Schools in the UK

[Bobajob02]

I grew up in the UK but live abroad now and my kids are in school over here. Are schools in the UK really as bad as they sound? Isolation, insane school uniform rules, detentions for the slightest misdemeanour. Not being able to take kids out of school during term time. Piled on top of that loads of exam pressure from a young age.

Do kids actually enjoy school in the UK? Is it ok if they are bright and toe the line? What about those who don’t fit the mould? Does this approach improve children’s outcomes (not just academic, but also in terms of well-being)?

I’m so sorry to hear about Scottish schools. Staff and children shouldn’t have to go through violence and the threat of violence like that.

I’ve witnessed children being scared of other children in my class. It’s awful to see. The children have to be in class at all times as there’s nowhere else to go and no one to take them out but it’s distressing for them and for the rest of the people in the classroom. No learning happens for anyone.

My son is a Secondary School teacher in Scotland. The only thing that keeps him going is the weans tbh. He thinks there are no “bad” weans.There are disruptive ones and it’s a challenge doing lesson plans due to inclusion as you can’t have one universal lesson, you have to meet the needs of every child and in a class of 30, you could have six different versions of the one lesson trying to meet all their needs. However, I answered most of the FOI requests in my job from MSPs, MPs, journalists etc re violence in schools. Most of the incidents were verbal and the ones that veered into physical or were purely physical were in ASN settings. That’s all I can say. Hope your child is more settled. At the end of the day your child comes first.

To be fair, anyone would certainly think from browsing Mumsnet that they educated more like 50% of the students, not 5%!

Where were these incidents?

FactCheck: violent injuries against school staff most common in Scotland – Channel 4 News https://share.google/8gbLsDeqWxLcPO9nA

No need. They’re fine. 👍

That was two teachers.

In my local area. I'm not going to say where but I can assure you they happened. I said upthread the school I work at doesn't really have a violence problem, and I stand by that compared to what I hear from colleagues elsewhere (or see going on in my kids' school) but I have still gone home from work bitten, scratched to bleeding, having had a chair lobbed at me, kicked in the face and no I do not work in a specialist unit. It's a mainstream primary in a mostly two working parent, very few FSM, catchment.
So no idea what is going on with your FOI requests.

Maybe because you live in a different country? Our reporting systems for violent incidents are robust. Maybe more robust than in your country?

Sorry to hear what you went through btw .

Sorry, I thought we were both talking about Scotland. Apologies if you weren't!

No Scotland. Maybe a different council?

Yes, quite possibly. I think the reporting really comes down to the SLT as well. When I get injured I need to fill out an incident report and then go through it with a member of SLT who submits to the council. There's rarely time to do that the day it happens, and then the incident reports pile up... I think of about a dozen incidents I only received confirmation from the council that one had been reported. The Unions are better at tracking this - we have a QR code in our staffroom so it's really easy to scan that and self report during break. So figures reported by unions are probably more accurate than official figures, at least in my experience.

Scroll down a bit.

Definitely not perfect here, but I look at the US and see them using junk pedagogies to teach; in conteast we are probably among the world leaders in following the science of how kids learn. They also seem to have no culture of safeguarding, whereas UK schools are typically very strong on this. Also a weird culture where teachers openly say they love the kids they teach, where we have clear professional boundaries. So I think we do OK compared to the States at least.

When I watched the "Adolescence" episode set in the school I was thinking, gosh, that's a terrible school, but my daughter said, nah, mum, that's accurate. I was shocked.

Much of the teacher CPD I've been offered (in the UK) in the last 10 years has been based on the Doug Lemov 'Teach Like a Champion' pedagogy, so I'm not sure the UK and US differ so much (although Lemov et al started by challenging the US style of pedagogy so maybe that battle's still being fought...)

My kids love school. They listen. They respect and they have a good number of friends. I also trust the teachers and understand there are always two sides to everything they say.

Err? I teach, skills for life and an academic subject as that's important too. They wear a fairly comfy uniform (no blazer), like lots of adults do for work. We have clubs, free breakfast before 8.15, pastoral managers, very few detentions and a tiny number of after school ones as most students take a school bus. Choose wisely and your kids will be fine. Control their social media and phone time and they'll do better emotionally and academically- most issues coming from this in my opinion

My eldest dd attends the top grammar school
in our county and which is also rated highly in the U.K. It is an all girls school and everyone says they’re very academic and they do focus on that but the girls don’t get loads of homework in Y7 and Y8. They put a lot of emphasis on the girls attending extra curricular clubs to build friendships. They are also fairly strict (but not overly) and have great pastoral care. There was an issue with some naming calling over what’sapp and they addressed it with the class straight away. But I have a friend who teaches at a state school in the county and it’s a different story from the grammars. Lots of sen,
mixed ability groups as the grammars get the more academic ones. She loves it but says it’s harder to manage all the Sen issues alongside everything else.

This sounds ideal. How do schools move back to this when behaviour has been on the slide? What are schools like this getting right that others aren’t. I’d love to know.

He’s it’s insane as you say for the ones that don’t “fit the mold” it’s pretty hellish, my sons school just beats them down, it destroys confidence and makes them not want to be there, such a shame our education doesn’t see kids for what they are but uniform wearing robots

Yes most schools in the U.K. are awful at the moment. Not for the reasons you stated though. The main issue is awful student behaviour and a complete lack of respect for teachers from parents, kids and society in general. I can’t see the issue with strict rules on uniform and absences since Covid have been too high so this needs to be addressed in some way. It worries me that some people disagree with detentions and isolation. Are you suggesting that your kids should be allowed to behave badly and not have a consequence?