What exactly is the strictness in English schools actually achieving?

[WaitAMinutePlease]

I’ve been on Mumsnet for years and one thing that genuinely puzzles me is how strict many English schools seem to be.

The thread today about the little boy with severe leg pain, and his mum asked if he could temporarily leave school at 1.30pm instead of 3.30pm because he’s struggling physically. The school apparently refused and said they wouldn’t “release” him. (Sorry? You won’t ‘release’ MY child??? WTAF!)

I see similar threads all the time. Parents being threatened with fines over attendance, children not being allowed time off for family holidays, requests for flexibility being refused, schools insisting on attendance despite medical issues that are still being investigated, and so on.

I’m Irish, and honestly this feels ridiculous to me. Irish schools are generally much more pragmatic. If a child was struggling with a health issue, even one that hadn’t yet been formally diagnosed, most schools would work with the parents. Reduced hours, work sent home, flexibility around attendance, none of that would seem remotely controversial. Equally, while schools don’t encourage term-time holidays, taking children out of school for a family holiday isn’t generally treated as some major disciplinary issue.

What I don’t understand is what the strictness is actually achieving. Ireland has a higher proportion of students progressing to third-level education than England by a mile (approx 76% vs 46%), so it’s not obvious to me that a highly punitive attendance culture produces better educational outcomes.

So my question is: why are English schools like this?

Is it government pressure? Ofsted? League tables? Funding linked to attendance? Or is it actually genuinely believed that this level of strictness benefits children?

We were singing that song back in the 80s. It’s a teenager thing.

In my opinion, the worst problems in schools today are down to parents having far too much time on their hands which they use to complain about teachers.

I’d love to see the parents teaching 5 periods a day with 30 pupils in each period, each period having a different year group, so 150 a day and then it could be a different 150 the next day and they need different lesson plans for each year group, and also different lesson plans per single class as some pupils can’t write properly so need to draw a poster etc, but they are, apparently “shite” because they get a bit exasperated as some of the pupils don’t even have a basic thing like a pen ffs and other ones need some kind of unique timetable because they somehow “get lost” between classes.

They don’t get paid enough imo.

@Differentforgirls i honestly dont know how the teachers 'keep their spirits up' they constantly seem to get bombarded with new mandates from SLT or parents about how to do things and it is so difficult to get any culpability for anything re the students whilst also having to put up with an inordinate amount of people going in and out of the classrooms whilst trying to teach and cope with all the behavioural issues.

I have kids who I know haven't got a pen due to home life

Yes - and there will be children who don't have a pen due to their home life or something else going on who you don't know about. It is great that you provide things for them (although the school should have a stash of those things for teachers to keep in the drawers rather than you paying yourself).

The child you are talking about may be an NT kid from a stable home, he may not be being bullied, he may not have any issues whatsoever - but he is still a teenager which means raging hormones, peer pressure etc.

In your example you said:

Teacher- oh dear. This was the same last lesson. Can you please bring a pen to class.

Yes - its perfectly reasonable to expect John to remember a pen, yes, he should have spoken up about not having a pen - but again....teenager!

It may have only been a pen but patronising him in front of his classmates and bringing up a mistake from a previous lesson was never going to end in anything but a distraction - he was always going to talk back either out of embarrassment or because he is one of the smart arses who thinks it's big and clever to talk back in front of his mates and you handed him the opportunity.

If you were in a meeting with colleagues and you happened to make a mistake and it was the same or similar to one you had made before, you wouldn't be happy if the head called you out in a patronising way in front of your colleagues.

You may not talk back like John did and you may take responsibility and ownership of your mistake, but it would annoying and unprofessional of the head to call it out in front of other staff.

Schools go on and on about the strictness and rules preparing children for adulthood on the one hand, and refuse to treat pupils with the same respect that they would expect from their colleagues.

It's confusing and incredibly hypocritical and the kids know it. The teachers that get the most out of children both in terms of respect and results are the ones that treat their students like people - I've seen it time and time again, at my school and my kids schools and colleges and at the schools their friends and cousins go to.

Again- staying behind after class- I might have to get to the opposite side of the school for an over lesson or go on break duty. I might have a kid who’s upset about something and wants to talk to me. I might have a kid who’s lost their timetable and needs me to look up what they have next. I might have a kid who needs a bit of help with hwk. So whilst it might seem to be no issue at all in the scenario I described it can have a knock on effect.

You'd take the time to help a kid that's lost their timetable, but not have a quiet word with the kid who has forgotten their pen a couple of times? I was suggesting a 20 second conversation that could be had while you were grabbing your papers / laptop / lanyard or whatever, while the other students were filing out of the classroom - it certainly would have taken less time than disruption outlined in your scenario.

Completely agree. I wouldn’t do it for all the money in the world and my favourite people are young people. I totally respect the people who can.

🙄

I think this thread illustrates that some parents just dont appreciate that managing large groups of young people is very challenging and requires compromises and management strategies that arent needed when you are engaging with young people in small groups or one to one. There has to be rules to keep kids on track and focused. @FrippEnos description of how missing equipment can descend into fuss & disruption as equipment is thrown or damaged is spot on.

I'd love to see some parents who seem to be very good armchair critics enjoying being 'challenged' by a group of Year 9s who dont see the point of trignometry ... They might find it isnt quite as easy in practice.

OMG can people really not get that professional adults and children in school are not the same? If an adult has forgotten a pen they borrow one calmly and return it at the end of the session. I’ve never, ever seen an adult take a pen they’ve borrowed and deliberately break it in half. I’ve never worked with any adult who persistently failed to bring a pen to meetings. I’m absolutely astounded at the incredibly low standards some have for teenagers. They are very capable of bringing a pen to lessons, excepting the most severe learning or developmental needs.

I've just looked up the PISA Scores: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country

I then googled whether the education system in each country is strict in terms of academic rigour, conformity and behaviour.

The top 6 are all Asian countries that do tend to be very strict on all three counts.

7th is Estonia, 8th Canada, 9th Ireland, 10th Switzerland, 11th Australia, 12th Finland and 13th New Zealand before the UK in 14th place.

Of all of those, Estonia, Canada, Switzerland, Finland all have education systems that prioritise academic rigour, but do so alongside a focus on inclusion and pupil well being. They don't tend to use exclusionary discipline, they encourage pupil independence and collaborative classroom environments and give teachers the flexibility to tailor curriculums to their pupils needs.

New Zealand and Australia are more aligned with the UK but are still more relaxed in terms of uniform etc and Australia has less of a focus on standardised testing and Ireland is a lot more relaxed about attendance.

We are never going to be like the Asian countries because our culture is totally different - we could be a lot more like the European countries and Canada by being less focussed on petty discipline, encouraging rather than supressing independence and individualism and sorting out inclusion and mental health support.

We could overhaul the curriculum to allow teachers to tailor learning and allow students to become better prepared for modern life by accessing a learning path that is better suited to their capabilities, skills and interests rather than a system based on learning by rote from the 1950s.

Nothing.

You know having employees who are incapable of challenge is quite the problem - they accept the status quos even when it’s wrong, we struggle to drum it out of them. They need better interpersonal skills and they don’t learn that at school, it’s a more important skill than all their GCSEs put together., imo They get told it’s our way or the highway. That might work in some industries but in many professions people need to be able to speak trth to
power because not speaking up endangers lives. From the healthcare sector to the airline sector - people have died because staff didn’t feel able to challenge authority.

It's not about the pens for goodness sake! Its about how students are treated generally - there is a lack of respect in schools - but it is absolutely not a one way lack of respect.

Parents don't respect schools, pupils don't respect teachers, and teachers don't respect pupils (and also don't respect quite a few parents).

Respect is and should be earned - in my experience, the teachers who get the most respect from the pupils (and as a consequence the better results and lower number of behaviour incidents) are the ones who demonstrate the expected behaviour by treating their students like people.

You don't improve behaviour by putting more and more petty rules in place - you only encourage resentment and rebellion. You make life more difficult for the children who are genuinely struggling and you give ammunition to the ones that want to play the big 'I am' in front of their mates.

My kids school massively improved behaviour recently by lifting some uniform restrictions - kids can now wear plain black trainers, they can dye their hair, pierce their ears as many times as they like, wear makeup and jewellery and wear scrunchies in their hair or on their wrist (yes, they actually banned scrunchies at one point).

It's amazing how behaviour improves when teachers aren't spending half the day policing pupils for wearing the wrong colour socks or forgetting to take a ring off or when detentions and internal exclusion aren't full of kids who are wearing trainers instead of shoes.

Who would have known that freeing up all of that teacher time would give them more time to teach and address real behaviour issues? And no-one could have possibly foreseen that allowing kids to express their individualism with hair dye and jewellery or be more comfy in trainers wouldn't lead to them pushing back against the remaining rules or immediately lead to them smoking dope and playing truant 🙄

I mean - it's not like its common sense or anything.

Spare us the parents who tell us that teachers have to 'earn the respect' of their pupils before they should be expected to behave for us.

I got several rules changed at school - by arguing, but also providing evidence.

The most memorable one was probably getting them to lift the ban on Year 12s driving to school if they had passed their test because 'there was no room on the car park'.

Half of the carpark hadn't got marked parking bays so people parked like idiots. So I went out with a meter wheel, measured the car park, figured out how many spaces they could get in the car park if they marked the bays up, counted how many cars were currently parked each day and asked around to figure out how many year 12s were likely to pass and want to drive to school.

Wrote a business case showing them that they could fit enough cars with spaces to spare.

They lifted the rule, I got a lift to school with my mate every day rather than having to catch the bus😂

I also got them to lift the rule that sixth formers had to come in for registration even if they had free periods all morning - but that was just by obnoxiously arguing that we were all going to get more done working at home that playing cards in the sixth form centre. I also pointed out that the form tutors would have more planning time if they didn't have to do registration.

I mean, most of us slept rather than actually working when we were at home, but either way, they capitulated and put sign in sheets in the sixth form centre instead of making us come in for registration....attendance actually improved as well, with far less skiving actual lessons.

Took those experiences with me and got a few petty rules changed at work too - saving my employers time and money!

No you are right kids don’t need respect, they need more and more rules till we break their spirit, we just haven’t got strict enough. Glad that’s sorted!

Don't be silly.

Secondary schools often have 1500-odd pupils. If kids only obey the adults who have had the time to 'earn their respect' then it would be absolute fucking chaos. And it's actually heading that way.

Kids should follow reasonable requests from adults working in schools without endless arguing. To suggest that this is unacceptable is stupid.

That’s what i guessed.

If all that money that was spent on someone’s vanity project had actually been spent on teachers and facilities we might not be in this mess.

Start flinging around words like silly and stupid and you don’t sound very clever anymore. Of course kids have to follow basic rules but why do they not deserve respect? Every human deserves respect - it worries me that you see the need to respect your pupils is a problem - it’s basic.

I didn't say that pupils don't deserve respect. I said spare us the parents who think that teachers need to earn the respect of pupils before the pupils should move themselves to follow basic instructions from them.

Glad you agree.

Grow up.

My children are respectful - they follow the rules, have never had a detention and have always been reported as being a delight to teach.

But they have also been taught by me that respect is a two way street - if they give it they should expect to earn it and that if they ever see a teacher behaving in ways that are disrespectful to them or their fellow students, then they should tell a member of pastoral staff if they have an opportunity.

Both of them have joined school councils etc to give feedback and have reported or been asked to confirm other reports of inappropriate teacher behaviour because their teachers, the head and the pastoral staff know that they don't moan about every little thing and have an understanding of what is appropriate.

My eldest reported the misogynistic behaviour of her PE teacher and the English teacher who broadcast that the only dyslexic boy in his class was only going to get a two on his test, by waving the test paper about and ranting about how crap they all were - he didn't use his name, but he was the only kid in the class whose tests were done on coloured paper.

Youngest DD had a science teacher that could not control the class and blew hot and cold, going from friendly to shouty - they said something a bit sarky to a kid one day, no harm meant, but because of their inconsistency, a number of kids reported them. DD hadn't reported it but was asked to confirm what had happened - she told the investigating teacher it was nothing but took the opportunity to report another incident in the same lesson where the teacher changed the seating plan and then yelled at the autistic kid who had a melt down over it and then yelled at his classmates who were sticking up for him (and yes, it was on the register and he did have an EHCP). The pastoral teacher she was talking to was horrified, DD was thanked and it was dealt with.

Your expectation that kids should automatically respect you, but you should not respect them in return makes me think you are more like the teachers in the examples above than the ones that inspire them and get brilliant results, even from the kids that are struggling.

You do you, but if that's your attitude then you reap what you sow.

BloominNora

You only have to read your (and others) replies to see that the issue isn't teachers not respecting the parents or pupils.

You point out that the countries above us in the pisa tables are more leanient iwith regards to rules but ignore that the respect given to teachers and the school is a given.
There is no earning of respect from the teachers as both the person and the institution is well regarded as a profession.
If you look even deeper you will see that those countries' politicians and media sources also respect education.

The final unpaletable truth is that parents and pupils have got the education system that they deserve. One that is falling apart, failling both pupils and teachers (remember that schools should have a responibilty for the health and well being of their staff members as well as the pupils) as relies almost completely on the good will of the teachers to do the job.

I didn't say that pupils needed to respect me, I said that they should follow reasonable instructions from an adult in a school regardless of whether they know them well enough to respect them or not.

Schools are there to teach children how to progress in the world - not just maths and english but how to operate in the real world, think critically and independently and giving and earning respect is part of that.

Kids will, for the most part, follow reasonable requests, if they are genuinely reasonable and / or they understand the reasons for those requests.

The problem with a lot of schools and teachers today is that requests aren't reasonable. Teenagers are mardy little buggers, they are biologically programmed to push boundaries and argue and have done since time immemorial - you are not going to change that by punishing them for doing so. If you try and supress that you are asking for trouble.

You don't accept it but you work with it to help make them well adjusted, independent, critically thinking adults. You don't suggest that them having a different opinion and wanting to voice it is 'stupid'.

If you want unconditionally perfect behaviour and a work environment where whatever you say goes, you may be better suited to dog sitting than teaching.

You literally don't know what you're talking about here. No idea.

It's an interesting question OP.

I'm Irish, my kids are in school here. But I lived in the UK for many years and I have a lot of friends who are teachers there.

I'd say in Ireland, there is much more of a sense of the school being core to the local community.

Many parents are friendly with their kids' teachers outside of school, they'll interact in other arenas (GAA clubs for example), so there is mutual respect ingrained there. The vast majority of parents would be horrified if their kid was the little shit who caused trouble in school (obviously there are exceptions to this, but in the main).

Then that respect goes both ways. If parents want to take kids who achieve well out of school for a week's holiday, no one sees that as a big deal. It helps that there's a lot less interference in schools from outside bodies - there's no real equivalent to OFSTED for example.

Headteachers are left to their own judgement to a much greater degree, so can be more sensible and nuanced about it. Of course they answer to the Dept of Education and Tusla have a role, but there's a lot less micro management from these bodies compared to the UK.

Yes, education is valued in Ireland, but I think community cohesion and good relationships are probably more important driving a difference between the countries.

I’d always start from a neutral position assuming that someone was a descent sort of person that deserved my respect - they would then move that dial by their own behaviour. I’d hope that all professionals would feel the same way about their clients. But I feel that does not happen in schools, teachers, parents and pupils are at war and we need a truce. I think the kids deserve better, the country deserves better and we have to find a way to deliver it and I don’t think imposing more rules and demanding more respect will achieve it but I think we have more failing to do in terms of behaviour and mental health before someone has the courage to try something new.