To wonder how anyone can be a teacher?

[Howdaretheydisciplinerudekids]

I think I am quite an understanding parent when it comes to my kids schools. However, I do contact the schools whenever I have a concern. I am always polite and understanding of school issues but flag things up when necessary.

However, I hear how some parents speak to and about their children’s teachers and I am pretty disgusted and wonder how anyone remains in teaching. I have so many stories from friends about the crap they put up with from headteachers, parents and children. Who else has similar stories?

1. A friend of mine was told on more than one occasion by a child that he wanted her dead and was going to shoot her. Her headteacher didn’t even ask if she was ok.
2. The same child regularly used to throw things in the classroom and trash the classroom. The headteacher refused to get involved and instead blamed the teacher for their being equipment on the floor (that the child had thrown) and asked why she hadn’t picked it up. The child was still throwing things (this time aimed at the class teacher) at the time.
3. I have heard many occasions of friends who have been out on capability plans for the most minor things. It would seem that bullying of staff from leadership is absolutely rife. For example, one teacher friend told me about the staff having a staff training day about a certain way of delivering maths. Part of the day was spent then planning maths in the said way. The headteacher went into maths lessons and then called all of the staff together because she didn’t like how they were teaching maths and told them all off. She said they should have ignored all training. Several friends have given me the same sort of stories.
4. My teacher friends are always making excuses why they can’t go out. They have too much work to do. They are too stressed. They are off sick. They have marking to do, leSsons to plan, forms to fill in, statements to write, parents to contact, documents to complete, emails to send etc etc. Then when they have done all that, they have to actually teach a class for 7 hours. They get no let up in that time. They have to be physically and mentally involved and face verbal and sometimes physical abuse, with no chance to recover.
5. Then they have parents to deal with. Parents who complain constantly because their child has been told off. Parents who constantly criticise teachers because their child, who has done something wrong, is then worrying about it. Or they have 2 sets of parents both claiming that their child is being bullied by the other. Or parents who have fallen out, expecting the schools to separate the children because their grown ups can’t resolve their own arguments.
6. One relative of mine, was put under disciplinary procedures because they dared to speak sternly to a child who had been stealing from them. They did not even raise their voice. However, they now have a safeguarding concern about them because a member of staff heard them telling the child how upset they were to have had their personal items stolen by them, and the member of staff didn’t like their tone of voice. My poor relative was in bits over this accusation because they had taught for nearly 30 years and now felt like they had been blamed for being a victim of crime. My relative had to take early retirement.
7. Another relative was teaching In A primary school and was filmed by a child on their phone, and it was shared around social media. My relative then told the child how upset they had been about this. However, instead of the child receiving any sort of consequence, instead my friend had to apologise to the child, for telling the child how upset they were. Sadly, another friend tried to commit suicide after all of the constant monitoring and accountability became too much for her. My friends and relatives who work in schools tell me about the lack of funding in their schools.

I stayed for long enough because i felt i could make a difference. But gradually over the course of the last few years before i left i saw perfectly capable and experienced teachers on support plans, partly because they were not so easy to mould into the robots the school wanted and partly because they were too expensive. I no longer felt that i was teaching but just delivering a curriculum. Proving what I'd delivered every step of the way, regardless of the fact that they didn't really understand it deep down but they could pass an exam. I felt it was chipping away at my personality.
There are hoards of teachers like me.

I left teaching 6 years ago after ten years in state primaries. I had scissors thrown at me, sworn at, called a drunken whore once, taught one child who repeatedly tried to strangle other children. One shoved a table at a pregnant teacher into her tummy. On top of that the observations, marking, constant meetings and planning, clubs, was just too much. I care for my disabled DD but she is 6 now and at school and sometimes I think about going back as we could use the money but the thought makes me feel sick!

And yes "robot" teachers delivering identikit curriculums is already the wya some academy chains are going.

And with the ability to train their own staff this is what some teachers are expecting. Centralised powerpoint to read odd, standard rules ("slant").

However kids are not cookie cutter kids and this isn't great for many of them. It's unlikely to be good in the long run.

I think some of the examples you give are extreme, it isn't like this in well managed schools.

I also think its very divided. There are still lots of schools out there where most pupils are reasonably behaved. My dc go to a small state primary, the children are lovely and we especially notice how kind the older children are to the youngest. The teenagers from the local secondaries seem by and large to be well mannered, hard working and with nice behaviour. However there's a town nearby where the teens seem much more feral, i know teachers from a couple of the schools there who struggle badly with the horrendous behaviour.

Oh and since getting rid of pay band protection, there's definitely an issue with older upper pay scale teachers being put on performance/support plans for utterly spurious reasons to get rid of them and replace them with teachers who are offered much lower banding even when experienced. This is what happens when you don't give schools enough money. 2 expensive experienced teachers on upper pay scales can be replaced with 2 cheaper teachers & a TA - you can see why teachers do it. The teaching budget should be ring fenced - its stupid as in many cases it means teachers can't afford to move job. My dsis is at the top of payscale with responsibility. Moved out of london to a small town due to housing costs.
Her DH also teaches and took a vast pay cut to move to a job nearer their new home - from upper pay scale essentially he lost 10 years worth of pay band progression. As a result they can't afford dsis moving near home until he's gone back up the bands a bit, so she's stuck with an awful commute and never sees her kids.

I can guarantee as a parent you will not see the half of what goes on even in a "nice" primary and secondary (my background was mn "nice" schools). Children on the whole are lovely. And given the right conditions I think most kids will do well. But the statistics show us that teachers are leaving in droves and there's good reason.

I think most people like to think "their" child is okay/their school is okay. And it's a way of "othering" the problem. It's really a national crisis. Searcg Noblegiraffes threads as she is so clear and puts it better than me.

Some teachers are protected from a lot of the really bad stuff by their good headteachers. But those headteachers do it by absorbing it all themselves and eventually burning out.

None of my dc nor nephews and nieces will ever go into teaching as they suffered from my the commitments first hand.

This is exactly what I was talking about. There will be nice kids living in the town where you describe the kids as feral whose parents send them to the nice school down the road. So that school is generally seen as nice. So the school where the kids are seen as feral, none of the nice families want their kids to go there so gradually the gap widens and the nice school gets nicer and the the feral school gets worse. It isn't that the nice school is well managed and the other one isn't, it's more likely that the feral school has no support from parents so the hands of the management are tied.

We were looking to recruit and the process went like this:
Could we get a good subject specialist? No.
Could we get a subject specialist?
No.
Could we get a teacher with experience in a closely linked subject?
No.
Could we get a teacher?
No.
Could we get someone with classroom experience?
No.
Could we get a competent adult?
Just about.

And these are to teach the swathes of SEN children who need really, really able teachers. I feel my school has written them off. I'm the only full time teacher with experience (in my core department) but I can't teach them all.

The reason religious schools tend to do better is because there's a shared ethos that extends through the whole community.

I think it would be interesting to have a school where families signed up for a full set of rules and there was a programme with support from social services, healthcare etc to make sure kids followed a core set of rules both at home and at school, had safe comfortable homes and enough sleep etc, healthy food, enough exercise.

With a bit of guidance for parents as well if they needed it on ways to manage household and debts etc.

I used to work for a charity that delivered self help programmes to really poor families in Africa, I always thought the same approach would help people here too.

My kids go to a good school, there are a few names of kids that come up over and over as being disruptive. There should be intervention or exclusion really, just letting it drift doesn't help anyone.

I taught secondary pupils for almost 25 years but I got burned out and retired early at 54 when I was going through a dreadful menopause.

I can relate to pretty much every single word of your post @Howdaretheydisciplinerudekids.
I was a TA/INA and threw the towel in last year. Had just had enough of the poor behaviour, poor SLT support and constant moaning from parents. Teachers are leaving in droves as well. I certainly didn't get paid enough to tolerate that crap.

The mistake in your view of proper educational goals, @Icedlatteplease, expressed in terms of utility 'for the workplace', is nicely evidenced by your mistake in thinking genetic traits naturally increase 'in each successive generation'.

To see how, look up 'regression to the mean' and try to think what understanding stuff like this might be useful for.

On the overall theme of why teaching in UK is such an awful job, and how the nation's children suffer thereby:
There are many causes, but one thing is necessary to put things right. Not sufficient (as @Icedlatteplease's mistake about goals shows). No, far from sufficient, but certainly necessary: proper resources.

Everyone understands this (OK, possibly not @Icedlatteplease and her ilk; but most people): compare the cost of a child at Eton or Harrow or Westminster with the cost per child at your local MAT comp.

How do you get ordinary schools for ordinary children of ordinary people properly resourced? - Difficult. But you have, each of you, a vote. Use it.

I'm in my mid 50s. If I stay in my current nice school for another couple of years, I could probably afford to retire. I have an elderly father who needs increasingly more support; my current school are aware of this and would willingly give me time off should I need it to deal with a crisis. Where am I going to find another job that will pay me more than I get now (UPS +2a allowance as HoD) but on a 0.6 contract and with the same goodwill from day one? Better the devil you know in my case. When my DDs were at the school, it made logistical sense to stay.

I left teaching in 2017 after I had my second child. The deterioration in children's behaviour and parental support from when I first qualified (2007) was astounding. I went from classes where I'd have one or two difficult children when I first started teaching to 1/3 of the class being difficult, 1/3 well behaved and a 1/3 with such dreadful behaviour that I feared for the safety of myself and the other children. My final year teaching was one long battle of stress and anxiety, constantly dealing with horrible unsupportive and abusive parents, and uncontrollable kids. I had no TA support as my TA was removed to help the SATs year classes even though I had double the class size, and my headteacher was useless and just hid in her office waiting to retire. My teacher friends have all told me not to return to teaching as it's got even worse since covid. Many amazing teachers I know have now left that profession, or been signed off sick or looking to leave.

My dd is having awful issues at her school. Her school has just been put into special measures. She was barely taught maths last year and what she was taught was badly taught. Her lack of knowledge is atrocious and I now have to do maths with her every day after school to help get her back up to speed, although I feel like this is like fighting a losing battle because the way education is going we're going to keep having issues with how certain subjects are taught due to recruitment/retainment issues. Her class are working weeks behind where they should be due to the dreadful behaviour in her class. A few months ago a girl in her year barricaded herself and another child in a classroom and threatened the other child with a pair of sharp scissors she'd brought into school from home. Most weeks my dd comes home and says she's witnessed kids physically fighting, a number of those occasions have involved a kid randomly attacking another child for no reason at all. It's frightening how violent and angry kids are.

My BIL is in recruitment and he says the quality of school leavers they now get are very poor. Many have poor social skills and he gets a lot who turn up for the first day of their new job but don't bother turning up on day two, or who leave at lunch time and don't return.

We have a ticking time bomb when it comes to education and our future work force- we're going to end up with generations of badly taught, disadvantaged, badly behaved and angry people who can't function in society due to how education is viewed by the government and the public.

We have a ticking time bomb when it comes to education and our future work force- we're going to end up with generations of badly taught, disadvantaged, badly behaved and angry people who can't function in society due to how education is viewed by the government and the public.

I hate to be that person and I usually roll my eyes at people who say things were so much better in the past but I fear this is where a lack of proper discipline gets you. Smacking is nearly banned and extremely frowned upon, you always have to be seen to be ‘supporting’ your child rather than actually parenting them. People are told to cuddle their violent child or take them for a hot chocolate and a heart to heart. Toddlers have no boundaries and are endlessly consulted by their well meaning but anxious parents, leading to entitlement and a lack of respect for authority. If modern parenting methods worked as intended we would be seeing the most well adjusted generation yet, instead they’re the most aggressive and unhappy.

No, old fashioned 'proper discipline', smacking, punishment etc. is not the answer.

Boundaries (no screens at the table or except between certain fixed times, never in bedrooms, ... 'please' and 'thank you' and 'may I please leave the table' etc.), ... homework done first thing on arriving home, ... chores ... etc., etc. Yes. Definitely.

-- But not, ever, enforced by physical punishment or harshness. Always praise effort, never achievement, always answer questions (and praise the asking), discuss everything, back-up school even when it's wrong (and, at a certain age, explain why so) ... This kind of modern parenting.

This works. (I could reference my own children and some of their friends, and their children and their friends.) I know this works. We know this works. (And we know smacking doesn't ... and it's just wrong to deliberately hurt a child like that. (And, yes, sorry, but it did do you harm, you just don't know it.))

Thing is, this all takes time and effort. Much more time and effort than the 'old-fashioned' way. (And, yes, it is very difficult for working parents to find the time to make the effort. There are wider societal issues here, indeed.)

And the equivalent at school also requires time and effort. Hence resources, which sadly are lacking.

The relevant thing here about all that awful 'back to basics' Gradgrind stuff (beloved of M Gove, tells you something!) is that it requires less resources than proper, real education and parenting. That's one reason people want you to adopt it. It's easier. Cheaper. But worse.

Exactly my experience. It’s a totally impossible job. I just wish the education profession would stop hiding the truth.

Most days are great. But then you have the occasional dreadful parent who thinks you are there to receive any abuse they deem appropriate.

One horrible woman when ranting about me missing work during an important exam year for her child said to my face "I'm sorry your father died. Fathers die. But why did it have to be THIS year?"

The world is harsh. Bosses won’t praise you for asking a question. They’ll find constant questions irritating. We don’t owe children a constant explanation and that won’t happen when they enter the world of work anyway. They don’t get a promotion, hassling HR to find out why because everything has to be justified to them will just result in their card being marked.

I think smacking should be used as a last resort and only as a consequence of violent behaviour and repeated aggression ie not for messing about. It’s my suspicion that the current cohort of aggressive children in school are the ones who haven’t had their violent behaviour nipped in the bud at an early age, they’ve learned the consequences aren’t that bad and you definitely won’t be smacked back. I think this is wrong, I think if a child smacks after a couple of warnings they should be smacked back (lightly and as a shock tactic rather than to cause harm). Better they learn it from a parent than another bigger child who definitely won’t moderate their self defence. There is a difference between hitting and self defence, the former is unacceptable (the aggressors behaviour) and the latter is perfectly acceptable (the victim).

Smacking is only done by parents that don't know how to parent properly. Permissive parenting (letting the kid do what they want, usually under the guise of gentle parenting) is also only done by parents that don't know how to parent properly.

Parents who are decent parents don't smack because they've brought up their children well so they don't need to be threatened with violence to comply.

And if you do smack, but obviously teachers don't, you get bad behaviour in class because the threat of pain is removed and you have taught them that pain is the only real punishment. Missing 5 mins of playtime isn't as bad as a smack so why the hell not!

It’s easy to say ‘ why don’t you leave if it’s so bad’ and it is clear that many are doing just that. Recruitment figures are way off their target and retention is poor. But, you have to plan to leave, because most teachers need to bring the money in and though there are transferable skills, it needs planning and strategy. So it’s not as easy as resign, leave, get a different job

I’m very pleased neither of my children became teachers.

See this is another problem I think. Assuming that when it comes to child behaviour, 2+2=4. ‘If I do X they’ll do Y, so if they’re badly behaved, then it’s because their parents are rubbish.’

It’s comforting to think that as parents we have complete control over our children’s outcomes so if we can just get the approach right we will see the results we want. Some parents try every approach under the sun and simply nothing works for aggressive behaviour and this is where smacking comes in - all else has failed, so if you hit me I will hit you back. And that’s what you can expect if you are aggressive towards another person. I think it’s perfectly sensible as long as the smacking is used sparingly and lightly and as a lesson only, not an ongoing form of punishment for other behaviour. Plenty of accounts on here by parents who used it as a final resort when nothing else worked and guess what, the child stopped hitting.

Teachers are leaving and we aren't able to replace them. The one's who are here in my current school are very close to retirement, to leave now would risk there pensions. But in say 5 years time we'll be stuffed as we can't replace teacher's now and some of our other departments are currently running on a lot of supply teacher's which isn't sustainable long term.