To ask teachers about disruptive behaviour in secondary schools?

[mimblewimble]

I hear of so many teachers leaving the profession, or describing how they work in extremely stressful conditions, with student behaviour being awful and seemingly getting worse.

My kids report so much disruption in class at their school, which is apparently one of the best local state schools.

As I write this I'm thinking I'm probably BU just for asking teachers anything as I'm sure you don't have loads of spare time and mental energy!

But I'm interested in what teachers would like to see done to tackle behaviour in secondary schools - are there changes that you think would help?

Or do you work in a school where the behaviour is good, and if so why do you think that is?

Sooo many people say this now! I started off as one of those parents with my eldest but now am really glad we've stepped back from it! I have a friend who is a very gentle parent and also homeschools but her eldest (5) is a pain to be around as she is constantly nagging for her mum to play, whinging, screaming.

There must be parents put there like me who want their child to attend a school that is strict on behaviour (including mine) so their child feels safe at school and can actually learn enough to be a functioning member of society.

It’s bollocks isn’t it, I started out like that and then I realised that sometimes kids do stuff just to see what happens, or because they acted impulsively or for many reasons really. They aren’t always trying to communicate a deep unmet need.

This is difficult because a lot of it reflects society generally.

I taught for twenty years.

There have always been pupils with send. At the moment there's been a move towards all students doing GCSEs and vocational qualifications weren't funded.

Some students really are just not suited to GCSEs and this does come out in their behaviour.

Schools are responding now by encouraging BTECs.

If teens of 14/15/16 have to study subjects they are not good at and not interested in they behave badly. If they are able to study things they are interested in they behave better.

My school a few years ago created a "sports academy" that year 9s had to apply for. The kids who got in got to do extra sport, sport btec, and wear a special uniform based on sports clothes. A lot of kids who where otherwise causing a lot of trouble in their normal classes were put together and they did work harder for the sports stuff than they otherwise would have done.

Also had the advantage they were not in normal lessons.

Many students who are disruptive have very difficult home stories. One I taught her house had been robbed and she was threatened at knife point. Another the parents marriage had broken up. Dad had refused to see the children but mum developed a drinking problem and he took them on. He couldn't even wash their clothes on a regular basis so they often turned up at school in not quite uniform and they were very aware he hadn't wanted them and didn't like them.

Ime it's often the parents. But not in a gentle parenting way, more in a they are just totally failing to provide the basic needs of the child.

@QQuirkyandGreen

I'm primary but last year I had an exceptionally entitled class (and their parents). Parents/children would accuse me of bullying them and favouring another child. Other child would accuse me of bullying them and favouring child A. And so on...

So if every child was being both bullied and favoured by me, I'm pretty sure I was balanced and fair.

Wow! Thanks for the responses, it feels quite unanimous that it's a general kind of cultural thing then?

That's sounds quite depressing... feels like an impossible task to change attitudes of parents/society as a whole!

Start with the premise everyone should be respected - respect can be lost or maintained
seems it’s shifted and respect has to be earned which starts from a baseline of disrespect, challenge and mistrust.

I'm retired now but behaviour got increasingly more challenging. The school I worked in had a significant number of families in crisis and huge poverty. When I started teaching in the 90s the biggest issue was truancy and generally boys who couldn't see the value of education because their parents didn't see the value. Over the decades, support for struggling families was eroded, poverty increased and special schools/units closed. The number of very difficult girls increased. Mobile phones and social media caused numerous problems which were acted on in schools. Illiteracy was still a problem but attendance improved. Difficult pupils actually came to school to act out. Mental health issues went through the roof, not helped by parents addictions. Senior management tried everything to support families but were limited in their reach and Middle management felt unsupported by senior management in dealing with discipline. Most teaching staff tried their best but teaching became difficult with certain classes. More and more was expected of us teachers. More recently senior management all came from practical subjects with a max of 15 and often not that in a class. I taught English and often had 30 in Higher classes, 33 in juniors. There was a disparity between what SMT were expecting and what was achievable. It didn't help that most of the middle and senior management were relatively inexperienced teachers and had moved up the greasy pole very quickly.

This, and having no consequences backed up by management and the government, I've read posts on here from teachers who've been assaulted by pupils and have to teach them the next day because 'well all behaviour is communication.... what need weren't you meeting that made them feel they had to punch you?'....

This is why we are near bankrupting ourselves to keep our DC in private. Unfortunately the local schools are a write-off.

DC’s school is strict, with a calm, quiet, learning experience.

It’s not just secondary-primary is just as bad.

More money is needed for staffing/resourcing.
More special schools to meet the needs of children with high needs.
Less testing.
A broader curriculum with less content.
Some sort of sanctions for schools to use when pupil behaviour is dangerous/stops others from learning. Saying to schools that’s it’s illegal to exclude when a child has SEN sounds great but just isn’t helpful.

It definitely isn't just secondary school

1. parents not teaching children to respect authority and 2)staff hands being tied by Paul Dix-sequence, wishy washy behaviour management policies
2. children in mainstream education who shouldn't be.
3. picking up the pieces arising from inadequate mental health funding

I’ve worked in 2 different schools with excellent behaviour (1x state grammar and 1 x church comp) - I’d say the common factor was that most of those kids had firm boundaries at home, and parents who valued their education and felt their kids were lucky to be at a good school. Suggesting to students that you might have call their parents was the ultimate nuclear-button threat!

My own kids (good Academy comp/outstanding independent comp) both say it’s normal for some lessons to be disrupted by behaviour.

In my experience (23 years in secondary) it’s three things that lead to poor behaviour. Lack of decent parenting / support from parents; adverse life events; SEND that isn’t being addressed or supported.

I think schools need to stop focusing on lack of equipment (just give them a sodding pen instead of a negative point), and spend less time focusing on uniform. I was walking a student to their class last week who rarely comes in and often truants, we walk past a member of SLT who picks up the fact that they're wearing the wrong shoes and tells them they need to borrow some black ones from Reset before they go to class. I knew the student would kick off if that happened and they wouldn't go to lesson. I decided to continue to walk them to their lesson and the shoes could be sorted afterwards. Pick your battles.

This student has a fucking awful home life, it's far safer for them to be at school than home. They come in and then someone's going on about their sodding shoes. Who gives a shit? They're being told "every second counts," yet theyre happy to stop a child's learning to make sure they have the right shoes on. Jeez.

Schools are concentrating on the wrong thing. Out school is a trust and it's run by officious men in suits who try to run it like a business.

We need to build trust and respect but we're going about it the wrong way. Fucked if I know how we do I though!

Wihout having read all the previous answers:

• Basic manners: I greet every student at my door; about 2/3 of each class fail to respond to my cheery "Good morning", just ingore me as they walk through my door. Similarly, there are students who don't even ask for a pen; they think it's acceptable to walk to my desk and take one from my drawer, where they are kept, and don't understand why I pull them up on it every time. Or why I get annoyed when I have given them a pen and they deliberately broke it, then want another and I offer a pencil, which upsets them.
• Parents ensuring their children have basic equipment - it would be oh so nice if I didn't need to spend 5min of my lesson handing out pens, pencils, rulers, calculators, and then to try and get it all back again.
• It would be nice if parents belived that I have better things to do with my time than phone them up about their child's behaviour, so no, I don't make it up when I call you and tell you that your child repeatedly swore at another student.
• Similarly, ensure your child has some basic life skills - using scissors correctly (without stabbing someone), using safety equipment without argument (yes, you really do need to wear goggles when you are working with acid, and not on the top of your head, but as instructed), having cracked an egg before the age of 16, having some idea of measurements like litres and millilitres or how to use a ruler to measure something, having handled money in a shop, being able to cross a road safely by age 11.
• That's for starters. It would also be nice if students knew that "skibbity toilet" is not an answer to any question I'd ever ask, that swearing does not belong in school, that talking when I'm talking is not okay, that chairs are for sitting on, that they cannot get up every 2mins to open or close windows, that they need to use toilets at break and lunch and not ask me 5min into a lesson whether they can go, that I'm asking them to write things down for a reason and that being punctual to lessons is a non-negotiable. But I can only dream.

I've worked in secondary in London since 1991. Behaviour has always been challenging in my opinion. What has changed is the attitude of more parents, so many are in direct conflict all the time with us about basic rules like wearing a school tie, or not having facial piercings.
However there are schools and I work in one who do keep the line. Pretty much any student Send or eal pupil premium or any other type, can succeed. Smaller class size would be nice but discipline is the key.
My leadership team are very old fashioned luckily.
We are also seeing covid issues but those year groups are aging through the system now and our current year 7s have much much better behaviour and manners, so I think there is hope.

Wow! Thanks for the responses, it feels quite unanimous that it's a general kind of cultural thing then?

Its a general white English culture which is why if you go to visit the high performing independent and state schools, English whites are the minority.

Recognising that behaviour is communication doesn’t = not give your DC boundaries and discipline.

What would make a difference:

Allowing vocational qualifications again.
Encourages teens to see the point in what they are doing.

Social services support for families struggling has been cut to the bone. My secondary had a washing machine and a dryer so we could help kids wash uniforms and PE kits if it wasn't possible at home.
So re-instating social services help so the families where poverty or other issues are really impacting the kids can be helped.

Drugs. County lines is impacting so many kids. Again, this is SS and police to support and help with (the teens are often unaware of what they are getting into and won't listen to their parents). Both SS and the police have had massive cuts.

More special schools and a better system for supporting disabilities. These days you get an EHCP if either the healthcare system picks you up before school or your parents fight for it. We had one lad who had been sexually abused as a preschooler and because his dad had learning disabilities and his primary school wasn't on the ball he had no documentation and no support whatever. He'd sort of learnt to read and could add and subtract up to 100. In any sensible system he'd have been in special school age 7.

These aren't the kind of issues that can be fixed in schools and massive massive numbers of kids are affected by them.

Yes, this. Restorative justice can get in the sea.

‘Headteacher, wee Jimmy here (6) has trashed the classroom, called me a twat, told another boy to fuck off and punched a reception girl in the face knocking her to the floor’.

‘Oh dear. Jimmy, that makes me sad, come and sit in my office and have a biscuit. We can play Lego and chat. Then we will draw a picture for the girl in reception’.

And weak headteachers who indulge parents whatever their children do and won't support their staff.

@Ridiculousradish Lack of equipment is not a minor issue anymore. I have classes where 15 students at the same time didn't bring a pen, expected me to provide one and half of them had taken the pens apart/ stomped on them by the end of the lesson, so they were no longer usable. When, in a class of 30, 20 don't bring in a calculator for a Maths-based lesson (my subject is primarily Maths-based), but the department only has one tray of calculators to share between 5 members of staff, where, in a graph-drawing lesson, hardly any student has a pencil or ruler, it not only takes time, but also departmental resources - money, which could be spent on better lab equipment or chemicals.

Unfortunately, support staff don't always see the scale of the issue. I provide pens, but have already gone through two boxes of 100 this term - i.e., 200 pens in 3 months, because students don't bring them into school and don't look after them when given one. At least one glue stick a week is wasted because some students would rather smear it all over the table, flick bit of it through the room or cut bits off and stick it into plug sockets or onto gas taps (I kid you not). There are some classes that I now refuse to allow to glue their sheets in by themselves, because of the waste of school equipment, so that then takes up my own time, because the books are still expected to look pristine. If students had to provide their own, they wouldn't be so wasteful.

Parenting is the reason. Until that changes, there’s no hope for some children.

We have 46% FSM and the kids are generally good but there is a small core who are destined for a hard life as a result of poor parenting. This small % of children occupy a disproportionate amount of staff time and energy. We are a very inclusive and supportive school but some parents just don’t, or can’t, step up to do their bit. By the time the kids get to us they’re in a downward spiral.
Our local primary heads say they are seeing the worst behaviour ever - from infants and parents. That’s despite the most effective support in terms of mental health and practical support that is available in schools in this area now. They expect schools to do EVERYTHING related to their lives, including the parenting.

Agree so much with other comments.
One thing I would love is children being able to understand that it's not just my responsibility to manage their behaviour. They have to take responsibility too. I simply cannot teach and manage every aspect of every child's behaviour for them, because that would entail saying to 30 children, individually:
Sit down on your chair
Listen to me and others
Write the task in your book
Try your hardest to understand before asking for help
Don't say unkind things to others
Don't swear
Don't leave the classroom
Go to the toilet at break and don't drink 3 litres of water per lesson
Do your homework
Write your name on your homework
Use please and thank you to others
Share the glue sticks

I can't do that every lesson, and teach.