To say the behaviour crisis in schools can't just be blamed on parenting

[Sendcrisis2025]

I speak as a mum of two children with EHCPs and someone who is a SENDIASS officer, name changed to protect my identity/job.

There is a strong rhetoric from the teaching unions this week about behaviour in schools and poor parenting. No mention of the bigger picture, just poor parenting.

My DC are 10 and 8, just two years behind them. When DC1 was a toddler there was a huge range of groups, support, targeted interventions through the local sure start centre. These were already being cut by the time my DC2 was a toddler. Then covid happened and the services and groups have just not returned. There is no early support anymore.

One of my DC is a challenge in school, fortuantly she is predominantly a flight risk rather than violent but still a behavioural challenge. We have had one physical incident where she shoved a teacher. Pure combination of factors that had led to DC being enclosed within a corner by several children and with nowhere to escape to she shoved to escape. Unacceptable but that was the reasoning of why and she was suspended for two days etc. She struggles to cope with the sensory demands of mainstream. Too many children, too much going on. They fly through the content whereas she likes to master things in depth before moving on. Too many low level behavioural issues like children who just don't ever stop talking. She can't navigate social dynamics. None of this DC can cope with. There is a lack of consistency in the school day and the routines. None of this is the school's fault but realistically how it is in every mainstream school. We are struggling to get her moved to a specialist setting. She has no learning needs and generally with the one exception, she isnt violent so the SEMH schools are not appropriate either.

My other DC would never dream of acting out, is not a behavioural issue at all despite his needs.

Based on the unions DC is entirely due to my poor parenting. It doesnt matter that DC2 is a behavioural dream. It doesnt matter that I have no behavioural issues with DC1 at home where it is quiet, the same rigid routine for the past 6 years and less social demands. It doesnt matter that she is in a completely wrong setting.

In my LA there are over 400 children like my DC1 who have specialist agreed but are stuck in mainstream with no setting to go to. There is nowhere for them to go. These are the children with specialist agreed by the LA. This doesn't include the many hundreds more who don't have specialist agreed or don't even have EHCPs yet.

Our health trust is on 3+ years for an initial appointment. CAMHs are almost non-existent. You are only considered for medication if you are already a behavioural problem in school, it doesn't matter if a child has severe ADHD until they are at the point they can no longer cope and it is at crisis point.

Early help, if accepted, offers 6 weeks of support. There is a huge gap between early help and child in need.

I speak to parents day in day out at work who are desperate for help as their children can not cope at school.

There will always be poorly behaved children due to poor parents but the majority? The majority are children who simply cannot cope in the setting they are in with nowhere to go to.

Over 400 children in my LA with specialist agreed but stuck in mainstream. That is an incredible number.

I know my DC spends 8.45am-2pm in a small cupboard with a 1-1 TA. She joins a much younger year group for the last hour a day. She does 95% of her schoolwork with me at home.

Exactly.

It's not solely children, it's a societal shift and from other posts on here from posters who attended, they didn't think it was particularly aimed at parenting as it was also talking about the aggression and violence FROM parents to staff. Which has exploded.

Same as with violence and aggression to all public sector workers, retail staff, public transport including airlines.

When our hospitals, GP surgeries, job centres, schools, housing offices, ticket offices and shops need security measures in place to protect staff from the violent and aggressive public, something is very wrong.

Which can't all be put down to poor parenting, SEN, the cost of living or whatever else the violence apologists want it to be.

It can be a struggle for those who can’t cope in mainstream school but most children with SEND don’t behave any worse than their peers.

Very low expectations from parents really doesn’t help. There seems to be an assumption from some parents that children are badly behaved, loud, charmless, unhealthy and lazy so they don’t think they are responsible for it in their own offspring.

I think doing a huge amount more enjoyable exercise at home and school would help children mentally and physically and that would lead to better behaviour and concentration. I do think it would be a game changer.

I agree that the SPaG content could do with some tweaking, but I'm not sure why people get so worked up about fronted adverbials. It's just a slightly silly, off-putting name for a perfectly simple thing. I teach 3 languages and did Latin A Level. Not sure I agree aboit Latin vs English. English grammar is a bit bonkers!

This is an interesting post and I agree.

My DC's got some SEN but is academically able. She just wasn't ready for a lot of the content in primary. She's doing much better in year 7 now she has matured a bit. But we live in a grammar area so this could potentially have changed her whole life educationally, as that system relies on early academic maturity.

There shouldn't be this hard and fast division between "academic" and "vocational" pathways either. Why shouldn't we have plumbers who enjoy Shakespeare and PhDs who can mend a bike? (I'm sure such people exist but the system certainly doesn't encourage it).

It sort of is about SEND though - well unsupported SEND.

Obviously, not all children with SEND have behaviour issues and not all children with behaviour issues have SEND but anyone who has worked in education or children's social care is aware that SEND is one of the biggest (if not the biggest factors in 'behaviour'). Although some posters on this thread have said "it's not about SEND", pretty much every commenting teacher has cited it as a factor.

"As a parent with a child with AuDHD if they misbehave at school, they will be told off at home. I don’t think having a diagnosis means they can do what they want without consequences that’s not life! Whilst their level of need isn’t severe, if they were being disrespectful to teacher, disrupting others learning, being violent dysregulated or not, that isn’t ok! And I feel lots of parents, who shouldn’t, use this as an excuse for their child’s poor behaviour."
I definitely recognise children like yours from when I was teaching but not all SEND / neurodivergence is the same and you've said yourself that your child's "level of need isn't severe". Imagine a child with a severe learning disability who literally can't understand consequences - their behaviour is not going to be the same as your child's.

Differences in social understanding/ behaviours is literally a core characteristic of autism, so although it might present differently in different children, some autistic children will behave differently to the expected standard and that is a core part of their diagnosis or disability. The same with impulsivity and ADHD.

The mainstream school system does not support children with SEND who present in this way, so the whole thing gets worse and worse.

Children test boundaries, it's what they do.

If a child disrupts the lesson they should be kicked out, or at best get one warning. Same if they disrespect the teacher. That would end most of it at source. If schools/teachers won't discipline children then they can't be surprised when behaviour is bad.

Doesn't help though does it !!!!

@SomethingInnocuousForNow
but it’s not just those children with severe SEN who are ‘misbehaving’ and SEN is a separate issue to behaviour in school, as especially in secondary as it’s not necessarily the SEN children misbehaving, but kids with attitudes and think the world resolves around them and thinking they are equals to teachers (and their parents)! And don’t like hearing the word NO!

Whilst the education system needs to change and hopefully will go back to old labour and explores the creative, curiosity approach to education rather than test test data data, death by powerpoint, which is killing the love of learning for children and teachers.

But, Attitudes and entitlement of children and parents need to change and children need boundaries and consequences - not you’ve attacked your teacher, trashed the classroom- have a biscuit and an iPad and then go back to class and carry on as normal.

I actually feel like it’s mainstream that needs to change. We teach everything far too fast and move on before half the class has cemented a concept as we have so much to fit in.

No there needs to a return to differentiated work. There are more able children who aren't challenged by it at all and are bored. The problem is they are trying to do this levelling approach of giving all the kids exactly the same, its simultaneously incredibly off putting/too hard for the lower 20% who are struggling, and boring/too easy and lacking engagement for the upper 20% who are more academically inclined.

You need plenty of staff to deal with even minimal levels of "kicking out". You can't just have kids roam the corridors or the streets.

I was doing differentiated work when l
oeft in 2021. It’s a basic core of teaching.

Replace "won't" with "can't" and you may have something. How about the time my colleague was told to fuck off by 15 yo in front of a class. He was removed pending investigation which turned into a shit show of parental denial and threats, the other kids being too scared to be witnesses and my colleague being told therefore that it was her word against his so it wouldn't stand up. She threatened to resign if he was put back in her class so he got to move up a set. He told her to fuck off btw because she had asked him to put his phone away and engage with the lesson.

Just have a detention room through the day. If the kids kick off there as well then suspend them.

Zero tolerance to bad behaviour will end most of it.

Yeah, but that's a school problem. The schools should back their teachers and not kowtow to feckless parents and their yobbish offspring.

Schools can't wonder why behaviour is bad when they won't instill discipline.

This displays a total lack of understanding of the situation. What do you think teachers can actually do to discipline these kids? You can't possibly be naïve enough to think that merely warning or removing from a lesson the kind of kids who are capable of displaying this kind of appalling behaviour is enough to 'end most of it at source'? Honestly that is laughable.

Essentially, schools can remove from class, give detentions, internally isolate. In extreme cases briefly suspend. Aside from expulsion, which is rarely possible, what other forms of discipline do you think we have in our arsenal that kids (or their parents) would be remotely bothered or deterred by? They. Don't. Care. And in the case of detention they often don't bother turning up. Even the ones who do turn up, or who are put in isolation, it doesn't remotely change their behaviour afterwards. You see exactly the same kids in detention and iso, week after week.

It's a separate but very related issue.

It's not all about 'severity' but just taking autism and ADHD (although I detest that SEND has basically been reduced to these two), for some (not all) kids with these forms of neurodivergence, even if they don't have 'severe' needs, things like shouting out, getting out of their seat, saying inappropriate things, forgetting equipment, struggling to follow instructions, questioning authority / not understanding hierarchy, low level disruption are a core part of their diagnoses.

It's getting the disruptive kids who 'don't care' out the lesson, if they won't behave, so everyone else can learn which is what they're there for.

Yes, I'm aware what they are there for, having been a teacher for 30 years (now in a girls' grammar school, thank god - I've done my time and won't go back). What do you do when a 3rd of the class don't care? How do you supervise potentially multiple kids per class who don't care, in a school of nearly 2000 students? You are not seeing the scale of the problem (in some, not all schools, obviously).

I taught between 2002 and 2008 and even then we had demanding, entitled parents who assumed that we would change an entire course to suit their little darling. Then we had the parents who didn’t go to school much themselves and so didn’t respect teachers or education and would think nothing if phoning up the school and objecting to any minor bit of discipline.
Other parents were great and supportive, but the ones who were shit and who raised kids to become disrespectful and impossible to teach sadly spoilt it for the kids and their parents who really wanted to learn and get good grades and get the fuck out of the shitty area where they lived.
I was then a school,Governor for 12 years and, guess what? It was still the same. Shitty parents raising shitty kids who spoil it for the ones who want to learn.

@SomethingInnocuousForNowbut then we go back to making excuses for the behaviour, yes it might be the reason but diagnosis or not, there needs to be consequences or boundaries and give the children strategies to support them to regulate. Low level disruption or not is still harming others learning - whether they have SEN or not! It’s still not ok! Especially at secondary.

Then parents of these children need to find a way so they can be in that class. A teacher, as has been pointed out, has plenty to get through.

What do the parents think is going to happen when their children look for a job not being able to follow instructions or questioning authority? Isn’t that part of what the parents and those children need to get to grips with?

Because if there are children whom will never get an education in main stream as it is they will need other workers to pay tax, so let the ones who have a chance get on with it instead of lesson after lesson after lesson being lost for everyone because one child “questions authority”.

They get dragged out of our teens’s schools by the Head and put in a separate room with worksheets because what else can you do? They can question authority all they like then. And have separate break ties because other children don’t deserve to be on the receiving end of their frustrations either.

Maybe it's just far worse now, but there's always been a few disruptive kids in class. Their behaviour wouldn't be tolerated, they'd be kicked out and the class would crack on.

Zero tolerance needs to be put in place before the first day of term. Parents should be made aware of the disciplinary procedures and that the school will back the teachers. Whether the pupil cares or not, if they disrupt the lesson then they're out, if they continue they're suspended.

Not just parenting. Also the enormous volume of children with specific needs schools are trying to cater to, which is to the detriment of all children including those who would manage well in a “normal” school environment were they not being confronted with challenging and violent behaviour all day every day and expected to put up with it in the name of inclusivity.

I don't want to sound like a snob, but quite a lot of parents (whether their children have SEND or not) would not have the skills to deliver specialist approaches to fully educate disabled children. It's not just a case of common sense and repetition as it is with neurological children.

I don't think many people understand what it's like to parent or educate children with additional needs at all.