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?

@Verbena17

Yes I see

Shouldn't he have been getting differentiated work or does this no longer exist

You're not being unreasonable, it's the same in my daughters comprehensive. It sounds horrific, but when you hear some of the stories that she comes home with, of children having to be revived by ambulance crew because they've been almost strangled to death by a fellow student in a classroom, while a teacher is present, students throwing chairs at the heads of children and even teachers etc etc etc you begin ho realise that the staff have to instill discipline however they can. Daughter can't wait to leave this summer.

@Theoware You can take a bag but the coat will stay wet. Plus with PE and food tech ingredients- it’s just unmanageable. What do they all take army rucksacks lol! Coat pegs outside classrooms?Teachers have a hard enough job already without enforcing such a menial ask.

This is the ludicrous fallacy behind the whole ideology: that children (particularly if they’re working class) are feral and wicked, and without punitive discipline they will be dangerous and uncontrollable. And everyone who complains is labelled as a bad parent who doesn’t value education and has no boundaries.

It is utter nonsense.

Also, the idea that the “disruptive element are removed”: removed from where and to where exactly? They still exist. They are not being eliminated from society, just off-rolled to make the academy’s results figures look better - at considerable long-term cost to society as a whole.

Today's students will be tomorrow's parents and teachers just as today's parents and teachers are yesterday's students. Their experiences now will contribute to how they view school when they become parents and teachers.

This thought led me to wonder why I am so much more cynical about school than my parents or my DBs.

My parents were reverential about school. They both went to grammar school. The secondary school my DBs and then I went to had been the town grammar school. When my DBs went it had just turned comprehensive and had kept the same staff.

By the time I got there most of these teachers had gone and the school was on the skids. But my parents were absolutely convinced it was a 'good' school. When ofsted came along a few years later they begged to differ.

For too long the school had rested on its nice, leafy, middle class laurels. Its focus was on getting select 6th formers into good universities.

I was definitely lower league (and a girl) so my experience of the school was very different from my DBs'.

My eldest DD(Y10) had her first day back today after Christmas together with Y11 and sixth form. Lower school are back tomorrow. The first thing they did was a whole school assembly outlining a new uniform 'regime'. Zero tolerance on things like untucked shirts, loosened ties, rolled up skirts, makeup, jewellery, etc, etc. Fair enough I thought when she told me this evening.
Not fair enough though (others may disagree) was the fact that following afternoon registration and before going to their next lesson, all students were told to line up in single file as they left the room. They then had to pull down their tie to prove that the top button was done up (as opposed to being undone and the tie pushed up to hide it), and to lift their jumpers to prove that the shirts were tucked in (even if not visible under the jumper). This in addition to the more obvious jewellery/makeup checks.
I don't have an issue with basic rule enforcement. But fucks sake; if a tie looks done up why does it matter if the top button is undone (which is how my DDs have always worn it), or if a shirt comes untucked during normal activities but can't be seen?

Why don’t you email the parent governors? Explaining the logic to them in really simple terms so they get it and realise how stupid they’re being?

It must be something like that but it doesn't seem to be a common rule as most schools I've heard of put them on the back of their chairs. I think DD would have to have an extra tote bag or something with her as her coat wouldn't fit in her rucksack. But by the time you've got a rucksack, tote bag and lunch bag it would seem to be making more of a trip/fire hazard.

But it sounds like it's not working.

An army rucksack would probably be bigger than my DD! 😂

My school was exactly like this in the 1970s. Only we have big cloakrooms which were locked in school hours and patrolled by a cane waving teacher when they were unlocked.

"Why did these Trusts come about?"
Well, the govt set up these paid "academy brokers" to try and encourage schools to sign up to them, then sent in ofsted to do bad gradings and force them to join if that didn't work. Eventually if there are too few non academy schools in an area the remaining establishments also have to become academies as the council can no longer support "school improvement" (ime school improvement generally equates to "make staff jump through more hoops with a side order of stressing children out") .
Started in 2000 by Labour - part of Tony Blair's obsession with data, tick sheets, and sacking heads and removed the passion and heart from education - they remain popular with Tories keen to destabilize teaching unions, local authorities, and the power of the red book on pay & conditions, and allow schools who academise to only need one qualified teacher on staff - the SENCO.

There are many, many countries around the world where children do not wear school uniform and still manage to achieve academically and become productive members of society. The obsession schools have in the UK about arbitrary uniform rules is embarrassing.

I am a working professional adult with a high level of academic achievement but if a teacher had asked me to lift up my jumper to show my shirt was tucked in, 15 year old me would have told them to fuck off.

Is this an outwood academy by any chance ? There's been a big hoohaa in my area about children being suspended for refusing to remove coats because it was freezing and in 1 video the staff shouting at children to take coats off are wearing .... you guessed it big thick winter coats !!!

It’s supposed to be differentiated but in reality….to have the work differentiated per pupil was seemingly too much of a stretch. I’ve spent the evening reading through all the old emails between me and DS’ year 7 tutors and for every single subject, there are back and fro emails that left me (once again) crying. I’ve not read them for a few years (he’s almost 19 now) and I just felt like I’d been hit in the stomach.

In their response emails - they were explaining why they were sticking with their C3 or C2 break detentions….when in fact he had only been hyper focussed on retrieving his things or was late for a lesson because they wouldn’t let him go to the loo just before his lesson began, as he couldn’t process how much time there was left before the end of break bell rang.

The ‘reasonable adjustments’ they stated were in their mind reasonable but upon reading them, weren’t adjusted for my child’s needs at all. The emails are mostly me requesting (and at times almost begging albeit very humbly) for help with planning homework, asking for text books to be sent home to help him or just asking that tasks are broken down more etc.

Anyway - just trying to illustrate how inflexible mainstream schools are and I’m pretty sure the staff are all sat in staff rooms (if they have them) saying ‘let’s go back to the old days instead of all this crap’.
Surely happy, well rounded children who can function as adults should be the outcome and as a mum, I’m pretty sure a dictatorship style discipline regime is not the way to go about it.

.....and your tone smacks of entitlement.

That's nonsense.

I'm speaking from the perspective of a parent whose DCs went to a public high school in the US, a school with a very mixed student intake - a student body of 3,500+ from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, income levels, cultural backgrounds, parents with wildly varying levels of aspiration and ambition and different experiences of school and school systems.

There were kids heading for Harvard and kids who wanted to be mechanics or hairdressers and all points in between. Many of the students were TESL students, from homes where Spanish or Polish or (lately) Ukrainian were the first languages. There were students whose ancestors came from the rural South whose experiences of segregation had an effect on how they viewed schools.

There were no uniforms, just a dress code.

There were lockers for every student, assigned on the first day of freshman year and kept for all four years, and PE lockers where students could keep their school issued PE shorts and Tshirts and leave their day clothes and bags while doing PE.

There was a five minute passing period between classes. Students could talk and use whatever side of the hallways they wished to use, getting around a building that is a city block long (1/8 of a mile) and four floors high.

Students could get a hall pass to use the bathroom during class. Hall passes were tracked.

Students were placed in academic tracks based on placement exams and performance in classes. They did not advance year by year with kids their age.

The library was specifically remodeled as a place where students could hang out, supervised.

Minor infractions of rules did not result in detentions or exclusions. A buildup of minor infractions resulted in a referral to a dean of discipline and a discussion of issues behind the behaviour, and problem solving. The school did not expel students and did not use detention as a constant response to chronic problems.

The school employed security guards to keep order in the hallways, cafeterias, and surrounds and to double as crossing guards/ direct traffic.

SEN were diagnosed and IEPs developed by SEN staff employed by the school. The school had a Special Ed section, plus a nursery for the babies and small children of staff and students, and farmed out kids who couldn't function in the mainstream school environment because of emotional or MH needs to specific alternative educational providers, with each student fully funded by the school, including school bus transport.

The school served breakfast and lunch in the cafeterias, with FSM students able to get a hearty meal at no cost twice a day, and reduced cost food available to hundreds more. During the covid shutdown the school distributed iPads and chrome books to all students and had free meals available for pickup to all registered for free school meals plus any other students whose families needed a weekly package of dry/ tinned pantry items - noodles, pasta, jars of sauce, dried fruit, instant porridge, etc.

Yes, all of that (and there was much, much more) costs money. If you think operating what amounts to a stressful boot camp masquerading as a school will accomplish what money and evidence-based approaches to discipline do, you need to examine what it is in your assumptions about your fellow Britons that makes you think that way.

I agree with all of that, @dontbenastyhaveapasty

The classist assumptions are gobsmacking.

@mathanxiety Minor infractions of rules did not result in detentions or exclusions. A buildup of minor infractions resulted in a referral to a dean of discipline and a discussion of issues behind the behaviour, and problem solving. The school did not expel students and did not use detention as a constant response to chronic problems.

Sounds similar to how they handle discipline in Finland, discussing the behaviour and trying to get to the root of it.
No automatic going up to the next school year either, if they fail they can do summer school and resit exams to see if they pass and get into the next grade, but they can be made to repeat the year. I think its pretty rare for that to happen though I know of at least two children in my DD's primary school that have repeated a grade (though one was because he had cancer and missed too much 1st grade). Lots of SEN support and seems relatively easy compared to the UK to get the support - I bet a lot of poor behaviour (not all of course) is due to struggling too much in a school that they can't cope with where their needs aren't met.

No rules about moving around between lessons beyond the usual no bullying rules. Sometimes they have to travel across town to another school for lessons and the teenagers are trusted and expected to do this within the time given, by themselves. This is a factory town, the vast majority are working class kids (though class differences are different here compared to the UK, or the US I expect) not naice middle class suburbs.

Wasn't against fire regulations when I was in school. Are classes just more crowded now perhaps?

Has it turned into an a academy. They bring in stupid rules.

I see some of the points raised but as a teacher in a pretty rough school where there is no discipline from senior management, we need a bit of this.

If this is the same building where the numbers have doubled then the school probably isn't designed to show that many pupils. One way systems are a pain but not something to get worked up over if it's for safety reasons. The lines in the corridor were put into my school in return from Covid and maybe in some schools it's been beneficial.

As for the uniform, I am 100% for this. Some of our pupils don't comply with this and nothing is done. Last year we had very serious problems with intruders coming into school and they were not easily identified due to the number of out pupils in hoodies and joggers. Some of these kids came in for a laugh and wandered around, some came in to attack some of our pupils for outside issues - gang mentality. Again, uniforms aren't the best, but if it keeps your child safe then there's a bigger picture. If they are doing uniform checks at the door, it could actually be something like this but they don't want come out and say it. There are a number of staff in my school who are concerned that someone will get stabbed in our school before things change and that's terrifying. I've had kids in my class who have obviously taken something during their break and you're concerned over what their behaviour is going to be like.

The jacket thing is annoying and common sense should be used. My classroom is terribly cold, I let my kids keep them on if it's too cold, and when smt come in and moan at them I tell them it was me who let them keep it on due to how cold it is. I've been in the same school for over 15 years and I used to think they were ott with jackets off as soon as you came in the door but that standard was let slip and that was the start.

Yes, I work in a god awful school, why do I not leave? We have some amazing kids who need teachers who are on their side and will do what they can for them despite the fact they're in a terrible school.

As a pupil I'd be fed up and would be rolling my eyes at the rules, as a parent I'd maybe still feel a little like that but would tell my son he just needs to get on with it.

I watched 'The UKs Strictest School' on ITV yesterday. Its called Michaela Community School' in West London. Its a very deprived area and they get amazing results.
They think if you're really strict with the tiny things and zero tolerant then the big things won't happen. Some of it all very strange though and I can't see how the school could work for SEN children, I don't think they'd be accepting, I assume the parents of SEN children wouldn't consider the school.
Has anyone watched it or have any experiences of the school?

Try sending your child to a school where there is no uniform code, no rules and no discipline because that is what my child's school has become! Regularly my child has come home from school with ripped uniform or bruises where from where they have been pushed down the stairs because there is a mass bundle of kids rushing down the corridors. No one cares what time you turn up as long as it is vaguely right. Thank goodness my child is in year 11 and leaves soon.