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.

Please explain to your child that boredom is no excuse for poor behaviour and he needs to behave appropriately at school or there will be consequences. This is an appropriate response to your child misbehaving because 'bored', anything else is poor/ weak parenting.

Excuses, excuses. You can choose to support the teacher and let your child know you won't back them up in their poor and inexcusable behaviour and they will have consequences at home if they misbehave. Who cares whether the teacher is good/ bad or indifferent they need to learn to 'suck it up', that's life - not have a parent excuse their poor behaviour. Shame on you for not dealing with your child appropriately when their behaviour was noted as unacceptable by the school.

Yet plenty inc my DD, locked in halls for weeks on end and finishing her last 18months with remote learning, went on to get excellent degree's & have done v. well in the workplace.

It was a few months, in total, of disruption.

Children will play up if not given boundaries and consequences, decent parents know this, yes there are a tiny minority of children, who for whatever reason, will be badly behaved but the sexism and misogyny the Unions are highlighting is disgusting and shouldn't be excused, let alone tolerated.

Teachers/Schools need backing 100% on the issues of discipline in schools and wider society.

I hope very much Labour get a backbone and do not water down the on-line safety bill or let the US tech giants off the hook.

In a few years time, these 10yo's will be young men, god alone knows what they'll be like, "bringing up" children of their own.

I don’t know what goes on in schools these days (DC are grown up and left school over 15 years ago), but I have observed the following behaviours while going out and about in the (nice) area local to my home:

1. EVERYONE that’s out and about seems to be on their phone all the time rather than paying attention to their surroundings
2. A lot of children don’t appear to be expected to go straight home after school, as they roam around the streets and parks in large groups, until quite late, unsupervised, often leaving a mess behind them of the copious wrappers and containers of junk food and drink that they seem to be able to afford daily (unless they are stealing it - see point 3)
3. A few children (the ones that steal from the local shops, mainly) seem to have access to balaclavas, illegal e-scooters (stand up ones) and e-mopeds (which they ride around on without the required crash helmets) and terrorise both the pavement and roads, and about which nothing is done
4. Scuffles regularly break out between children, sometimes resulting in collateral damage (unnoticed by the children, who seem to be incapable of apologising to the people they have barged into, often elderly, as they appear to have been taught no social skills or manners)
5. Parents take their children to local coffee shops, restaurants and pubs, where they completely ignore them in favour of chatting on the phone or in person with their mates, disregarding their children’s behaviour, language or noise levels in complete contempt of other customer’s safety, comfort and ability to hear their own conversations over the screaming

I’m fully aware that these children are in a minority, but imagine dealing with that kind of nonsense, as a teacher, every day (not to mention the fact that some children reach school without toilet training, ability to dress themselves or eat without supervision) and NOT be tempted to blame the parents! I do, however, think that the blanket blaming of the parents is not, in most cases, aimed at the parents of children with SEN, rather toward those that allow and enable the behaviours described above…

Why don't all the parents of children who "would cope in main stream if only the teachers did this, or if only there was the right support" become part of the solution that is so easy in their minds and train up to become a teacher or 1-1 support?

Start being part of the solution.

With your vast understanding and clear reasoning of these simple solutions you could not only help your child but many others for years to come.

If teaching is a stretch there are routes into TA, and mamy vacancies.

Why don't you do that?

You still haven’t said where? When? Universities were different. They were not subject to the league tables.

So your child is one of the problems.

Teachers have 30 kids - or more - each who would like their full attention and it taught in a particular way to them. Unfortunately, teachers are also human beings who physically can not bend over backwards to one child.

My children have had some piss poor teachers - to the point I home educate one of them - but their behaviour was never a problem.

Right now we have the schools we have.
Change takes time and money and teachers, LAs, Government are not going to make changes unless they think they will work. So time ticks on and your child is in this system right now.

So it is your job as a parent to equip your child with the necessary skills and behaviour to be in the classroom they are, not the one that doesn't exist.

If your child shoves a teacher, or tells them to fuck off, or storms out of a class, it is your responsibility. If they display misogynistic attitudes in school what the hell are you teaching them at home? What are they watching online? What are you doing to combat these behaviours? That is entirely down to what they are being taught and exposed to outside of school hours, which is your responsibility, as their parent.

There are children who have time in separate houses, but it is still the responsibility of both parents to take control of these behaviours.

Our children have been exposed to classroom disruption, luckily, in their secondaries, those children get removed from class, by the Head, by the scruff of the neck, if need be. Put in isolation and eventually if nothing changes they are permanently excluded.

Does anyone think that 25+ other children and teachers should continuously be subjected to classrooms where nothing gets done because one child is shouting fuck off and refusing to sit down? Should the education, and teaching, of the many be stunted because of the few?

If you want your child in a school then make sure they can be there, with whatever support that is AVAILABLE not desired.

The Unions are advising teachers to vote against the "no exclusion" policy the government has suggested and any parent who opposes this I would guess has a disruptive child, but as most, the vast majority of children are not disruptive, most parents agree with exclusions for the aggressive, misogynistic, disruptive pupils.

Why should our children not get an education because someone else's child won't be taught by a female? (And the answer really isn't get more male teachers in this example)

Many parents are sick of these kids and their parents taking up more than their fair share of school resources and staff time.

The reason our teens are doing ok is partly because pupils have been expelled, but on top of that we have parented, I know it's an odd concept, continuously parented their conduct as they grow into men, talked through what they have witnessed in school and support the quite frankly amazing teaching staff who we trust for their education and wellbeing during many days.

We have been told "if all students were like your boy my job would be easy" via more than one teacher. But this doesn't happen in a vacuum we continue to parent our teens because we chose to have them and understand they and their behaviour the buck stops with us.

Not 100% no, nothing is, but the vast majority of child's behaviour is the parent's responsibility. How could it not be?

I do think its a mix of factors. In no particular order:

1. Weaker parenting, less clear discipline & consistently imposed boundaries. Too much explaining and validating, not enough being in charge of child at an early age.

2. higher academic requirements that some children are simply going to find too hard, with teachers expected to "level" a class and get lower attainers closer to a higher base line. In the 80s/90s when i was at school it was more accepted that some kids were not going to attain at particular levels and could learn different/more appropriate things, teachers weren't held accountable for "keep up not catch up" when some kids are just less academic. If everything is too hard for you all the time, you are not going to behave as well.

3. Behaviour policies in school that have been disastrous - paul dix with very few real consequences for pupils who misbehave.

4. Teachers/school rules not being supported by parents. When i was a child if you got a detention or lines for cheeking a teacher, you got a bollocking at home as well! Same regarding uniform, your parents bought the dorky required skirt from the uniform shop, they didn't buy you some more fashionable prohibited one & then defend your "right" to wear it.

5. Screens. Both inside and out of school. I understand things like MyMaths are quicker & easier for teachers to set, provide instant data etc, so reduce workload, but kids seem to be using tablets in school for a huge amount of things, its not good for young brains. Add in too much screen time at home as well and its a recipe for disaster.

People who make this kind of remark rarely have any sensible suggestions about what a 21st century school should look like. They often seem to want schools to teach a bewildering range of life-skills-type subjects, but actually don't seem to be able to identify any currently taught subjects which should be ditched to make room for these.

They also don't seem to have any suggestions about how one would create a system that 'caters to all'. I agree that things about the current system need to change. The exam system especially. But I think people are kidding themselves if they think a more accessible curriculum would get rid of behaviour problems.

Plenty of kids throughout the generations have always been bored by school and by their subjects. It is inevitable. Learning and preparing for their future is simply not high on many kids' priority lists. They are driven by other things at that age. No amount of trying to make the curriculum interesting will solve that problem. And the lack of discipline from home, the influence of social media and the lack of respect for teachers mean that it's almost impossible to make some of them care about even trying to look as if they give a shit.

DS was going to primary school in the early 90s, before the literacy and numeracy hour came in. There was more room in the timetable for other subjects like history, etc. IMO, it was much better then, as children got to do other subjects, which interested them more.

There was none of this, expecting children to know parts of speeches. IMO, it’s dry and boring for young children - not something they need to know at that age!

DGC go to Polish school on Saturday mornings - the teachers there are horrified at the way English children are expected to be sitting down and doing so much formal learning, before the age of 7. IMO, we should be looking at the kindergarten system up to the age of 7.

I agree with all of that (except that there is nothing difficult or strange about knowing the words for parts of speech - noun, verb, adjective etc - it's no more difficult than lots of other things kids learn at that age, and it's certainly useful when they start learning a foreign language).

However, like many suggestions, imo it's not going to solve the most pressing problems that are worrying people most about schools and kids' behaviour.

I think part of the issue is there have always been some more academic children who even at 4 and 5 genuinely enjoy reading, writing and maths and progress well in them. The powers that be see the levels these children can attain at 6 & 7 and think "great, how can we get more children to that level?". But actually in reality, while we can all learn & improve, some children will never "keep up". Add in the impact of some children having very poor home development in crucial early years and you are never going to get everyone to the same level. The answer isn't to constantly mess around with a "floor" level of attainment. Its to understand that academic ability varies, and outcomes will as well, and we can't blame teachers if they can't work miracles with lower attainers.

There need to be pathways that enable learning of functional literacy and maths that also lead towards useful skills for a workforce. We are badly short on construction workers & care workers, You don't not need fabulous academic qualifications to be an excellent construction worker or highly empathetic care worker.

Those parts of speech are fine and ITA, they are necessary to understand how to structure a sentence in English and then foreign languages. However - fronted adverbials at KS2?

I did French, German, Latin and Spanish. I don’t recall ever having to do about fronted adverbials - and Latin needs a way deeper understanding of grammar than English!

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. The curriculum needs scaling back and, especially at primary, teachers should have the freedom to tailor it to their class’ interests. Since we joined a MAT we are forced to have boards, planning etc identical. The CEO didn’t like the fact that every classroom looked different as it wasn’t pleasing for him to walk around. The Long term and Medium term plans have to be up on the website early so there is no chance to deviate from these to follow the children’s passions and interests. We mostly follow schemes as apparently that’s what OFSTED likes. It makes the whole thing soulless and it’s not surprising ND and NT children are struggling.

Fantastic post 👏 👏 👏

Children don't seem to "play out" any more. When I was a kid, we'd all play outside, riding bikes, roller skating, skate boarding and generally just "hanging out". We were allowed to get the bus into town (6 miles away) once we reached secondary school age. And at weekends my parents would take us on long country walks (which I hated!).

Increased traffic has made that less safe, and the cost of living means that far fewer families have a stay at home parent, so that sort of informal, unstructured play doesn't seem to happen. Consequently, I think it's harder for kids to develop the ability to entertain themselves.

Letting a bunch of 9-11 year olds go and "build camps" in the woods for hours would probably result in a visit from children's services these days.

Hard one to answer as it’s not all parenting. But maybe a (large) proportion is.

I don’t think SEN are always supported well and it seems we will have more inclusion but with lower funding which won’t be good for anyone.

Dc are also subject to poor parenting, sometimes very poor and the impact of that will be seen in the classroom.

Just by chance I happened to walk past a group of around 14 year olds outside a large Sainsbury’s swearing their heads off and just hanging out. I can imagine how they are in class.

This is something my DC really struggles with. She likes to learn about things properly and is very aware (even at 10) they just rush through it. She can't manage the pace and lack of depth in it and gets so overwhelmed. For example, they had 3 lessons on the Stone Age and moved on. She had so many questions and it had caught her interest but they moved on so fast. She finds it really hard!

I agree about too much academic filigree at a young age. I’d never even heard of fronted adverbials at age 40. The children in a school I volunteer in learn French, which is good. and I think it would be good if they learned phrases. But they seem to learn really obscure vocabulary, and exercises such as: fill in the name Yves or Chantelle in the blanks:
……. est amusant.
……. est intelligente.
They have to hear very subtle difference in the ending, which is always drowned by the cries of “I don’t get it!” I think such is for secondary, not 9 years old.

I don't think that's what they were saying by the sounds of it.

Don't you think the lack of care workers has more to do with the appalling pay and conditions than anything else?

Weak parenting, weak schools, lack of discipline, lack of boundaries, kids heads wrecked by social media and screens. Lack of specialist schools to teach children who shouldn't be in mainstream education.

That's about the size of it and it's condemning a whole generation to the scrapheap.

This isn’t about SEN children.

We have a generation of children where a good proportion of them don’t respect their parents, teachers, elders or others in their community. Nothing is their fault, it’s someone else, they are entitled and they take no accountability for their actions and often parents back them up without exploring what actually might have happened. Also as someone who works in education I do feel children are more violent to each other and adults than they ever were and I work in an infant school! So the reason for this needs exploring too.

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.

They have just gone up to secondary school and the stories they come back with, attitude to teachers, children constantly being given detentions, sent to isolation and excluded is scary to think they are only year 7! God help the teachers as they get older!

I think we have a societal problem, parents aren’t parenting as well as they perhaps should, children aren’t having the quality time with parents they should. Life is so much rushed now, so it’s hard for parents working or not, to give the quality time due to the demands of daily life. I think technology, food quality also isn’t helping children’s young minds develop as they did.

I don't believe most of what teachers unions say anymore when I see bristol national teachers union trotting about trans rights parades and they can't tell me what a woman is.
I respect teachers an awful lot. I couldn't do the job they do. My DS school is a primary thrive school (academy) of excellence - a third of his school have children with SEND. My DD secondary school is an academy and has a SLT which is diabolical, constantly dishing out ridiculous rules, rewriting policies, refusing to help kids with SEND because they don't have the provisions due to recently scoring inadequate in their ofsted report. They constantly suspend kids for a day for "defiance" ... aka having the wrong shoes/socks on etc. Utter shambles.