding and typing for modern life.
What is on your approved list of music?

As someone who didn’t send her children to school I must admit I’m watching the attendance news with interest.
I’ve sent multiple children happily into life, via university, and I wonder if it’ll become more common.

Where do you think the class clown learnt it from?

And what do you think will happen to society if that child, and the many others like them, were thrown out of school aged 7 upwards, and left in the 24/7 care of their class clown parent?

If your school is like that, then your head needs to resign so the school can find someone who is capable of the job to step into post.

If good behaviour management isn't in place across a school, then the best curriculum in the world that's suited to the most diverse of children will fail.

I disagree. That young teachers are the ones that are left. Young teachers are the ones who can’t cope. It’s the older teachers who are stronger and can cope.

Schooling optional during lockdown? It wasn’t optional at all!

I agree that doing English Literature at school completely put me off Shakespeare and every other book we covered. Going through it line by line in a class where at least a quarter of the pupils couldn't read fluently was incredibly painful, there was no meaningful or interesting discussion due to 35 children and teacher who couldn't keep order. Plus it took over half a term to get through the book by then everyone had forgotten the beginning.
I love reading and was and am an avid reader including most types of literature, ad even read Shakepeare at age 8 and loved it. I also enjoyed many other school subjects including maths, science, history, geography.
But there's something about Eng Lit that just does not work in a mediocre comprehensive with mixed ability classes.

I do think children and young people increasingly expect everything about life to be easy and enjoyable and do not want to engage with anything difficult. We see this in university students. That is not the fault of schools but it is the backdrop against which they are teaching. Unfortunately everything about school cannot be exciting all the time, but there is value in a good education. Being a bit bored or not that interested in something is not a reason to disrupt the class.

https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/08/teachers-england-schools-figures-department-education-survey

Not punishment. They are simply accepting their child back. Why should it be the State's responsibility to educate all children? Ultimate welfare lies with the parents.

I'd like to introduce you to an important concept in statistics known as "survivorship bias". The older teachers are the ones who didn't leave within weeks 20 years ago because they are mentally well-suited to the job. The many teachers that did leave within weeks 20 years ago aren't visible within the current teaching population.

French has always had more issues with behaviour than most subjects which I believe is why they made it optional post 15. I pity the teachers! French is great for those with enthusiasm. But is it worth teaching to those with literacy issues? Do we listen to what a section of children are saying with their behaviour?

Sorry, but you are talking absolute nonsense. Where do you get these ideas from, seriously? Bad behaviour isn't caused by French

I don't agree with much of your premise. Pythagoras, and quadratic equations, have never been of any use to the vast majority of the population. I'm a maths teacher, with a pure maths degree, and even I have never factorised anything outside of a classroom. Huge chunks of education have always been largely "irrelevant for the work place", this is nothing new.

There is obviously a place for skills and for training; we need people to be able to do the jobs that need doing. But education is about far more than just useful training. It's about using your brain in ways that you don't in every day life. It's about broadening your horizons. It's about abstract thought. The benefits of a rounded education to both an individual and to society are wider reaching than the direct usefulness in the work place.

This notion that disruptive kids should be permanently excluded is ill conceived, quite often they are the very kids who we need to look after more than others and their chaotic home life is the reason why they behave the way they do. Yet UK society seems to be accepting of poor parenting and happy to blame schools… you couldn’t make it up!

Coupled with the very strict criteria for permanent exclusion, the very many strategies a school has to try (and evidence at every turn) and the very many local authorities (and their third parties) that no longer support schools in a meaningful manner (SEND Ops, Inclusion Partners, Alternative Provision, pupil referral units etc) on top of the total apathy (borderline hatred by some) displayed by many parents/careers and that is the reason why education is on its knees in the UK.

Parenting (or lack of) is the issue here, so many children are being failed by the very people who are supposed to love and nurture them.

You are missing the point.
Those with reading ages in English well below their chronological age are also going to have difficulty picking up French. Yet we, instead of offering support in what they have already struggled with, give them French lessons. The impossibility of the task they are presented with leads to disengagement and behaviour reactions.
We know, from their existing literacy difficulties, they are not suited to language study. We need to adapt the curriculum to the children, not hope the children adapt to the curriculum

😳