I know it's been done to death but I don't think people realise how hard it is to work in a school!

[user4692821]

I work in a small village primary school in the north. I'm so used to hearing people saying "oh I'd love to work in a school so I could have the holidays off" or something along the lines of "well you can't complain as you get so much holidays with the kids" etc.

My week normally consists of:

Being called a bch 3/4 times a day
Told to shut the fk up at least once a day
Being punched
Spat at

And that's just some of the 'bad' incidents. It's not mentioning the other more 'minor' incidents that happen constantly through the day.

I work with 6/7 year olds. In a mainstream school. It's not uncommon, most TA's have similar in their classes. When we meet people from other schools they say the same.

Yet we are constantly told to be grateful we have a job that gives us time off for our kids. I 100% get that it's lucky we can have the holidays off so we don't have to pay for childcare. However what I ask myself everyday is: is this worth my mental health? Because honestly (apart from NHS jobs or similar) where would you go in to work and expected to be treated like this and paid minimum wage?

@Einwegflasche

The sigh because you believe it is a common situation in every primary? Read the responses of those who spent 20 years as teachers.

KIDNAPPED?? Damn that's crazy my landlords selling and y'all are giving me ideas haha time to get the chloroform and duct tape.

But really it's no laughing matter I agree with what you're saying tbh generally public behaviour is shitty and I'd rather be intimidated by a young kid then a grown adult. Lone working in retail will do that to you though

My friend is a vicar in a parish north of our city and goes into two schools to take assemblies etc. One is not too bad but the other really struggles with behavior. She had the most awful bruise on her arm last week, from a child throwing something heavy, and the excuse given was ‘he gets angry when he’s tired’.
She has also has sand thrown at her at toddler group and it got in her eye - ok this happens in early years but the kid doing it wasn’t told off by his mother, just laughed at ‘oh daaaarling don’t throw sand’.

That’s most definitely not true , I moved from working in a private school to a state school and immediately noticed much less swearing! I say initially as unfortunately over the last 10 years it has become horrific.

@Sahara123 its just my experience

I hear you OP as I do the same job. Sworn at, bitten, things thrown at me. I'm done, I care with my whole heart about my kids but I need to leave for my own wellbeing.

Wow. I taught at several Orthodox Jewish schools in London for over 15 years. This kind of behaviour or language would never in a million years happen. Seems traditional values do have something going for themselves after all.

It certainly is, totally underpaid for the expectations!

At the least the teachers can theoretically leave.

Theoretically many things are possible, but in reality they are not. Theoretically parents can themselves to behave and teach kids to behave. Then no kid have to witness school bad behaviour.

When you think you and your kids are above community / society, then you won't teach them to treat others with respect. This is what is happening with a lot of parents.

No wonder so many teachers are leaving in their 1000s.

People leave all sorts of jobs because they decide it's not the right fit for them, that's normal. But generally those people are replaced, and this isn't happening in schools because no-one wants to be a teacher. And when schools can't fill vacancies, that's when people in general need to worry. We don't need to feel sorry for those who have left (believe me, they're all much happier now!), but for the kids who are being left without proper teachers because those who leave can't be replaced.

My current school is fairly nice, we do get some swearing and aggressive behaviour from pupils like in most schools, but it's promptly dealt with with appropriate sanctions and is generally only done by the minority of pupils. But we still have a massive shortage of teachers. We already have so many lessons across multiple subjects who haven't had a proper teacher for weeks or even months and who are given worksheets to complete while being supervised by an agency cover teacher who often doesn't have the technological skills to log into a computer and cannot communicate in fluent English.

3 teachers left at Easter and a further 5 teachers, including myself, are leaving at the end of this year, mainly changing career. As of yet, SLT haven't been able to replace 3 of us despite running adverts for months.

I'm really happy for all of us teachers who are leaving, as we've (mostly) found jobs with better flexibility, conditions and long-term earning potential. My worry is for the education system in general and what it's going to look like in another 3-5 years.

Teachers have no recourses at all these days - once upon a time, there was being sent to stand in the corridor or even to sit outside the headteacher's office for behaving badly. And then being soundly told off by someone scary in authority. That doesn't work any more. In most schools it wouldn't be permitted anyway, for fear the miscreants would just take themselves off and cause trouble elsewhere.

“…. (Kids) given worksheets to complete while being supervised by an agency cover teacher who often doesn't have the technological skills to log into a computer and cannot communicate in fluent English”

Why are schools paying unqualified supply teachers who can’t log into a computer and can’t speak English fluently? How much are they paid and what is the point of them providing cover if only handing out worksheets? Who are these agencies making money from this dire situation? They need to find suitably qualified teachers for proper cover. A worksheet is ok for a day due to sickness but that’s it. We need to do better for our kids.

My daughter is in year 2 & the other reception, I am 99% sure this doesn’t happen in either of their classes at school. I’ve been a class helper a fair few times & parents talk. I can imagine it in year 5/6 maybe but 4,5,6 & 7 year olds?! 😱 Holy shit. My kids wouldn’t see a ‘treat’ or tv for a very long time if they dared to speak to a teacher like this!

I've been attacked by a six year old, hit by another and called a fucking bitch by one as well. All six years old. Year One children. A Year Three child also threatened to drop a pair of scissors on me from a great height. It was two Year 2 girls that caused two different colleagues to end up visiting hospital on different occasions after they'd been attacked by said girls. Ended up with bruising and soft tissue damage.

I think religious school also tend to benefit from higher levels of parental involvement? Did you notice this and would you say it made a positive impact?

In the early 2000s there was a lot of interest in the theory that increasing parental involvement in schools would have a positive impact on student behaviour and attainment, but I don't know what the short or long term outcomes of that were. I do remember a few projects that sought to get parents from 'rough' areas taking classes in primary schools and that early indications were positive.

If you have a suggestion about where to find qualified teachers who are willing to work on day-to-day supply contracts, please do let my school know! We would love to hear from you given that we contact numerous agencies every day and cannot find anyone! But we can't just conscript people, or drag them off the streets and force them to be cover supervisors, and these are the best that the agency can find. (we do get some good supply teachers, but they are few and far between).

The point of them providing cover is because there's a legal obligation to have an adult in the room with them. That said, at times it does happen that 2-4 classes are all sitting in the hall together with one or two teachers supervising because we can't find enough cover teachers.

And yes, we do need to do better for our kids, but the government isn't willing to. And most adults aren't going to sacrifice their earning potential, work-life balance and expectations of basic human treatment to work in schools until things change a lot. You'll get the odd few who feel it's a vocation, but many of us can't afford to have a vocation any more unfortunately.

It feels like the pendulum has swung too far. No one likes the “seen and not heard” rule of fear approach to discipline but we as a society have now gone too far the other way.

When I was a teen you lived in fear of your parents finding out about your bad behaviour as they would back the school and tell you off/
ground you. A letter home was really feared. Now the parents usually back the child (family are teachers past and present this is their observation too).

They will be copying that from their parents

Yeah no one should be instilling fear into their children, that is traumatic and abusive. the parents should model good behaviour and make sure their role models are good. Children copy what they see and hear

It absolutely is what a lot of them hear at home (and everything is logged on the relevant platforms for safeguarding reasons). It's also what a lot of them are hearing online/on TV - the number of children who have watched things like IT or Deadpool, and can tell you about it in great detail, is terrifying. By Y4, most of the boys seem to playing Call of Duty and GTA as well.

It's by no means all children, but we've moved from one or two in a class of 30, to 9 or 10, and it's shifted the whole balance of the classroom from learning to constant behaviour management. The low-level disruption is actually more problematic than the big outbursts. A constant background of "I'm not doing that", "No!", "This is boring", "I don't care!", coupled with children just wilfully wandering around and refusing to sit down...the children who want to learn physically can't hear the input, and the whole lesson is disrupted and interrupted every couple of minutes. The children just don't care about the sanctions, and parents don't want to hear it, so it just goes on...

I have a baby boy who is one year old and he very often refuses to sit down/lie down eg when nappy changing

What are we as a society doing wrong ?.
I've experienced the threats,the actual violence myself as xnhs .
People just seem angrier, more entitled.
What are we teaching our children?.
And let's look at our own behaviour
I honestly don't have an answer I just feel that if we took a pause to make interactions more positive and polite life would be so much better

Whilst it sounds tough, anyone who is public facing can get this and for a lot less money. I could write an Edinburgh show on the stuff I've experienced in my job (negative) but you'll never think it if I told you what it was (too outing) and I only get 25 days a year holidays, still more than retail and hospitality get and they get abuse too!

I'm not saying abuse is ever right it's just the grass isn't greener