To think disruptive behaviour in schools is out of hand?

[Absentosaur]

‘Children at state schools are almost three times more likely to have their lessons disrupted by poor behaviour than their privately educated peers, a widespread survey of parents has found.’

https://archive.md/HMGtJ accessible link to article .

18% 16-18yr olds go to private school, probably for this reason a lot of the time.

Do we expect the government to do something about it, particularly given they have closed the private school doors to many? What could they be doing to improve the worst state schools??

No but how can they get the qualifications if the parent gets in the way of it. It seems like parents can make unfair decisions that disrupt kids getting into uni and certainly drag out. All their mates that are in schools would be off to uni whilst they get left far far behind.

Michaela is a great example of what’s done right. I think kids actually appreciate clear structure and boundaries. Michaela has a really diverse intake with high levels of deprivation. It’s changing lives. However you need to apply to go there and I think it means that whatever the kids background their parent values education and has signed up for the regime. There is a buy in. I’m a state school teacher and the worst disruption is by kids whose parents hate school with a passion and enable their kids. To misbehave. Schools have to educate this cohort though and if you don’t by excluding them from education you are going to be paying for them their entire life. Unfortunately it comes down to funding in education.

I've worked in schools and I'm afraid that your other posts and your use of hyperbole give you away.

You're policing even the vocabulary the SENCO uses about your child? Observing they have 'a high, squeaky voice' isn't abusive FFS! What adjectives have you insisted they use instead? 'Piercingly delicate' 'pertaining to the higher registers of volume'?

You seem determined to portray your child as this 'absolutely beautiful', special, fascinating creature that is cruelly misunderstood? I strongly suspect the school and its teachers understand you and your child all too well.

We need more SEN provision end of. Ive been a secondary school teacher for about 15 years, the last 5 of working in SEN school, I could never go back to mainstream now. My class sizes are 10 max, usually about 7. The support for each child is amazing, I get to plan for each kid and support each kid throughout lessons, no one misses out.

I agree. Actually I think the solution is outreach to these parents but much earlier than secondary.

Some parents are just plain scared of school and some teach their kids useful things like that rules are ALL BAD including speed limits in hospital car parks. And some think school is out to get their kid when kid doesn’t seem to know the basics of good behaviour.

My DD1 (16) is now in a specialist college like that, she’s in their sixth form. I really wish we could have got her there earlier during her education, but it was such a battle to get her an EHCP. She loves going there and has settled in well.

And no, she wasn’t disruptive in the state high school, though her attendance was poor from year 10 onwards. But she was bullied badly by another girl with SEN, who had been expelled from 5 previous schools.

SEN children can also frequently be victims of bullying rather than disrupters.

Thats great for your daughter 😍 yes lots of SEN children get bullied too its nasty.

All admirable and true.
but how do I meet the ‘indvidual’ needs of 4 children with EHCPs, 4 on support plans, 3 that are causing concern and are being ‘monitored’ for now and then teach the rest of my mixed age class to the expected standard and beyond - don’t lower the expectations!
All with a TA in the morning only.
It isn’t possible.
I crawled to the Summer, we have been back 8 days and I’m done.
I am experienced and well trained. I cannot give each one of the children with SEN what they need without even thinking about the other children. As one pertinent example: One child needs a visual timetable of the day - no problem, we have a class one, after all what benefits one can benefit all.
Except that one child has trauma and anxiety and will become dysregulated if he sees that we are doing something he doesn’t enjoy later.
Whose needs do I choose to meet?
Who will do the speech and language interventions? When?
Who is making the alternative resources and teaching them to use colourful semantics?
I cannot just teach anymore.
I am exhausted.

Absolutely right twinkletoes - it is so sad to see teachers who clearly get it, and care, and want to do the best for every student, being let down by a system that is underfunded and under-resourced. I find the wait times I am hearing for speech therapy hard to stomach - how much time children are waiting when they are passing through critical foundational years of development and education. Meanwhile parents are resorting to trawling the internet and books for information on how to be their child's therapist. It's absolutely mad that in 2025 this is happening. What happened to the optimism of the 90s and 00s when things were supposed to get better?

Everything seems so broken across all parts of public services in the UK and it's very sad. I can't help but think that if education, health and social services had better funding in the first place it would reduce costs later down the line but they all seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul and it seems impossible to interrupt the destructive cycle. Any time extra funding is announced it's like 1% of the amounts needed to actually make any difference which just seems completely pointless. Instead of putting large but insufficient amounts into each service, which immediately get swallowed up by the gaping holes/problems which are there from decades of neglect, someone needs to commission an expert report into all of these systems and how they connect, and then a long term plan needs to be made probably focusing on one area at a time. I don't know how realistic that is - probably not very, unfortunately. Maybe our system of government where everything can change every few years is part of the problem, that was perhaps best for a simpler time but these days everything is more complex and there needs to be a much longer-term vision that can't just be scrapped or ruined by subsequent governments.

Even with the NHS for example with the ageing population costs - it's been known for decades that there would be an explosion in the number of older people needing more care but apparently it's now a surprise and no hospital is prepared for it? It doesn't make sense.

Having just read the Wiki info on this, it sounds very similar to the French school system and what my children experience now - i.e. very little group work, Children sit in rows and learn largely by rote with lots of exercises for homework. Pupils memorise poems, and read a lot of French and English literature. Respect for adults is systemic and ultimate authority of the largely very strict ‘Profs’ seems to be universally accepted. There is much less accepted interference from parents in our personal experience also. My children were amazed at the difference in the classroom and how quiet the lessons were from their previous UK based Secondary and Primary schools. My DSs are fortunate not to require SEN support though for which I’m grateful because SEN provision in their school seems to be virtually non-existent. Those children that are disruptive seem to just disappear, presumably kicked out. It would be a different story if we did need SEN support I expect, but right now, it’s the happiest my DSs have ever been in school and they are thriving. I was worried about what I had heard regarding strictness of French schools generally but am now grateful for it. (Edited for typos)

If they want to go to uni, parents will generally go down the exam route.

DD isn't sure what she wants to do after compulsory education yet (she's only 11) but we've decided that she'll do GCSEs in Maths, English Lang & Lit, Sciences and whatever else interests her, to give her plenty of options. She will sit GCSE Sociology in summer 2026, and IGCSE Environmental Management the following year, so she's getting a head start on it.

I'd imagine she'll go to college for A Levels / vocational courses when she's 16, but I don't know.

I mean, this can happen to school educated kids too. Parents dictating their options or making choices that disrupt their ability to reach their potential. The majority of parents who home educate do so with their child's best interests at heart, and will be led by them.

We may end up home educating our son, who should be at GCSE level but is very far behind. He has home tuition for English and Maths, but currently working at KS2 level, and is doing Sociology and Psychology GCSEs online. When he's ready to take the exams we would pay for him to do them privately. It'll probably take him longer, but we're hoping he will get the five GCSEs he needs to move on to college at some point.

Features that occur in the UK’s top state schools like Michaela Community School - where here is NO CLASSROOM MISBEHAVIOUR

Such as complete banning of mobiles, zero tolerance on classroom misbehaviour, and in the case of Michaela, Katharine Birbalsingh’s the removal of teacher overtime duties in their own time of lesson planning and marking.

These two enable Michaela teachers to arrive fresh and unstressed every morning and ready to teach AND keep order.

Lesson plans are recorded year on year so there is no need for teachers continually to reinvent the wheel

CA portfolio of common lesson plans based on a parallel set of core materials are produced in school time.

This means that any replacement teacher knows instantly where is a particular class in the curriculum.

Such plans however are continually changed and so kept fresh by the teachers themselves inschool as new ideas are tried out and inserted - gradually honing the very best results.

Homework is set using worksheets, again common and centrally created which consolidate that day’s lessons and prepare for the next days lessons.

It is marked by the kids themselves in and assessed by means of quizzes.

It works because the kids take responsibility for how well they are taking in the core materials of knowledge.

The teachers give out merits and demerits depending on the actions of the kids being worthy of praising or criticising. The give out six times the number of merits than demerits. Tow demerits in a day means a no-excuse detention that evening after school.

Detention mostly deals with the action or omission that created the demerits.

It is explained why the misbehaviour affects the pupil themself and their future life as well as the effect on the fellow pupils.

The important point is the critique is of the behaviour and not the child.

This is because they threat the pre-adult as malleable and their behaviour traits therefore able to be changed - the idea is not to break the child to emphasise to the pupil how to succeed and conversely how to fail.

And so, the pupil is allowed to improve of their own choice.

Michaela expels about one pupil per year - mostly for safety reasons of for example bringing a knife into school.

Its intake is non-selective - which would be easy to filter - but by ballot from a very deprived catchment in Brent London, with over a quarter on free school meals and a higher proportion than average of SEND kids.

The teaching is by teachers who clearly love the pupils there - I have visited with my wife.

The kids are smiling, joyous, full of enthusiasm.

The Labour Minister, Bridget Phillipson and all Labour MPs refuse to visit the school - as do the teaching unions.

Jim Murray

Professor Dana Susskind in the US and her 30 Million Words movement has used research to show that middle class kids hear and engage with an average of 30 million MORE words than their deprived peers in the period from birth to fourth birthday.

The research was a huge comparative study using many thousands of families. The study was years-long fly-on-the-wall CCTV recording parent-child interactions over the younger years.

The comparison was between middle class family homes to those of deprived families in ‘the projects’ (aka council estates)

Middle class kids were shown continually and right from birth, to be talked to, regularly to be read to - especially before bed - and are taught signing to communicate before they are even able to talk, are spoken to in complete sentences and their responses always listened to.

Middle class kids are given simple choices on what to eat, what to wear, where to go etc and their efforts are continually praised - not just their successes but their efforts.

And when they are refused a request, they are firmly told the reason for this and not then allowed to learn to cajole the parent.

Prof Susskind’s 30MW showed this extra communication and stimulation was crucially given while the child’s brains were still plastic, and so created many more synaptic connections.

The result of this is that middle-class kids began primary school a measured 18 months more advanced that their peers - who, most of them, NEVER caught up.

Every parent wants the best for their child but the above account shows that some do not know how because their own parents did not know how.

It is all in the first three or four years of life.

Google

"Professor Dana Suskind 30 Million Words Tune in Talk more brightly"

              My Solution for our society - lessons in parenting

I believe our Snowflake Generation was created as parenting skills have been lost over several generations since the war - esp in deprived class families - and even more for the huge proportion of fatherless kids

My first suggested solution is that the classroom teaching of parenting should be as real and important an area of teaching as that of Maths, Reading, History, Geography and so on.

During their training, Secondary School teachers AND Primary School teachers should be taught how to put across the basics of parenting to their classes as a preparation for their own future responsibilities towards their own children.

AND do this right from the get-go in first-year primary, then to be reinforced every year into secondary school so that young adults leave school at 18 with 13 years of the taught skills sets and knowledge needed to raise families.

Jim Murray

I find it depressing that children are being labelled feral etc. At the end of the day they are children and their behaviour is a response to either what is going on outside of school (family, friends, other issues) or the school environment. Rather than label them feral, I wish we had an education system that stopped and asked why they behave like this and how can we help them. One of the issues is the one size fits all system. Another issue is the private school system. My children go to standard state primary, with above average "disruptive" children as the school has a reputation for supporting them well. The school work hard to support and help those children and their families so children who were once talked of as naughty are now thriving. If all the kids from the primary went to the standard local secondary then all would be somewhat better. But as everyone obviously wants the best for their children then those who can afford go to private for secondary or else move to live near "better" secondary schools and the local secondary school never improves.

I think parental buy in is a significant point. My DC went to a great state school where on the whole the behaviour standards are pretty good. It has a fairly traditional ethos, though nothing like as strict as I gather Michaela is. I'm not claiming there are zero incidents of bad behaviour, but my DC's learning was never significantly disrupted and when I did some volunteering there I found the vast majority of the kids I interacted with to be polite and respectful.
Due to the slightly unusual demographics of the area a large number of the pupils are bussed in from outside the catchment area, often passing more than one other school to get there. Not that I am suggesting for one moment that every parent who chooses their local school doesn't care about their child's education, but it does mean that there is a self selecting population of parents at this particular school who are likely to have certain expectations of their children and crucially will be supportive of the staff when it comes to things like discipline, getting homework done etc. I do think the fact that a lot of families are actively choosing the school despite additional inconvenience and travel expenses means that adherence to school policies etc is better than average. It must make the teachers' job easier to know that if they impose sanctions on a pupil it's highly likely that they will be backed up by parents rather than ignored or challenged.
How things can be improved I really don't know, but I think there is a tendency to blame schools for the problems in wider society when really it's wider society which is the cause of problems in schools.

30 million words? That's a load of bullshit. Do the math. 30,000,000 ÷ 4 ÷ 365 = 20,500 more words per day. Not a chance.

I'm not sure that's so crazy. In normal speech you probably say 3 or 4 words a second I guess, so 10,800 words and hour. It's very possible that an engaged parent who spends a lot of time chatting to their child and narrating the world talks for 2 or more hours more than a disengaged, stressed parent.

This is a very good point, my daughter's school is quite remote and you can only really get there by driving. It means that everyone who sends their child there is affluent enough to own a car and has actively chosen the school for it's quirky ethos. There are very few issues with behaviour and most of the children are quite advanced for their age- about half the latest Y6 class went on to the super selective independent school nearby which has about 10 applicants per place.

I can't afford private school for my 2 girls but the classes are streamed into sets - which usually solves the problem :)

It doesn’t solve the problem for my son who wants to learn and is capable of doing well but is not in top sets. He has dyslexia and ASD with anxiety, with learning support he will do well but his learning is being made extra difficult by the teachers managing began for half a lesson. Why should those who aren’t as academically bright, be subject to poor behaviour interrupting their learning. Sets should be based on attitude to learning rather than academic results.

Yes my dc too needs order and quiet to achieve anything, setting doesn’t solve the whole thing and it creates other issues of kids getting stuck in those sets.

You're right, I never thought of that. I hope you're able to find a solution for your son x

I moan about some of the ridiculous school rules I hear about (like giving detentions during Tube strikes) but I had a conversation with a teacher friend yesterday which opened my eyes. She teaches in a Catholic primary school. Y3, so 7 year olds.

She said they are rude and disrespectful and if she asks them to be quiet they ignore her and when she asks them if they heard her tell them to be quiet they say "yes but we wanted to keep on talking".

She also said that there's a fear of silence - they are all massively overstimulated from having smartphones from a silly age etc. I can totally see where she's coming from.

But will people reading this keep their kids off consoles and devices? I bet they don't.

People thought TV was the devil when I was a child, but it was nothing to what kids are exposed to now - it doesn't have to be inappropriate content, it's just the volume of it.