To wonder what has happened to my Son's school

[k2493]

Just posting for thoughts

Both my kids have gone through the same secondary school. When my daughter started, the school was lovely and new with around 750 kids.

Fast forward to 2024 and there is now 1500 kids and it's become like a dictatorship.

Due to the number of kids, the school has put lines either side of the hallway that they have to walk within otherwise they get detention.

Every hallway is a one way system.

The minute they arrive in school, they have to remove their coats or it's detention even with no heating in the middle of winter. The other day my son arrived back to school to find that there were long queues outside while they did two uniform checks at the door. By the time he got in, he was frozen. Immediately he got shouted at for still having his coat on even though he had just stepped in from the cold.

He then went around the corner and got shouted at again even though he tried to explain it's really difficult to be expected to stay warm, keep moving and remove your coat all at the same time. Nope. Threaten with detention again.

AIBU to wonder what has happened to our education system? I'm lucky in that my son is quite strong minded and just brushes it off but what about the kids who's mental health this is impacting? Surely we want our kids to remember school as being enjoyable for their education and friendships rather than for being shouted at every two minutes for not walking between lines or not taking their coats off the minute they arrive in school?

Well that's ridiculous. I'm also on a vocational course for adults (thankfully not in the UK) and we're treated like adults. No one tells us what we can or cannot wear in the classroom (in the hangar we wear school-provided work clothes, for safety reasons), some wear their coats, some wear hats, pretty much everyone wears hoodies. Some, uncorrelated to clothing, don't put effort in (the two youngest spend most lessons playing computer games) but they're the ones that will suffer when they fail their exams, it doesn't affect anyone else's learning.

@2dogsandabudgie the thing with buying expensive trainers vs expensive uniform. For some people it's not necessary about the cost. It just they would rather spend money on something their child can wear all the time, are physically comfortable in and actually fits them properly.
The issue with many school uniforms is they are badly made, poorly fitting and physically uncomfortable - and who wants to wear formal school shoes on the weekend?
Most parents would be happy to be able to buy just one pair of more expensive decent quality shoes/trainers for their children than 2 pairs of cheaper ones.

Well-meaning early career teachers are brainwashed into believing this utterly meaningless word salad shit pushed out by academy trusts, and then become terrible leaders.

What they actually do in the school is likely the opposite of what the word salad appears to be saying.

Academisation has saved money, not saved education. Money that then gets paid to academy CEOs. Money that isn't buying books or improving buildings or paying teachers a fair wage (not in terms of salary for the contracted hours of 32.5 weekly but salary for a lot of teachers actual hours of more like 60 a week) or making enough TAs available to support SEN.

No-one wants to be a head because you die on your sword when Ofsted inevitably find you're not draconian enough, so only idiots with superiority complexes apply.

These threads make me so glad I left the UK and my children don't have to go to school there. Primary schools still sound lovely like I remember but secondary schools don't sound like I remember mine being (sure it had some petty rules but nothing too draconian, and I really enjoyed my time there). Detentions for everything makes them meaningless - in schools where I am now detention is one of the last resorts, there's a meeting with parents and social workers before there's detention! But they don't have a huge amount of rules to enforce so its much easier, when the teachers don't have to police clothes, and forgetting materials just results in a bad mark in the online portal (repeated bad marks would warrant further action but one offs don't), then they only have to address serious issues like bad behaviour and then its easier those issues to be dealt with in an individual way, with meetings with the head and the parents and whatnot. And there's much more pastoral care, that probably makes a huge difference.

But it sounds like behaviour in UK schools is on a whole other level, what is causing that though? Why is it so much worse? Can't all be blamed on screen time because that's increased everywhere.

You sound like a teacher 🤔.
How ridiculous- even if some people blow their noise noisily who cares?!
Are you going to measure the decibels of somebody’s cough?

This is what I mean! Petty through and through. Poor blooming kids!

cyclamenqueen - I would hope that if someone was found in school to be carrying a knife that the police would be called and that student arrested as that is a criminal offence.

My dc go to one of these strict schools and the school say they're setting them up for life. Yes, you have to be on time, yes you have adhere to rules. But I've never been to a workplace where you aren't allowed to to to the toilet when you want or you get punished or even frowned upon for blowing your nose!

Or you know….the teacher could tell the kids to think logically and suggest they make their own straight lines! Edge of a work book, freehand etc.
Mind blown hey? 😂

No I'm not, I'm support staff and you couldn't pay me enough to actually teach. The stuff our poor teachers have to put up with is often unacceptable.
I see everyday waht goes on in the classroom and I work in a very average school in a typical middle class area.

It's frustrating as it's not all students but definitely a higher % then it used to be.

That all sounds horrendous. My two attend different secondary schools (in Scotland) and neither school is like that. No wonder there are such huge problems being reported with teenage mental health. Yes, you need discipline in schools but children/young people also need to be treated with respect and there should be a positive environment for them.

As for creating a situation where children can't wear warm coats or appropriate footwear in winter, no wonder people don't want to walk to school and hence the problems with traffic and emissions, not to mention obesity/health problems due to lack of exercise.

Do you not have parents' councils or similar in England where parents can make their views known about what is happening in their children's schools?

@MigGirl
If you are an academy, is the behaviour worse since a stricter regime came in?
Do you have non-uniform days? How does the behaviour compare?

In reply to:
No I'm not, I'm support staff and you couldn't pay me enough to actually teach. The stuff our poor teachers have to put up with is often unacceptable.
I see everyday waht goes on in the classroom and I work in a very average school in a typical middle class area.

It's frustrating as it's not all students but definitely a higher % than it used to be.

How do schools find teaching staff to supervise all these detentions? There is a recruitment crisis as it is.

If a child forgets a ruler for lesson, there should be a natural consequence ie the child misses the learning and has to catch up at home. Teachers shouldn’t have to supply spares. Dishing out a detention has no effect.

It does seem trivial. I regularly give out pens and always have done

Yes I was a teacher.

But then you sound like some one that has not had to deal with pupils doing things deliberately to distract and disrupt the class Its called low level disruption.

No-one and I mean no-one needs to blow their nose making it sound like an elephant calling for its mate.

Yes it is "Poor blooming kids!" having to put up with idiots that think its funny to disrupt the education of others,

But if the teacher doesn't supply the spares then the child is not making sufficient progress in the lesson and the teacher is the one that gets the bollocking.

This is one of the reasons why teachers spend so much of their own money on equipment for kids.

Perhaps every school desk should have a ruler and pencil attached to it on a long chain 😂

In the ‘old’ days, there was no high stakes Ofsted. These days being a head is like being a football manager but without the salary. It has led to a new breed of headteachers that have become ‘tough’ to cope with it. The breed of heads I worked with when I started teaching have all pretty much now retired. I worked with a super head as well - he was great and very caring.

Some schools like the one where my DD goes (secondary) has maintained its caring ethos. It doesn’t have petty rules and the teachers come across as they genuinely enjoy working there. However that is in part to being a stand alone academy and the reality of having a decent catchment. The majority of parents care about results and will support the school. The results are consistently good and historically always have been. It keeps its staff and doesn’t appear to have ridiculous workload policies.

However, if you work in a school where the parents have had a less than positive experience themselves, where pupils intend to work but aren’t bothered about the results that the SATs say they should get -quote ‘I only need 5 x Cs to get my apprenticeship to work at my Dad’s a garage.’ Less support from parents, more low level disruption, academy trust wanting to see action being taken because Ofsted, some parents wanting to see things improve and are vocal.
Very little support from services outside the school, tight budgets, more SEND and SEMH issues and with CAMHS essentially broken so schools are coping with behaviour that would have landed a permanent exclusion when I started teaching, Early help now funded out of tight school budgets and you can start to see why some of these schools have gone down that route - it’s a means of control.

What can we do? Well not a lot, keep complaining to your MP, make education a key policy in the upcoming election and vote out the Tories.

What have I just read?

This is all insanity.

I completely disagree.

A school is there to find and draw out the best in the students and encourage them to reach their individual potential.

Schools elsewhere manage to do this without silly, unjustifiable rules, the barking of orders, and the ridiculous uniforms.

Is there something especially awful about British teenagers in state schools that warrants the boot camp ethos described on this thread? Are British teens so different from teens elsewhere that this knee-jerk and probably not evidence-based type of regime must be imposed on them?

These rules are weird, but maybe my secondary school was weirdly lax.

l left 10 years ago, so maybe that has something to do with it too. We had no uniform, as long as you wore nothing offensive it wasn’t an issue. No hoods up in class. They freely handed out pencils rulers and calculators (the big fancy Texas instrument ones too). I got a variety of detentions, usually pe, I would never show up and nothing ever came of it. Senior management were honestly not bad people, one would shout if you were doing something stupid, but you could have a good conversation with them.

I once made a teacher cry, not intentionally, but I’m autistic and a cheeky little shit sometimes and rather sarcastic. But nothing that would have made any other teacher cry. I didn’t say anything vicious, but was very literal. She was a freshly qualified teacher, change of career. She ran out into the corridor and one of the senior management was there, he took me down to his office, I explained what happened. He was truly baffled and let me go. never saw her again, it also turned out another class had made her cry too. Strange.

my school were very reasonable in hindsight. Many teachers not so much, senior management were very reasonable.

I was that autistic pda child that would refuse to leave the classroom or change seat. I’d have an argument with them for 15 minutes, instead of going out the classroom for two minutes. Never particularly got in trouble though, from higher up.

I fucking hated school. But looking back I can see why the teachers hated me tbh. I did very little in class apart from be disruptive (because I couldn’t cope with school) but still got good marks apart maths, English and physics.

some of the rules they have now, with isolation, (mainly English schools on documentaries I’ve seen), I would not have coped with.

I don’t understand uniform rules, seems a waste of time. The school got a uniform the year after I left. There was vote as well so I don’t think it was minded.

since I left the school has gone downhill, the new headteacher is no where near as good apparently.

The voice of reason.

I'd go one further and eliminate uniform altogether.

Think Fripp means that this is often done deliberately (coughing too). Some students find it very funny.

Exactly - the uniform would naturally be jeans, trainers and T-shirts like most of the 6th form college wear.
They would feel more comfortable which would in turn promote learning. Just think of the time saved by teachers who then could actually teach instead of wasting time inspecting socks!

Verbena17 - You do realise that rulers aren't just for drawing straight lines don't you? Well I hope you do.

@SellFridges
I cannot see any need whatsoever for family style lunches with set discussion topics, affirmation chanting, and the 3,2.1 slant nonsense.

The what?? 🤷‍♀️