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 once taught someone who hid a huge knife in his coat. It was me that found it. During my lesson.
So, no coats.

And it has to be a rule that applies to everyone - it can't be that everyone else manages to get their coat off but your son didn't manage to on the second time of being challenged.

If a knife can be hidden in a coat then surely they can be hidden in a blazer too?
I'd actually rather see more focus on WHY teens feel the need to carry knives in schools?
Why so many are unhappy? Why so many hate each other?

Because some children will sit in class wearing a massive puffa jacket with the hood up (just like Kenny in South Park https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5yFCZ8-sw_8) and will refuse to take it off when asked politely. Its a way of saying fuck you to the teacher.

I am (naively) shocked about this. What are the consequences for these kids who threaten violence? What do the parents say?

Consequences are isolation etc but kids who bring knives into school aren't the ones with supportive parents so outside of school there are zero consequences.
The ones who swear at teachers have zero consequences because the parents always blame the teachers. You see it on this site all the time, a DC gets sanctioned at school and the parent posts on MN saying how unfair it is and blaming the school.
FYI this is why our NDN sends his daughter to private school. All my teacher friends who work in state secondary schools send their kids to private schools.

Is it though? Why does it matter?

Basically most schools are horrible. They have to be because of the lack of discipline and self-discipline most pupils are brought up with and the shortage of budgets to cope with the challenges posed by this by anything other than authoritarian resentment- and anxiety-inducing shit.

Home educate if you can afford it

That's it. Sorry to be negative but there's no solution within the current educational, social and political constraints.

Where the hell are kids getting knives from anyway? Taking them from the kitchen at home?

I know a number of children in different secondary schools here in Ireland. Some of them have finished secondary school and some are still in secondary school.
I think it hard now for any principal in charge of a secondary school as the numbers are going up and the funding isn't. Then some kids arrive to secondary school and they are not socially mature enough for secondary. I know of a school that won't take children until they are 13 into their 1st year of secondary school. In Ireland we do 8 years in primary school before secondary. Some pupils in the past started school at 4 rather than 5.
Then some kids may have learning difficulties and the support they need is lacking. Some parents refuse to correct their child and get abusive when a teacher or principal says their child is disruptive or needs to go to a lower level say in Maths or English.

I know that some head teachers can bring in new rules and some of them are a bit much. I can understand 1 line going up and 1 going down on a corridor in a large school. If you go to a few schools you can see the difference in the ones that are well run and the ones where improvements need to be made.

Then if a principal takes over a bad school they are trying to improve the behaviour to keep teachers in the school. Then if teachers leave they are trying to attract a good teacher to replace them. If you could work as a teacher in a nice school in a middle or upper class area with a good principal or in a poor school in a possible rough area which would you pick?

Even for people working in jobs some companies are known as nice to work for. Other places then are constantly looking for staff due to poor hours, poor pay or bad management or a combination of these.

@AnneValentine yes indeed - the quiet child who just wants to focus on the lesson and zone out the other members of the class might feel much more comfortable hiding under a hood. It doesn't always mean they are being disrespectful.

@twistyizzy surely putting a knife carrying kid into isolation is going to to fuck all. Do the police get involved?

It does help if you can actually see the faces of the children you're teaching. Plus it's easier to hide a machete in a padded coat than it is a blazer.

@Icanttellyouanything hoods don't usually hide faces though. Do they?

Not my school so I don't know to be honest.

But as a teacher you then can't see if they are engaged or just asleep! If Ofsted/SLT came in for an observation and a child was hiding their face under a hood the teacher would be hauled up.
In the real world it may make no sense but schools aren't the real world and they aren't held up to real world standards.

Stronger sanctions are needed. I’m not exactly sure of the legalities of carrying a knife (I assume illegal?) then the police need to be told and the young person given a thorough bollocking and criminal record. I am amazed that kids get away with taking knives to school and the parents don’t know or don’t care.

Keeping your coat on isnt disruptive behaviour, it is a personal choice or necessity if it is cold, parents should be letting the head know that shouting at someone for this isnt acceptable, and as someone mentioned female teachers doing this to only boys is an even darker problem, that would need to be challenged and stamped out pretty quickly IMO. Sounds like the 70s early 80s TBH when you could be belted over the hands with a leather strap in front of the whole class for relatively minor "disruptive behaviour".

I was wondering if this is a UK problem or world wide? I was reading an article about Estonia recently and how successful their education system is.

@twistyizzy it's all a bit crappy for teachers really 🙁

Have you been around a teen lately? They keep these awful puffa jackets on even in the height of a 30° summer! Of course they'll say they're cold, they don't want to do as they're told!

What do you mean why does it matter?

I don't abusively tell my dc... like I said a poster on here once heard a woman call her teenage DD a pest in the supermarket and actually started a thread about whether she should follow her out to the car park to get her reg plate and report her.

Of course they do?!

I've made a very specific of making sure I explain and justify why I am setting a boundary or making a rule to my child, regardless of the severity or how obvious the explanation is.

"Your curfew is X time because it is dark by then, the busses are less regular and if I'm late home from work I won't be able to come and get you if the bus doesn't turn up" not, "Be home by X because I said so, don't argue with it or you're not going out at all".

Absolutely no good comes from the "Because I said so approach, in parenting or teaching. It doesn't help them learn to rationalise decisions made by others, it doesn't help them to learn how to work out where their own boundaries are in their own lives. People expect their children to turn into well rounded adults but aren't furnishing them with the logical reasoning and critical thinking skills that they need, all "because they said so".

*tell my dc off that should read

But I don't necessarily think raising your voice occasionally counts as abuse

I went to secondary school in the 80s. I changed school several times for various reasons but I don’t remember any of the schools I attended being overly strict (one school had a thing about having to wear white socks/tights but it wasn’t terrible). There were coat hooks dotted around the school for coats, schools probably don’t have room for these now. I generally enjoyed my school days. This thread is deeply depressing, I feel so sorry for 11 year old year 7s who are terrified of putting a foot wrong.