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?

I went to school in the 80's. I used to get sent to the deputy head every morning where she would make me wipe my makeup off (I was a punk so makeup was a bit extreme) I used to persevere every day. I was eventually suspended.
We were allowed to wear coats though..

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

So what do you mean by this?

But sadly in my DDs school the shift to a draconian behaviour policy is being done 'for teachers' because of the recruitment challenges.

How are mass detentions for teachers? Someone has to staff those detentions? Is SLT staffing them?! For some kids “homework” club after school is a good idea. Are you all sure this is not what they are trying to achieve? Get the non compliant kids to do their work at school itself because they don’t have a quiet/safe place at home?

They quoted 2 things in their rationale:

1. 25% of parents didn't think behaviour was good or very good And
2. teacher recruitment

Sadly this isn't about getting kids to do homework. They are dolling out detentions for forgetting a ruler.

Weirdly they still have 3 strikes before a detention for behaviour issues. But forget your ruler or have your shirt undone and it's automatically an hour after school detention.

Saw this on X/Twitter this morning. Looks like one of the best state or grammar allows individual dress styles and they are allowed to take their jackets off!

Schools are failing children because of successive governments washing their hands of education and handing schools over to businesses to run.

Please stop blaming the teachers.

That's quite the cheap shot there.

Out of a population of about 350 million, how many have shot their fellow students?

Your comment is ridiculous.

Well again, top state and grammar schools usually have an intake of students with higher incomes and stable families with fewer social stresses. Families who can afford to deliberately move to the catchment areas of these schools for example.

You need to match like with like. It's unlikely for example, that top performing schools have double the amount of teenagers in the school building than it was designed to accommodate.

Again, selective schools such as grammars can cherry pick the highest performing most promising students, unlike an overcrowded comprehensive.

It's easier to have more relaxed discipline when you have a highly motivated student body in a school that's not crowded and with less children who are in poverty or suffering various kinds of social deprivation. Tight budgets may not stretch to provide all the pastoral services that a crowded school needs; while the intake from a more deprived area may have less social resources of highly motivated and economically wealthy parents.

Please use a true comparison.

The assumption in a lot of this is that more rules and stricter discipline help kids from.worse backgrounds behave better. There doesn't seem to be much evidence og this.

press.princeton.edu/ideas/i-spent-a-year-and-a-half-at-a-no-excuses-charter-school-this-is-what-i-saw
The charter schools of the US are a far cry from those of the UK. Parents choose to send their students to charter schools in the US. They are not forced by residence in a catchment to send them.

And there are a great many recognized and acknowledged flaws in the approach.

The knee-jerk reactionary/ neo-con element of British society has hopped aboard a half digested idea from America and made it their own. For Black, Latinx, and PoC students they have substituted the British underclass.

www.kipp.org/news/a-letter-from-dave-levin-to-kipp-alumni/
A letter from Dave Levin, founder of KIPP schools, to alumni, apologising for the one size fits all approach, for the ways the rules hurt and dehumanised students and teachers alike, and contributed to the Us and Them (You) culture of broader society. In the American context, this translates primarily but not exclusively to anti-Blackness.

Above all, that apology contains a glimpse of the idea that the message such schools impart is that it is the students and their families/ culture that must be changed - because they are the problem, and they need the top-down imposition of a superior culture if they are to get anywhere in life. The broader inequalities and institutional biases of society remain unquestioned and untouched. If Margaret Thatcher ever had a wet dream, this is what it looked like.

In practice, what draconian rule schools allow is the unleashing of a comprehensive contempt for a wide swathe of the population, and a comprehensive dismissal of everything this cohort needs and offers.

Maybe that's a sixth form class, in which case they will be wearing 'business dress'?

@Redpeonies
I went to a comprehensive school with classes of about 30 pupils, 8 forms with very mixed backgrounds and abilities.

Although it was strict, we didn't get put in isolation for forgetting a ruler or not wearing the correct jumper.

We were allowed to take blazers off when it was too hot. We also had lockers to store our PE kit and books.

This was in the UK.

I know my nephew transferred to a state school that had fantastic A level results for 6th form only to find they were weeding out kids in the first year that weren't performing at the top level.

I definitely think this is the problem.
Top salaries of CEOs of some of these schools is eye watering! Money that should be being used for education.

@wildlifeWalker I understand this and I am not suggesting it is all schools, but a school with 1500 that was built for 750 often has to sacrifice the locker space for other essential things.

I also attended a comprehensive school in London. At Primary we had 30+ kids in our class.

What we experienced is not necessarily what current teachers are facing, such as huge overcrowding and serious underfunding for all the extra services and support that many students need. Or no room to put the extra services in.

I am not saying petty discipline measures work, but many schools are getting to a level of crowd control where they are trying to keep everyone safe and moving through the day. This is often with a significant number of kids who don't want to be there, or have various challenges which in previous decades would've had alternative help available in a number of forms that no longer exist (specialized schools, more social workers, more pastoral staff etc etc).

Teachers and school staff are spread extremely thin in some schools. There are many threads on MN of teachers desperate to get out of teaching, being signed off sick due to mental health and generally feeling exhausted and stressed out.

This!
My eldest is in Y8, and had just come home in tears because she got her first ever detention today. She was in her last lesson of the day, the room was really warm so about 10 minutes into the lesson she asked to take her jumper off. Teacher refused saying that it wasn't that warm. About 15 minutes later she asked again, again teacher refused saying that no-one else seemed to have a problem. She didn't dare to ask again so she did what I would consider to be the sensible thing and pulled her tie down and undid her collar. She remained like this for the rest of the lesson, and it wasn't until the end of the lesson that the teacher asked her to stay behind. Teacher wanted to know why she'd loosened her tie without permission, and accused her of being disruptive throughout the lesson. Issued her with a lunchtime detention for Monday.
I'm not saying that my daughter is an angel and the fact that she's a 'chatterbox' has been mentioned many times in parents' evenings, but she always gets her work done and knows the rules regarding general behaviour, uniform, etc.

But people are realising that many teachers are just staying passive and don’t advocate for the children.

So whilst you’re right, lots of teachers aren’t to blame for the decisions being made, they’re also not doing anything to fight them….when they can clearly see the nightmare they’re (the petty rules) causing.

Teachers aren't being passive. I cannot magically create SEND funding or get enough money to buy new pritt sticks or white board pens. I fight constantly with SLT for resources, the SENDcO for support and what does it achieve? Nothing. I also have a job to do without fighting for everything everyone needs. Even the basics would be nice.

@Verbena17, do you work as a teacher?

Teachers cannot increase the amount of money spent on support or pastoral staff. Many children with SEND require 1.1 support. There is no money to pay for TAs to support these children in most schools unless the student has 1.1 written into an EHCP. I can ask the senco five hundred times for help in my classroom for a student but they still can't give it. They do not have the money in the budget. I have minimal prep time and huge classes. Many children have needs that mean they need an adult alongside them to encourage, support and assist them. I cannot be that 1.1 as I have 29 others to teach and manage. Some of these will also have significant needs or may have behaviour or emotional difficulties. Then there are the kids who need to be challenged and then there are the quiet students who just get on who also need some of my time and attention. Verbena77 - I think you need to spend a week in a standard comp to get a flavour of what it is like.

Agree also that it is much easier to have a relaxed approach with highly motivated, academic students. Comparing selective schools or schools in very leafy areas with more mixed comprehensives is pointless. They don't have the same clientele.

Why exactly can pupils not take off their jumper or blazer if they are warm? I really don't get the reason for this. Not all people feel temperature in the same way.

You could just say at the beginning of the lesson they are allowed to which would prevent multiple students asking separately...

@pissedoffwithschool

It's absolutely ridiculous

I would be furious as well

Have the students got no autonomy now

Thanks, not just me being precious then.
She's really upset because she likes to be a 'good girl', and takes it to heart if she gets told off.

No yanbu she's in class and hot, what's wrong with loosening tie or taking off blazer or jumper. She's not being g disruptive. What is the big deal

She's not focusing on the lesson if she feels like this and has asked nicely