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.

And the ones who will send a kid to exclusion for practical but "wrong" shoes? Looks a lot like wielding power for power's sake to me

Bollocks. Teachers don't make the rules but they must implement them. If teachers didn't have to oversee uniform every sodding day, their lives would be transformed.

YANBU

I’ve thought that since my adult som started nursery.

Learning to follow rules is a good discipline in life, whether you like it or not. We all have to suck it up sometimes.

I partly agree with your assessment of EngLit. There are brilliant modern authors who should be on the curriculum, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

I disgree completely with dropping PSRE. PSRE was the only time when we discussed DV, and that is essential because the girls who need to discuss that most are the ones who aren't getting taught healthy relationships at home. I think that PSRE should be elevated to a compulsory examined Life Skills qualification and also include meal preparation and planning, basic personal finance training, sexual ethics and consent, how to read a garment care label, that sort of thing. I'd love for an exam paper to have questions on it "name any five contraceptive methods and list their pros and cons" and "here are five garment labels, what cycle should you use and what detergent assuming that you wash them all together?"

Learning to question bad rules, and when and how to do it, are also good life skills to have.

Kickers? Dr Martens?

Schools allowing shitty ballet flats that are worse than any trainer?

I don't know where this notion comes from that young teachers can't hack it. DC1 is in their 4th year as a young teacher and loves it. Obviously they have a lot of teacher friends, who all love their jobs too.

This thread, from some of the opinions expressed, is a depressingly damning indictment of the state of education. Some people are so totally out of touch. It's a bit rich for someone to bleat on about educational standards in the one breath, and then go on to encourage kids to laugh at their teachers. Some people should require a licence to breed.

The idea that the State should abnegate all responsibility for the education of already vulnerable and disadvantaged children is utterly ludicrous!

You are not making sense now at all.

Children need properly fitted, supportive school shoes. Kickers, yes, Clarks, Start-rite etc - don't know any school that would accept DMs!! I am pretty sure that the majority of schools don't consider ballet flats to be adequate either!

I agree the curriculum is, in places, way out of date.

I don’t agree that’s why there are behaviour problems in schools.

Kids don’t behave like that because they don’t like the curriculum. It’s far, far, far more likely to be down to parenting.

Tell that to your line manager when you get sacked for insubordination.

Or to the courts when you are hauled before them for breaking the law.

I'm all for calling out what you call "bad rules" but I have the intelligence and commonsense to know when it's appropriate and when it's not.

As for English Literature, IME my kids seemed to have to read more American literature than English. Any English teacher will tell you that it's hard to engage young people with the literature on the current curriculum.

It doesn't have to be 21st century either. I developed a love for novelists like Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, DH Lawrence etc from English lit at school.

None of my kids have read any of these!

Which had its place.

Back in the day there were Grammars, Technical Schools and Sec Moderns.

The sec moderns were not always a dumping ground. And children were often steered (not always) to the school best suited to their needs.

The only real downside was that SEN children didn't have good enough (any) provision. But if they could be properly catered for then I think that old system has some merit.

I wish my DGC were at your school,

Because theirs seems much more like the one the OP describes

I liked Maths, Additional Maths and PE in secondary school. Everything else i hated, found irrelevant, waste of time and even more so after the internet. Gets better as you grow older where you can finally drop all the crap subjects at A levels and even more so at uni.

I don’t think the need for foreign languages has ever been higher.
we also desperately need critical thinking honed by Humanities subjects.

Hear hear!

Are school now brand ambassadors for approved shoes - why are Kickers ok and DMs are not?

Oh mate.

Good god where on earth do you teach / are your children at school..?

I have done quite a bit of supply teaching in a pretty diverse range of schools around London + the SE over the last few years and even my least favourite ever didn’t come close to the hell you’re describing!

There have multiple threads on here discussing school shoes, including ballet flats being allowed and one mother sending her DD to school in £6 ballet flats because that's all she could afford that was within the rules.

I wore DMs as a child and there's nothing wrong with my feet. We didn't have sheets with approved and prohibited shoe styles on when I was a child, we weren't even limited to black as navy and brown were also allowed, yet we didn't have an isolation unit because we didn't need one and no kids got expelled. Interestingly, the girls at my school got more bolshy when the uniform changed to be stricter. I don't consider that a coincidence.

I think obsession with uniform is an example of the "little Hitler" micromanaging the wrong things to the point of abusiveness attitude that I bemoaned upthread. I think it's a combination of the SLT wanting to wield power over the kids at all costs and a sort of "institutional eating disorder" in schools that have problems. The SLT can't fix lack of funding, they can't fix parents not caring, they can't fix staff churn, but they can "fix" the girl whose skirt is one inch too short or the boy who wears his tie slackened at the collar. Just like the anorexic schoolgirl who controls her eating because it's the one thing she can control in a world that is chaos for her because of puberty and sexual harassment.

Did you miss the bit where I said "when and how"? Or did you ignore it because it didn't fit the narrative you wanted to adopt for your retort?

Bad laws should be obeyed but challenged in the courts and by petitioning and writing to MPs.

I've never been fired in my life. I have challenged unfair policies through my union.

Maybe it's parents who have a more narrow mindset that does children more disservice than the schools?

Agreed

Yes, radically rethink. Education isn't just about getting a job it is about promoting lif long learning and enabling people to understand society and be good citizens. It is about questioning, learning and enjoying.
If you want to be question it, teach them at home, give them experiences, let them do it when they feel like it. But don't expect the resources to be pushed into your idea of an individualisex program. What fits 'your' child doesn't fit others
Education is not just about facts, it is about working together, cooperation, understanding others, being part of society, giving one the skills to enjoy life long learning. Not just for certificates but enjoyment and for the good of society.

I went to a secondary modern. I can assure you this is an idealistic view of the education. It was dumbed down, basic, boring and taught us to know our place as thickos. Demotivated teachers, disruptive classes, zero SEN provision (this was the early 80s) but did offer ‘remedial teaching’ for those at the lowest levels. I did typing ffs, typing as a serious subject.

The school stunted me for life, despite doing A levels and going on to do a degree… thank god my friend told me to apply. She saved my life.

I was in top set in maths. Actually I was top set in everything because I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The maths teacher spent over 1/3 of his time talking about his wife and we were never taught great swathes of the syllabus. The highlight of his classes was being picked to take petty cash to the bank during lesson times, resulting in yet more education time lost.

Op waffling on about learning Shakespeare for GCSE not appreciating just how privileged she was because my school didn’t fund O level English literature so there was no Shakespeare or Chaucer. I studied those at A level, thank goodness. Instead, i was stuck watching videos of the day of the triffids and studying basic texts when my reading ability had always been way beyond my years. We did Animal Farm as one of the texts. That’s about as high brow as it got there.

So no, bollocks to a 21st century take on secondary moderns. We shouldn’t be categorising children at 11. These schools would become a dumping ground. You only have to look at the ofsted reports of some of the schools, in fact the school I went to, to know that categorising children in this way is a bad idea. And that school is apparently ten fold better than when I was there.

Idk how it is today. But back then, more money was given to the high / grammars per capita than the secondary moderns. Because hey, we were irrelevant. I only have 5 O levels because the funding wasn’t there to do anymore...