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?

@DrRuthGalloway that's really interesting. Why do you think the curriculum / grade levels are set like that? It must be an unintended consequence of something that sounded like a desirable outcome? Raising standards I guess?

Presumably it was an attempt to return to a time when people thought kids learned more, some imagined 1960's grammar school type world?

Which was when there were 2 sets of exams and 2 school systems. That failed less capable kids because it wrote them off early (I think that was the criticism).

So how do we fix it?

I work in a school that would be described as “challenging” but even there, I’d say 2/3 of students are great all of the time. Of the remaining 1/3, there are some who are fine for experienced teacher like me (teaching for 20 years in a variety of contexts) but can be difficult for ECTs/supply, who do make up a small but significant % of the teaching staff of a school, especially at KS3 (so other children might go home and report this behaviour) Then there are some who have genuine needs that aren’t being met either due to CAMHS waiting lists or poverty in society etc. Then a very small number remain where it is down to weak/permissive parenting (and these few have a big impact)

I agree that sounds frustrating, but on the toilet one:

My son who is v good at school, finds that when it's lunch he will have his drink with his lunch and he goes to the toilet at the end of lunch before lessons, but he will always need a pee in the lesson after lunch because I guess it takes a while for his lunch drink.to go through his system!

He's not allowed to go to the toilet in his lessons so he holds his pee. Problem is he says he then can't focus. And when he needs to.pee he needs to pee! I've told him he needs to ask the teacher to go to the toilet so he can concentrate, but he doesn't want to be told off. He's got himself in a bit of a state about it. He does need a drink at lunch because he avoids one at break time for the same reason.

I do think regarding the toilet, children should be allowed to go out for a pee. But I do appreciate this may cause disruption.

As an adult with a rubbish bladder, I'd hate not to be allowed to visit the toilet in a meeting after lunch etc.. and would just go if I needed to. A child however might be disciplined for this which I don't agree with.

This is totally spot-on. In my previous school 6 out of 7 of the SLT are P-E or technology teachers!

When I was in initial training (clinical psychologist) about 20 years ago, there were some interesting studies regarding impact of being in childcare from a young age on future behaviour and self regulation in particular.

i don’t know much more as I followed a different route, but friends in educational psychology say there is potentially a lot in this - but no funding to research it as the government won’t approve it - the push has been on getting people back to work and therefore children in childcare.

its very controversial and will probably be on here too, but it would be interesting to hear teachers take on it as a possible contributing factor.

That poster isn't misunderstanding it, they're saying it's thrown out as an excuse for poor behaviour BY people who don't understand it.

Like my PP said and 'trauma informed practice' is also included in that.

They've become meaningless 'buzz-phrases' used by virtually everyone in the systems because they hear them all the time and think they know what they mean and it's a way to shut down the workers who are challenging that.

A recent example I encountered was a teenager who had early release from youth custody based on they should be engaging with specific community projects. They attended the first day, said "fuck off, this is shit" .

So the worker documented 'working in a trauma informed way, I asked them what they'd like to do or find helpful so I took them to a shop and bought them a 'phone charger (from public funds), then we went to get food from a takeaway they like (also from public funds) and then I dropped them off at their friends house.

Yes, and often the message is ' I want to disrupt your class to get a laugh from my mates. Oh and your lessons are boring. I'd rather be on -insert popular social media platform here-'.

Basically putting the blame and responsibility on the teachers.

@Singleandproud that school sounds awesome!

Let’s not be ridiculous. On what planet have parents not always been discussing how “good” their children’s teachers are? They do this because they care about their children’s happiness and well-being.

Parents should start from the presumption that teachers are competent and acting in the best interests of their children. But I can’t understand this attitude that schools and teachers can only be criticized by people who work in the field. It’s not an attitude you would extend to any other public institution like the NHS, police etc.

I would discuss the effectiveness of my child’s education but would not gossip with about their teachers’ illnesses etc which was being done here.

Unfortunately in many of my classes in my previous school, up to 15 pupils would not have a pen (the same pupils wearing Zavetti jackets who would laugh at my iPhone 7- so not a money issue). Time is wasted giving them out (forget a please or thanks-I ain’t got a pen so I ain’t doing no work), and I’ll usually only get half back intact. Some will be taken apart and destroyed. There is no way I can afford to replace them, and not enough to go round the school.

Fair enough. I agree that kind of personal gossip has no good purpose.

It’s bad - they don’t care about consequences. Not sure what we can do about it.

I joined teaching in my forties, and had four kids aged 5-teens. Even before teaching I made it clear to my kids 1. Respect teachers 2. Listen and engage in class. Inevitably there were problems, sometimes I didn’t agree with the teacher but would call them calmly say why I didn’t agree and say I was backing them anyway. A united front. I have never been interested in being a friend to my kids they have friends but only one Mum, I made them “do as they were told” as a single parent I needed to ensure as they grew that I could enforce rules. It would have been easier to just let them all do as they pleased but I saw my job as raising stable hardworking adults. Which they now all are.
Times have changed some parents are more indulgent with their kids, are best friends with their kids and don’t set any boundaries then blame schools for their kids problems.

I work in a school with excellent behaviour in an inner city area which is very deprived.

First the leadership are very strong. The mentality is that teachers are there to teach, not to entertain. We are kind but firm. No excuses are made for poor behaviour and teachers are always supported.

Students who do not heed the first warning are removed so those that want to learn, can. This, believe it or not, is the vast majority.

Rules and routines are very strict. Wishy washy parents who seem proud of the fact that their disobedient / rude offspring are so “spirited” no longer choose our school.

Staff are not blamed for poor behaviour and senior staff deal with abusive parents.

As a result of the good behaviour, strong staff are attracted to the school and as a result we are fully staffed, even in shortage subjects.

This means no child is in a situation where they have supply teacher after supply teacher, which doesn’t do any child any favours!

It started with strong leadership!

They are set like that because Michael Gove was educated in the grammar system of the 60s and thought "that sort of education" would raise standards, without reflecting on the fact that grammar schools catered for the top 20 percent and in the 1960s we had a very different society with fewer distractions.

They are set at O level type standard but without a CSE equivalent. And schools are actively encouraged to enter kids they know full well will get grade 1 across the board because it still counts towards their progress 8 stats, whereas if they allow children not to be entered their progress 8 stats suffer. All the while the buzz in school is that you have to get grade 4 to pass and below is a "fail", so kids are being put into 8 or 9 exams that everyone, including they, know they will just fail all of. This is cruel; it's not done in the interests of the children. There are no incentives to offer alternative curriculum such as ASDAN or functional skills or entry level in OFSTED inspections- it's better for the school to put kids in for exams they will definitely fail than to provide them with an alternative that means they can leave with passes at their level.

This is also the reason for the explosion in "school refusal". The acting out kids act out, the internalising kids (many autistic) have breakdowns.

Michael Gove was not educated in a grammar school!

He is Scottish and attended a private (assisted place) school in Aberdeen in the 1980s. I am no fan of his but he isn't a grammar school boy.

Michael Gove is to blame for lots of this-Nick Gibb, too.

The curriculum that we have to teach at primary is dreadful. We shouldn’t have children with EBSA in year 1-they should be skipping up the path to see what exciting things (learning, exploring, play, discovery) they’ll be doing that day.

School sounds brilliant! I wish note schools had teachers and leaders with the strength and conviction to maintain these boundaries.

Ok, my mistake! A grammar-style curriculum then :)

I don't know as two streams helps here. We had some vocational college classes maybe 20 years ago who still had to do core GCSEs. Their behaviour was awful because they didn't want to be in a classroom and they were also a clique and quite ghettoised.

I'd really like to restore some kind of coursework to more subjects (those that it suits at least) and have 15 year olds sitting far fewer exams.

Too many schools have narrowed their curriculum offer. This is driven by lots of factors. Kids of all abilities often don't get to do what they like. The drop off in uptake of arts subjects, for example is ideologically driven.

I really liked coursework-I did my GCSEs in the early 90s and English was 100% coursework. I thoroughly enjoyed it and did A level as well (when we could take the books into the exam!). I loved reading and still do, unlike my own kids who refused to read at secondary school as they had been so put off how it was taught. Many of the books chosen were horribly depressing as well!

Are you still receiving these reports about your son?
What steps have you taken to cooperate with the nursery in addressing the concerns?

I'm trying gauge how your involvement in fixing the issue, after the reports, made things better, unchanged or worse.

Behaviour at my school a few years back was absolutely dreadful. We'd implemented a Paul Dix-style system where behaviour was almost entirely the responsibility of the class teacher with very little back-up. Any negative sanction meant the teacher then had to have a restorative conversation with the pupil before the next lesson. The kids racking up negative sanctions did not give a toss about restorative conversations and they had zero impact. They also had so many that you had to 'book' your restorative conversation two weeks in the future as they tried to fit you into their busy schedule. It took 7 warnings before you were allowed to remove a child from your class, but then you didn't send them out, you had to call for SLT to come to get them. Often SLT never came, so you were left trying to teach with the disruptive kid continuing to be disruptive and also smug that your attempt to deal with them had failed and there was nothing else you could do about it.

Behaviour is now much better because we binned all that crap, introduced a centralised detention system so that implementing the behaviour system correctly doesn't create extra workload for the teacher (this is really important, any system that creates extra workload will not be implemented properly as no one has time for that). One warning for poor behaviour and then you can be sent out. And we don't have to wait for SLT to remove the disruptive kid, we send an alert that they have been sent to isolation and if they don't turn up in 5 minutes, they are excluded, which means that by and large, they go.

This has massively improved behaviour in lessons. Behaviour in unstructured time is quite bad, however, because we don't know the kids' names and it is very hard to deal with disruptive behaviour when you can't apply sanctions.

So the response to poor behaviour is stricter schools, which can involve sweating the small stuff. Parents tend to hate this sort of thing though 'I don't understand why they are so strict about uniform/homework/equipment' - because that's setting the culture where the kids actually do what they are told which feeds into everything else.

Schools can't afford to keep handing out equipment. My department budget stretches to everyone get 2 exercise books per year, 1 box of glue sticks (to be divided between 3 staff) and our gcse book subscription. All our glue sticks have been stolen whilst we had a supply teacher in. I now have none left in the department and insufficient funds until April.