Few details tweaked for obvious reasons.
I work in a primary school that was visited by Ofsted early Jan, and we have just received the outstanding result.
I was asked to fill out a staff survey and so did so VERY HONESTLY, but it seems as though I am the only person that did.
I find lots of aspects of the school to be great but behaviour is outrageous.
The new behaviour policy does not work.
Lots of pupils are extremely rude and disrespectful to one another and to staff.
There are a handful of children in each year group that display really challenging behaviour, which disrupts the class teaching and I believe impacts other children’s learning.
Staff are regularly hit by children.
Daily there is screaming and shouting in the corridors (granted this is usually ND children, though definitely not exclusively) and adults are struggling to restrain the children from going on angry rampages.
A recent example I can give is from my own class.
One boy (Child B) was called the most vicious names and put downs by another child (Child S) and was then punched hard (left with a black-eye) in the face. This was DURING my maths lesson.
The reason this happened is because Child B would not give up his seat. Child S had to sit on another seat and did not want to.
I had tried to intervene, I was on my own and was trying to talk to Child S, I am not allowed to raise my voice or put my hands on the children as I have not had the correct training.
I stood helpless as he lashed out physically and hit poor Child B.
I could only send the injured child out of class and wait for management to come (I had sent another child to fetch them).
Child S had to miss one play time (it was raining so everybody missed play) and refused point blank to apologise to the other child.
The Child B was actually asked to apologise to him for not being kind and giving up his seat. The head said ‘ We thought maybe if he apologised first the other child would apologise.’
Child B’s mum was FURIOUS at how this was dealt with and of course I caught the brunt of her anger.
She kept her child off school as he was worried (quite rightly) about returning. His mum said he did not feel safe at school.
This incident really upset me and I cried about it a lot! It also upset some other pupils and I had to have a little talk with them about what they had seen.
I won’t go into more detail about Child S but let’s just say, it was not the first incident involving him.
I constantly hear other staff members complaining, it’s a shared thought that behaviour is shocking.
Yet, nobody bothered to fill out the staff survey and those that did said how wonderful the school is.
On the days Ofsted came, they knew which classes they would be in and flooded those classes and the playground at playtime with adults ( sooo many members of management at our school and office staff) scooping up difficult children and engaging them in fun activities etc to keep them from acting out.
Many were sent out of class for ‘interventions’ that have were not in place before and have not been down since.
Behaviour was said to be ‘exemplary’ which everybody is now mocking.
In the results of the staff survery there was just one negative (mine) and one neutral.
The rest were all positive.
We were told to fill out the surveys ‘and to be very positive’ by management.
We have had training from ex Ofsted inspectors on how to pass Ofsted so it’s really no surprise we did as well as we did.
I am just so disappointed that nobody else spoke up.
AIBU to not want to listen to people complain to me about behaviour, workload and managements incompetence anymore?
I actually want to say to them ‘Well perhaps if you had voiced your issues in the survey they would have been addressed and worked on…’
Just this week, my teaching partner was in tears because of lack of support for the children struggling academically because she has to put so much effort into dealing with behaviour.
I comforted her but, tbh, a part of me feels like she helped to let those children down by not speaking up.
Maybe they are worried about anonymity.
I must admit, I am rather worried they know it was me that filled in the survey as I did.
But then a part of me is past caring if they do know and I am actually looking into courses to get me out of teaching.
BTW, many of us have spoken previously to management about our issues with the behaviour policy and how we feel unsupported so it is not as if they would be blindsided by negative feedback on behaviour.