“Miss” and “Sir” in schools

[MyCleverGrayBear]

Been to lots of secondary school open days recently. At the state secondaries the children showing parents around etc called the teachers “Sir” and “Miss”. Is that normal? I haven’t heard this IRL ever.

(To be clear, “Miss, this parent wants to know about languages at school” vs “Mrs Jones, this parent would like to see the sports centre”. But also in a couple of classrooms there were children constantly saying “Miss, look at this, Miss, I’ve out the sign up, Miss, shall I stand here” etc and it was incredibly grating.)

And why are female teachers “Miss” and make teachers “Sir”? I felt like I was in a bad 80’s Grange Hill episode and Benny Hill was about to run in and chase me 🫣

I have never called a male teacher sir. It instinctively never sat right with me, no matter how much I respected the teachers themselves. No one ever "please-miss"ed a teacher at my schools either. I thought that was normal and that Miss and Sir, whilst they do occur in the wild, were mostly done for effect in books or hammed up for TV.

Yeah it's normal but I don't like it because it makes the men sound more senior than the women.

I’ve never minded it as a teacher.

We did this in the 80s and 90s. It's completely normal!

It was never ‘Miss’ at any of the 3 schools I attended - it was always Miss/Mrs/Mr plus their surname.

My Gdcs, who attend a state primary, do the same.
Exception was their nursery/preschool, where they used first names for some of them.

We had a teacher called Mr Best who preferred that we all called him “Besty”. He was great. Our German head teacher insisted we called her “Frau” but we all called her Hitler instead. (Behind her back of course) This was the mid 2000’s.

You’d have had a heart attack OP. Or probs hurt your hands from the pearl clutching.

🤣🤣🤣

My school (90s UK) had teachers known as, eg Mrs Smith and Mr Jones, and that is also how they addressed one another, but a pupil in class would say 'Miss' or 'Sir'. The few who had doctorates were usually known as Dr Whatever but all addressed as above. They all kept their first names private like a dirty secret.

It's quite normal and always has been.

However, when I was at school, we were taught to call female teachers Miss ...their name, not just 'Miss'. Sometimes Mrs but most were single.

Boys were invariably taught by men and always called them Sir.

What did you call your teachers?

Was Miss or Sir at my school in the 80s, and still Miss or Sir for my teens now.

Our language can be lacking when it comes to certain things like honorifics (I’d like to add it would be great to have one word for adult children too, not sure if any language has that). The equivalent to Sir would probably be Madam (which is horrible in my opinion) and still sounds wrong. Yes Sir sounds fine, no Madam just sounds weird and wrong. No Madame with French pronunciation sounds fine though.

Honestly, I think it’s sloppy.

DS is in year 10 and everyone is Miss or Sir.

No you’re funny. Grammar lesson 2024.

Most of us are not. It doesn’t bother me or any of the other women I work with.

That's your decision, but it's still more sexist than 'Miss'.

so from this thread (and literally any tv show featuring a british state school, ever) it's pretty much ubiquitous, in all 4 countries of the UK&NI, since at least the 1980s to present day, EXCEPT from the school you went to and the school your kids go to. Okay....

Normal for me too, and I teach in four schools. What I find is weird is when staff call each other Miss and Sir when in public places (ie not the staffroom)

In the first two schools I taught at 1978 and then 1982, the female teachers were called Madam. The second school was in a social priority area and we were sometimes called Madds! It took a bit of getting used to. The schools were 200 miles apart and the rest of the schools I taught at I was called Miss.

Do I? I wrote “Please don’t be offended on my behalf. I can assure you that I have never felt infantilised…” Is the use of the terms ‘my’ and ‘I’ confusing to you?

Sometimes. End of lower school exams can be interesting.

The instruction includes to write your teacher’s name. Sometimes there can be interesting spelling. On one occasion we had ‘the blond lady who teaches R/S P3 on Wednesday in S4’

You know what’s not sexist? Letting teachers decide which title they’d like to be known as. Plenty of married teachers who haven’t taken their husband’s name and are still Miss Jones. Or who choose to take their husbands name and become Mrs Smith. Letting women choose which title and surname they’d like to be known as professionally isn’t sexist.

Are you from Leicestershire, OP?

When I started doing a PGCE in 1991 I found it really weird that all the kids were using Miss and Sir, because I'd never heard it before (started school in 1974). Everyone else on the course just shrugged and said well yes, what else would they call us?

It was very strange.

It was normal when I was in high school in Wales in the 70's so it's been going on forever. My mother said that how it was when she was in school too.

Yes this is normal and is preferable to students calling staff by their first names.
When I worked in a secondary school office, I did allow sixth form students to call me by their first name as I believed it was a good idea to get them used to real life outside of school.