to believe that some children in the classroom are acting as if they are three or four years younger than their actual age.

[Coldcaller]

DD 2 is a science teacher in ordinary Comprehensive school where grade 5 in English and Math's hovers around 40% and about 25% of pupils are in receipt of FSM. Therefore, in all probability it is a very average Secondary School. DD 2 is very reticent about continuing to teach at the school or possibly to give up teaching totally. This is down to the behavior of many of the children and DD was continually given the bottom sets to teach in year 7, 8 and 9. because she appeared to the SLT to be the teacher who could mostly engage with them. The behavior never mind any interest in the subject from many of the kids is horrific, swearing fighting refusal to sit down and general anarchy being regular. Despite the appearance DD was getting depressed teaching these groups and was using all her efforts on classroom management and not teaching. A lack of interest in handling the difficult and disengaged kids is shown by members of the SLT. This, means classroom teachers are asked to continue teaching even if swearing is heard as long if it is not aimed at the teacher. There is no point sending a child out, for swearing because SLT will just re admit the child to the class . Isolation is the last resort and would probably require a physical assault to have taken place for it to be in-acted.

DD went to the head of Science and the Headteacher 4 weeks ago saying that she was not enjoying teaching and was thinking of quitting teaching. The truth was she had an interview for a Chemistry teacher for a Co-ed Independent, where the benchmark for GCSE grades are 8 and 9's . Despite having the interview, the head of Science talked her round, convincing her that she would be putting the department in a huge hole if she left. Because DD 2 is nice but naive, she agreed to stay at least until the end of July 2024. This, was on the proviso she would be teaching the top sets in years 9, 10 and 11. The behavior of her current year 10 top set Double Science is currently causing her concern for their immaturity . The kids don't swear or fight but act like 11 year old's. 15 year old girls putting their hands up and telling silly tales, boys laughing at very immature behavior reminiscent of year 6 boys. These kids are expected to get between grades 5 -8 in Double Science in June 2025 and DD says her top pupil is currently in line for a 4 if lucky ! DD is expected to plug the gaps left by the ex teacher in year 10 and these kids are the schools 'Cream'..

But why is it so much more common now?

@IveOnlyEverHeardOutwithONHere

Hear Hear hear well said !

Welcome to education!!!

Add to that SLTs who are often absolute evil and you understand why teachers are leaving the profession in droves!!

Not worth the money or stress AT ALL!!

(The kids are ace. Even the anarchic ones. Literally only good bit).

There are obviously issues related to the pandemic and being out of the classroom for a year. There are also issues with class sizes too. And of course there are also issues with respect and discipline. I haven't been in a classroom for 20+ years, but I remember there were teachers that we (as a class) behaved well for and teachers that had no control and that we could get away with murder in their lessons. Perhaps your DD could benefit from some assertiveness training or other soft skills that might help her manage the class better. I'm not saying that to be rude, just to offer a suggestion of something that might help going forward. The children aren't going to change if nothing else changes.

In my humble personal experience of working in schools with reception aged children I am yet to meet a child who cannot speak/is still in nappies due to the parents laziness and excessive Screentime.
And I do KNOW parents who are very lazy and their children are on iPads why too much. The children can still talk though. When my son started reception last year there was ONE child who couldn't talk and was still in nappies and she has learning disabilities.
Don't get me wrong I've seen the clickbait headlines saying there's a "drastic rise in children starting school unable to talk or shit on a toilet" but those articles don't mention whether the children have special needs?

When I was a child I was cripplingly shy and wouldn't talk to anyone unless they were close family according to many on Mumsnet I was a rude child and my parents neglected me. Wrong my parents are lovely and iPads did not exist when in was a child.

As an aside - I just wanted to point out that there is also a real consequence for the teachers if disruptive kids affect grades, not just the kids in the class.

If the disruptive kids have, as mine did in the last school I worked at, HUGE problems at home (parents in prison/in care/drugs/abuse/prostitution/gang members/crime etc), ALL issues that impact on expected grades enormously, the school will still expect YOU to get them to that grade. End of.

You try sitting with a child who hasn't slept for days because he's forced out to work by gangs at night and isn't eating because Mum spends all of her money earned on the street on drugs that he really needs to prioritise a science exam and see where it gets you. No services to step in and help, no adults to turn to to save them, no mental health services to support them. The only place on the horizon with a bed and a regular meal the prison they'll inevitably end up in. Utterly heart breaking.

The whole system is madness.

Honestly, parents don't know the half of what teachers, or a lot of the kids, go through.

One reason used to be that children were not allowed to start school in nappies ,thankfully the law has changed to stop children who are delayed for whatever reason from being discriminated against
My child is non verbal he also has severe autism and severe learning disabilities and an underlying rare chromosome disorder
I think there maybe multiple reasons why some more children have such disabilities, better health care premature children having a better survival rate ,sometimes resulting in more disabilities
.I also have my own thoughts on why there are more genetic disorders resulting in increased children with disabilities

I dislike the "lazy parents" trope. A two parent household with two full time working adults is at best going to have 30 minutes in the morning and 1 hour in the evening if the kids 1-4 are doing full time nursery hours.

This household will have maybe 30 hours quality, awake contact time a week with their kids. How on god's green earth is ANYONE supposed to potty train a kid in that time?

We aren't raising our own children anymore. Maybe in the 80s it would be a granny or a local childminder that would look after you, but these days granny is working and the local childminder isn't old Doris 5 doors down who lets you muck about with your friends as long as you mind your manners, it's someone with a EYFS framework getting a 18 month old to focus on their early phonics with flashcards.

This is why helicopter parents exist - we've got to entrust the most precious part of our lives to "for profit" nurseries and organisations. Childrearing has become KPI'd and over engineered.

You have to take your pick of what kind of gentle authoritarian tiger passive parent you're going to be, and get backlash from the other types if woebetide you dare set boundaries, slap a wrist, give a hug, or upset your kid.

Then you get to school, and there's no peace there. My 7 year old is learning grammar that I didn't approach until A levels. She's doing year 2 Maths that I did in year 6. And I was pretty smart at school. Her teachers are utterly amazing, I don't know how on earth they're cramming this into her head. It's impressive. And she's still "behind where she should be" for her year group.

But, is it the right thing to do? Are we seeing education over exploration, dulling self sufficiency and imagination? I think we are. And then, when that happens. We kick the parents.

They're just right lazy bastards after all.

What kind of learning disabilities? Was it tied to a concrete diagnosis? I think you’ve misunderstood what I meant (sorry I probably didn’t word it well), but I meant the rise of non verbal children with some kind of learning disability (very usually autism) where there is no clear medical reason for this, like with @x2boys son who has a genetic condition. I mean children who for no reason just don’t develop as expected, their speech is behind, they have autistic traits or ADHD traits. These type of children just seem to be far far far more common than they ever were before. I live in a large town and there are probably 2 or 3 posts to our mums fb chat about children who are behind with speech and have asd/adhd.

I don’t think it’s the fault of ‘lazy parents’ I have already said this. I have a feeling there is something else behind it but what that is I have no idea.

2 or 3 posts a day I meant

Well yes they will be. They missed a big chunk of their education and social learning during Covid.

It is really quite sad because DD 2 has wanted to be a teacher from being 14 . This is in contrast to DD 1 who just stumbled in to teaching. Yet DD 1 founds she loves teaching. This most probably being due to the environment of a highly selective grammar school. Whereas the natural teacher in DD 2 is inhibited by the restrictions of class management due to time taking up dealing with behavior and outside issues. I wish the two girls were in each others schools, because DD 1 would leave teaching or have no regrets about teaching in the independent . DD 2 though has a more caring attitude to those who are less fortunate hence a desire to teach in a non selective ordinary school.

The school have asked her previously if she can teach English to year 7-9 despite her degree being in Chemistry. This being because the Head of English noticed that DD 2 has a A* at A Level English and thinks the school could get away with it. The school are unable to recruit an English teacher. The school are prepared to ruin the Science Department if they can prop up English and Math's results.

Last time I spoke to her parents they said she was being tested for autism If I remember rightly. My comment about people blaming lazy parents was more aimed at people in general who believe that then you specifically.

I have a personal theory that the rise in learning disabilities in children may be related to the rise in cancer and that the many things which cause cancer may also affect children's brains. I appreciate there might not be any actual proof for that though

I think there could be some truth in that. I’m really struggling to think of what children come in contact with more now than they used to. There’s been TV for years, both my parents smoked, mums used to drink wine in pregnancy albeit in smallish amounts, there’s always been ‘chemicals’ (asbestos, lead paint etc) and junk food definitely isn’t a new invention. I’m wracking my brains. I worry if they don’t find out soon we will end up with an absolutely enormous cohort of disabled adults that the system just won’t be able to cope with alongside the ageing population and a smaller workforce as it is.

It is very sad to hear this but ultimately it is poor parenting that has led to this.

Parents need to take responsibility for their childrens bad behavior.

I feel so sorry for both the teachers and the well behaved children whose life chances are being eroded but the disruptive ones.

Another reason might be your hearing about it more now with the internet and online forums and chat groups etc,20,30years ago when the internet was in its infancy and before ,people just didn't use the same connections they do now

Your right in some ways though in my town we have four special schools ,two primary ,and two secondary ,all.of them have doubled in capacity in the last few years i have my own personal thoughts about some of the reasons for this .

Would you mind sharing them?

This is, in a way, a very 'helpful' post for me personally.

It articulates very well that feeling I keep having that 'school is not supposed to be like this'.

I have a bright teen DC who can barely cope with school (ND). All her energy goes into putting up with 'hours in prison, with a lot of unfair and pointless rules' - as she puts it. While all the joy of learing has gone.

She says that behaviour is generally awful, that a lof of her peers are 'disgusting and stupid' (we gather she means immature) and she feels trapped and drowing everyday surrounded by them.

This is a local well-regarded school, with a long-standing reputation pre-pandemic BTW.

I'm certain she'd actually enjoy school and get a lot out of it in a 'free -school' type of place. Or, as we used to call them when I was a teen, 'a school'. As it is, she is being crushed, everything feels pointless.

There is no way we can afford to HE, but I find myself thinking daily that she'd be better off out of school altogether.

Theres been a large shift in say 10 years to older parents. There always was women over 40 but its moved from 20yo in a generation to 30yo.
But with a large variation in a class so 1-2 with 20-25yo parents many whose parents were 26-30 some 30-6 and odd one or 2 up to 45.
Or having pcos thyroid issues or diabetes or overweight
I think young parents higher adhd risk and older ones higher asd.
But also apparently 5% of kids have fasd. The only severe asd child i know of in nappies and no speech was an alcoholic. The other asd kids have say a mum on medication in pregnancy or as i say older parents over 35. Previuosly when people had 4+ kids the kids were forced to be more flexible by parents or plder sibs.
There was no silly carpet time where you are sat too close.
Illness like ear infections and tonsilitis can affect behaviour.

At secondary dc has had kids kicking the stool next to her. Swearing. And this is art!

The primary curriculum probably is fine - for the eldest in the year but too fast for some others.
Some kids have missed 70% of a year of primary between covid 2 lockdowns, Queen funeral, coronation, off for testing or class cases, strikes. But even if not the teaching lost the kids who werent in for strikes were out roaming with no supervision and has affected their later attendance.
Eldest did fine on ks2 sats but obviously the science sats dont exist. And they missed science history and geography during covid.
I think secondaries need to set more subjects. Her spanish tests some got 0 and had to retake compared to others getting full marks.

Thanks for that🙄
My son is severely autistic and non verbal.and I know many children like him non of the mothers are alcoholics autism even severe autism is not the same as Foetal alcohol syndrome .

Where is the link to overweight parents having children with additional needs @Schooldinner2 ? Or a mother with pcos or diabetes? I've never heard that young parents increase likelihood of adhd in children, where has that come from?

Also, there has always been carpet time; I remember carpet time when I was in Reception in the 80s! Germs have always been rife in school.

I've certainly read on here before that improved infant survival rates might explain some increase in developmental delays or additional needs as very premature babies are more likely to live nowadays and might have ongoing needs which makes sense. And at the same time, schools are perpetually trying to do more with less so there is very little individual support remaining in classrooms.

IMHO the blame can surely only lie with parents. This is about children who are disruptive and disrespectful to professional adults or authority. No idea on how to behave. Not all of those children are ND.

They can do these things because there are no sanctions, if a parent objects then they can't be kept in detention, given lines because they're 'dehumanising' as I once told, the power lies with parents and so many couldn't care less, know all their rights but have no responsibilities. You only have to read MN where schools are expected to sort out so many problems that are not their responsibilities and posters keep their children as babies for far too long.

Typical of MN, always some who support shitty behaviour, the sort who turns on the school if any attempt is made to discipline their child. Often they can't manage a couple of children and support their children's appalling behaviour.

People have started to confuse children with small adults I think. They say ‘you wouldn’t make an adult ask permission to use the toilet’ but they are forgetting children and adults are not the same. Children don’t process information like adults do, they couldn’t care less about long term consequences (grown up life seems a million years away) and someone else is ultimately responsible for their food, roof over their head, and expenses. In the moment they need a sharp shock and real consequences, not to ‘help them understand the moral of the story’ but basically to moderate their behaviour until such a time they’ll understand why moderating it themselves is actually better for them. But that won’t be when they’re 5, or even 15.