To be glad schools are finally hitting back

[Teachingquestion]

Over the last couple of days I've seen more stories about schools introducing new rules and sending students home who won't comply.
I'm in a really tricky school about to do the same (when we start back) and the staff are so relieved. Teachers on here : are you glad to see it?

No, they actually don't. It constantly gets drummed into young teachers in England that "the little things matter", "insist they stick to the small rules so you won't have to worry about the bigger issues"...That's just bullshit.
I never wore school uniform. My teachers didn't care what we wore. It had zero impact on our learning or our grades. I didn't have to walk through corridors in silence, we could sit where we wanted in class, we brought our own equipment and borrowed stuff from classmates if we forgot. Surprise.. no unruly behaviour in class. We were allowed to go to the toilet when needed. No stupid comments or threats. After all, we were responsible for our own learning. I didn't know anyone, who ever got a detention at my school. It just wasn't done. (I assume our teachers had better things to do than spend more time in a room with kids, who had annoyed them...) The teacher is there to teach. It's a bit like the horse and the water...
And no, I didn't go to some fancy private school. I attended a bog standard comp, albeit abroad.

It's like parenting. Pick your battles. Is whether a kid goes to the toilet in a lesson really an issue? It's only an issue if you make it one. They either need to go and then they are back after a few minutes,...or they use it to get out of the lesson. Then it would be more useful to find out why that's the case and how you can support them in not having to hide in a stinky loo.
The undone top button doesn't distract from the lesson. The teacher making an issue out of an undone top button or a wonky tie or an untucked shirt causes a distraction.
It doesn't stop a child from accessing a lesson when they don't have a pen and quickly ask a friend to borrow one. It stops them if the teacher makes an issue out of it, refuses to lend out equipment and spends ages just going on about it.

I have found children to be much more relaxed and increasingly more reliable about these things when the teacher doesn't "sweat the small stuff". There's no fun in sneaking to the loo when it's perfectly fine to do so. They're much quicker organising a pen and more reliable in returning it if it's just normal that equipment is available. (It's my stuff...they don't tend to throw or break my stuff,...because they do generally quite like me and I tend to have a positive relationship with my classes and my students' parents. I'm apparently, "really strict but funny'.)

I used to work in an office before becoming a teacher. People would wander off for fag breaks whenever they fancied, they'd wear what they wanted, have little chats in the corridor, go the toilet when they needed. I didn't need to bring my own pens. We had pens and nobody tried to make me stay longer for using one.

And yet almost every one of the best state schools in the country have smart uniforms which are strictly enforced.

@BeachLife2 that is typical post hoc ergo propter hoc rationalisation.

I went to school in a tracksuit and got some of the best GCSEs at my school.

If strict uniform rules were a causal factor we’d be the top performing education system in the northern hemisphere.

Schools don't make up rules for the sake of it and just because you don't see the reason behind it doesnt mean that there isn't one.

No one knows what the level of GCSE were at your school so it doesn't mean much.

Compare the performance of private schools here, with strict uniforms and state schools. Remove the state school, I bet the UK would jump a lot in the school league internationally.

It's not just about uniform, but it's an ethos that follow through the entire system.

My children are at an independent. Really high expectations of how your hair, shoes, uniform are presented. It's not that the uniform correlates with the grades but the expectations of discipline and pride. The children open doors, walk nicely, don't scream and shout and are all quite confident but don't back chat.

So many children get away with so much at he and school and become self centred, absorbed, who lack basic respect.

My DD got expelled for wearing plain black trousers after being bullied about having chunky legs.
All her female teachers wore trousers.
She did quote the equality act because she's SEN and her brain works like that.
She has now has a sponsored PhD offer.

Ok, I never wore school uniform. I went in jeans, tshirt and trainers.
I've got 16 GCSEs and four A-Levels (recognised equivalent qualifications, since I didn't go to school in England)...as did the majority of my classmates.

If you removed the state schools, you'd have to compare the private schools only with other private schools internationally (in many cases also without uniforms).
Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense. Not sure you'd still get the results you're hoping for.

My kids always said that the best teachers were the least strict and did not care about uniform rules. And achieved the best results from pupils. Children behaved for them in lessons because their teachers were engaging, interested and not patronising. This was secondary school.

not quite, if you want to be accurate, look a bit deeper on what the private systems means in the countries you are comparing with.

And the point still stands. School with strict uniform at least in this country achieve better. It's not everything, but It's not a coincidence

Not always, no, but that point bears no relevance here 🙄

Ok. I actually work in a top private school.

Most of the kids look like they’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Wrong shoes? Get plimsoles from the office.
Shirt not tucked in? Told to tuck it in
Highlighted hair? So the fuck what.

How the rules are enforced is what’s key,

And 8 GCSEs (the most we could take) all As and Bs where the 5 A-C pass rate was something like 45%. I went to a rough South London comp in the 90s where there was little bullying, generally good behaviour, and a very deprived catchment.

You might LIKE uniform but there is little evidence it does anything of any real value.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8775910/

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/school-uniform

I think it is relevant, when people are saying “If you don’t like the school’s rules, go to a different school!”, @Northernladdette! People can only do that if they DO have several schools to choose from.

Floor loot. Mind you there would not be abandoned pens and pencils in this situation.

Overly strict school just damage the mental health of the average kid, and those with SEN, while the ones it's aimed at probably don't care. Some policies are ablist.

There is a happy medium between.

@Sheeparemyfriends Oh Lord.

I remember girls coming in with fake nails that were so long that they couldn’t hold a pen.

We tried making laptops available. That worked for some.

Others tried to claim that they had the “right” to have a scribe.

I might also add that another reason why so many children are disruptive is because what they learn is utterly pointless and boring, or inaccessible to them. We badly need to shake up the system in this country. A good 50% of children shouldn't be doing GCSEs and A Levels and should be working towards practical, apprenticeship-style qualifications that will lead them to fulfilling work. It's trying to force kids without the interest or intellectual capacity to do formal qualifications in subjects they don't like, don't understand and don't see the point in studying that causes so many issues in school. If the content of what students were learning matched their needs and interests, they wouldn't be disengaged or disruptive.

@EnidSpyton Isn't this what we had up until about 50 years ago with the Grammar /Secondary Modern set up?

I suppose the issue then was that the 11+ was so divisive and children's educational outcomes decided ridiculously early.

Maybe a shift back to something like this with a 13+ assessment would work.

I am privileged, I can easily afford to have kids with or without uniform, and I have chosen their school based on their results so they go in very decent school.

I see no interest in them wasting time in a circus with parents wasting everybody's time arguing that their little darling is special instead of concentrating on their actual education.

Best schools around have very strict uniform policy, what can I say. Clearly has a link

Well, no, it's not a coincidence that schools with engaged parents and children, who have usually been selected by academic ability perform better...
You could put them all in potato sacks and that wouldn't affect their academic outcomes. Might be a bit distracting and scratchy...

I currently work at a private school with very lax uniform... we still outperform state schools by miles. No wonder, our kids are bright and their parents will be on their backsides if they don't perform. (I've also worked at an inner city school in a really deprived area...so, I've been round a bit.)

Best schools around have very strict uniform policy, what can I say. Clearly has a link

I hope they teach your children better critical thinking skills than you’re equipped with @randomlemonsheep

Really?

The pro uniform brigade are notorious for confusion correlation with causation.

Which is of course nonsense, because it uniform caused good academic standards, there would be no countries without uniform which have good educational outcomes.

So what would be the reason behind not being allowed to take a blazer off in summer until the head says you can?

Yes they do. Because the academy trusts are businesses, they don't really see the kids as people but more of a resource. I don't mean the teachers particularly, they just enforce the rules they're told to

You might be confused about route cause.

Predators (victims?) were excluded from school because of their characters. They didn't become predators because they were excluded.

I don't get the "children who are excluded are more likely to go to prison thing" surely it's the behaviour that causes the criminality not the exclusion?

We have lots of schools round about us - private, academy, religious, single-sex. The kids at the academy are the smartest and have the most distinctive uniform. The private school kids are a mix - some quite scruffy but I'm told by my friend who has a child there that there are certain events that they are expected to look immaculate for. Apparently it's frowned on to have new kit - they all want second-hand sports kit with a bit of a "worn" look, which seems odd 🙄. The girls at the girls school look the most comfortable - sensitive knee-length skirts, socks in summer, and shirts and jumpers. No blazers or ties. I'm not sure the uniform really ties into the level of achievement at these schools.