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?

I can tell you flat out that imposing a stricter behaviour management system in my school almost instantly improved behaviour.

I could also point you in the direction of many teachers on here who will attest to the fact that introducing a more conciliatory behaviour management system in their school lead to appalling behaviour.

And if you actually read my replies properly, you will see that I acknowledge that the lack of respect in schools is not just about teachers to pupils but also the other way.

The reason the school system is falling apart is very little to do with the discussions about behaviour and respect - that is one issue of many caused by a lack of funding, crappy curriculum and a national culture that has focussed on individualism instead of community and society for the past 40 years.

Teachers have absolutely been failed by that system - but taking that out on the pupils isn't going to make things any better is it?

The fact that you think that pupils 'deserve' the education system they are subjected to says it all really - what on earth do you think pupils could possibly have done in the 11 years before they enter secondary school that means that they deserve to be treated the way they are?

The pupils can't change the system - but the teachers and the pupils working together can. Teachers can use their time with the pupils to instil those notions of respect both for their profession and for people generally. Some of those pupils that they are teaching are the next generation of politicians and policy makers, all of them will be the next generation of voters.

Who do you want making the decisions in the future? A bunch of people who ask how high when someone who is perceived to be in a more powerful position tells them to jump or well rounded individuals who are capable of critical thinking, challenging unfairness and who know how to get people onside without having to resort to punitive measures and petty punishments.

Those countries in the PISA tables have cultures of collaborative classrooms - collaborations is only possible with two way respect.

Model for the whole country?

I just don’t get why schools are not flexible with things like uniform.

Some schools make students wear blazers when it’s 28c. Some schools don’t allow students to wear jumpers between Easter and Oct half term. It can be cold those times. This is border on the side as torture

Yet in both situations- the teachers can wear summer dresses, short sleeve tops in the former. Then wear jumpers in the latter

I can understand the fuss and distraction that would happen, I went to school in the UK after all, but it just seems like there's a lot less fuss and distraction when there's less rules to break and equipment is provided, as it is in my children's schools. They don't behave perfectly of course (I can think of one incident in particular when a boy was locked out of the food tech room when he went to the loo) but when I tell DD what school was like in my day, all the misbehaviour that went on, its completely alien to her and it seems everyone, teacher and student alike, is treated with more respect than I experienced in secondary school.

Teachers absolutely shouldn't be paying for anything out of their own pockets, that's a failing of the school budget.

Regarding the other discussion about challenging teachers, I only encouraged DD to do that once, when her teacher marked her physics exam wrong, so much of an error she was two grades below what it should have been. She did it very politely and diplomatically though and her teacher looked again at the paper and corrected it. Things like getting told off for the aforementioned incident even though she wasn't part of it, I told her to let go, life isn't always fair.

The issue is that in many schools, the application of the system is inconsistent. What goes in one lesson , won’t in another , 3 different teachers will react in 3 different ways , or worse , you get the same punishment for a daft thing (forgetting your calculator on a non maths day) as you do for a more serious thing (fighting).

And does it really, really matter if the girls wear black socks instead of white or brown?

@SanSeb
Re not questioning at work. Yes i have had experience of that in my previous career, quite often it was due to cultural expectations not to ask questions and come from an environment of micro management, not found that an issue from uk schooled employees. We are, however, talking about English schools rather than employees in corporate environments (which incidentally, i have found to welcome challenges until it becomes an unavoidable embarrassment to the senior leaders) and employees are also adults that have life experience and should be challenging decisions from an informed standpoint rather than a petulant teenager with parents at home saying they should challenge whatever an adult says.

It's funny how people assume that implementing a 'stricter' behaviour management system meant caring about the colour of socks. Incidentally, I don't agree with extremely draconian uniform policies and I wouldn't work in a place like Michaela

But for some on here, 'stricter' means stuff like expecting pupils to bring a pen to school or to follow a reasonable instruction without arguing about it from any adult in the school.

I don’t understand the whole thing around pupils having to ask whether they can take off their blazer and the teacher having the authority to say no. Leading to the weird position of the children potentially sweltering in the summer whilst the teachers are in lovely light summer clothes to keep cool.

I feel the same with schools in Scotland. My dad and his family live up there. We are in England. My kids were in high school in England at the same time my cousins kids were in high schools in Scotland

Scottish schools dont seem to have the same strictness regarding uniforms. The girls were allowed to wear make up/jewellery. They all wore trainers. We were there one day (different half terms) when my cousins kids came home in cute little skirts, black tops with frilly sleeves over their shirts, make up done and converse on their feet. My girls were shook 😂 they would never have been able to wear that at their school

they don’t get fined for taking kids out on holidays, there doesn’t seem to be as much pressure.

The kids all seem to be doing very well and it does make me think why are schools down here so regimented? Why are uniform rules so strict? I’ve never understood why it matters or what difference it makes to their learning if they have make up on

We are not preparing them for work - that’s the reality. It’s a school but it’s suppposed to be preparing them for life outside school and it doesn’t - it should be a safe place for them to learn these skills but it isn’t. The school system is not fit for purpose - it does not exist to meet its own ends, we are not equipping kids with the skills they need to succeed in employment- sure they can pass an exam - that’s very little use to employers and I’m not the only one to say this, over and over we complain that the kids coming out of schools do not have the skills for work - the can’t think for themselves, they don’t show initiative, they need to be spoon fed, they can’t collaborate, they don’t value people skills - at all! These are life skills and they are more important to kids that drilling to pass exams, kids need soft skills and schools are not teaching them. And with smaller families, they aren’t learning at home either. Sure kids challenging you is hard - that’s teaching, that coaching and that’s managing and it’s bloody hard. That’s doing the good work. Delivering a subject to well behaved drones is a lot easier and I can see why it’s a popular aim amongst the teaching profession. It’s just not going to create an amazing work force with the skills to succeed. So the kids who are naturally good at the soft skills take off leaving everyone wondering why their kid with an amazing degree can’t get a job.

Sure kids challenging you is hard - that’s teaching, that coaching and that’s managing and it’s bloody hard. That’s doing the good work. Delivering a subject to well behaved drones is a lot easier and I can see why it’s a popular aim amongst the teaching profession.

Patronising, aren't you? Actually, I don't want to 'deliver a subject to well behaved drones', that would be boring. But I also don't want to fail to teach my subject because some kids are endlessly pissing around and not doing what they are told. But apparently you like your children to sit around waiting to be taught while the teacher is endlessly explaining to other students why the perfectly reasonable thing they were just asked to do should in fact be done.

Actually my DDs maths teacher told me at parents evening that she had a lovely class of delightful children - didn’t want to teach hard maths, she thought maths should be a nice subject so she stayed away from the horrible hard questions and hence her classes were lovely and everyone was happy. We were delighted of course! Dd was also very pleased that she could only answer a third of her maths gcse paper, what did she need with silly maths. We of course got a tutor (like the other 2/3 of the class) to teach the horrible questions and all was well in the world - maybe that’s the answer?
Tbh I’d have been more understanding if the kids had been challenging and so the teacher had diverted all her time to resolving poor behaviour but she just didn’t want to teach.

she stayed away from the horrible hard questions and hence her classes were lovely and everyone was happy.

Well, if that isn’t just validating the idea that if you lower expectations the kids learn less because they don’t actually want to do the work.

@SanSeb My children (so the school tells me) are well behaved. They are very different children, one is a questioner and one isnt. They both respect their teachers though because i have told them to imagine standing infront of their own classes and trying to deliver lessons to the disruptive children in those classes and how difficult that must be and to contribute in a positive way to the lesson and not make the teachers life more difficult by being disruptive. They also know that if their teacher tells me about negative behaviour, then i will be supportive of the teacher...this is what you really should be advising children...empathy and respect for someone trying to do the best job they can for your children.

Whomever employs my children in the future will be very lucky, they are hard workers, polite, funny, bright and respectful regardless of exam results they get. Maybe they wont be CEO's (who knows) but there are no CEO's without the likes of my children.

There again with the smug attitude. Just because I disagree with you I must have no idea what I'm talking about 🙄

I really hope you don't teach English, History or Sciology given your inability to engage in discussion and debate without resorting to debasing language about people's intelligence and experience and mininsing their views just because they don't align with yours.

You said “Kids will, for the most part, follow reasonable requests, if they are genuinely reasonable”

And you followed it up with the idea that the problem in schools is that the requests being made are unreasonable.

You clearly have no idea how many times a teacher might be ignored when asking a class to stop talking, or to get to their lessons on time or even bring in a pen if there’s no possibility of a sanction being applied for non-compliance.

It’s not about world view, it’s about huge amounts of experience of working with kids.

I’ve trained a lot of teachers. They generally start out thinking that classes will simply respond to reasonable requests and then they slowly realise that there’s a reason for the behaviour management system.

The point is the unreasonable requests drown out the reasonable ones - its the classroom management version of the boy who cried wolf.

If teachers implement ever stricter petty rules either through school policy or their own desire for power trips, kids will push back against all the rules.

They won't make an effort to remember a pen if it is the same sanction as wearing the wrong colour socks.

They also won't respond to reasonable requests if it is coming from a teacher with a history of humiliating and embarrassing individuals.

The teacher who stood there in their short sleeve top in 25 degree heat yelling at kids to put their blazers back on while they queue for their phones five minutes before the end of the school day because the email hasn't gone out giving them permission to take them off is not going to be respected and get good behaviour back in the classroom. That same teacher is the one that spends half the lesson telling kids off and shouting and changes the seating plan every other week because they can't control the class.

The teacher who doesn't have a seating plan, only implements seat moves as part of the behaviour policy not as a weird powerplay, chats to the kids, sometimes lets them get loud but lays out their expectations at the start of the year. That's the teacher that can say "Quiet now everyone, its time to work" and they are listened to.

Both of those are real examples from the last couple of weeks at my daughters school by the way.

No-one has said there shouldn't be sanctions available - I really don't know where you have got that from.

Go back to the pen example (that wasn't really about the pen).

In the situation outlined, the teacher didn't actually threaten a sanction when they told the pupil off for not having the pen.

However, in the alternative approach I suggested I did threaten a sanction. My suggested conversation was:

John - can I have a word? You've forgotten your pen a couple of times now, try and remember it will you? I don't want the hassle of having to give you a break time detention and email your parents, so sort it out will you? Let me know if there are any issues that are stopping you from bringing a pen"

The difference in my approach was not to create theatre out of it in front of the whole class while making the possibility of sanctions if the behaviour continues clear.

Treating kids with respect does not mean no sanctions, or never telling them off neither does it mean not being able to impelement rules like remembering to bring a pen. It just means recognising their agency and not using the behaviour policy as performance.

I see I'm not the only poster here banging her head on whatever hard surface is nearest to their heads at your posts here.

My DCs went to a 3500+ student high school in the US where a lot of money is spent annually on an equitable discipline system. This system was put in place after two years of community input, and analysis of the core issues and how to address them.

The school employs deans whose job is to act as a signpost to various support systems that the school makes available. These range from moving to an alternative school at school expense, with transport laod on, assignment to the school's staff of licensed clinical social workers for counseling during the school day, conferences with parents/ guardians in which the problems are discussed and solutions agreed upon, as well as in-school suspension. Expulsion only occurs in cases of criminality and after all other options are exhausted.

There is no uniform, but there is a student dress code, basically - no offensive images or slogans on clothes (sexism, racism, ableism, offensive words or phrases, and anything else that might be considered uncivil), and clothing must cover the rear end and torso.

Teachers and staff otoh have to wear professional looking clothing - no jeans, t-shirts, tank tops, nothing tatty or ripped.

Teachers do not have to spend class time dealing with low level disruption because repeated incidents merit referral to a dean who will deal with the problem.

While students do not wear uniform, they tend to be very proud of their sports team uniforms, and school hoodies and other 'spirit wear' are worn around town and also to school. The football team wear chinos and their jerseys to school on Fridays during the football season.

Community input into the discipline code meant that diverse ethnic groups within the community felt more engaged and invested in making the code work, and the administration worked hard to understand how the old code was alienating people.

The entire thrust of the current code is to treat behaviour as communication, and to engage in collaborative problem solving. It is built on a good faith effort on the part of all stakeholders to be mutually respectful, which in turn is built on the assumption that everyone involved in the venture has the best interests of all the students front and centre.

If the cornerstone of your approach is the assumption that the kids don't want to learn, their parents are dumber than muck, and basically students and parents alike are The Enemy, you'll get nowhere.

Unfortunately the other countries in the UK drag England down. So if England were measured alone, we would be pretty much be at the top of the Western World. We would be above Finland, Switzerland etc. So there you go, for all the debates and constant belief that we are failing our pupils, we are above the countries you list.
looks like we are leading the way.
You are wrong.

BloominNora

Its called breaking the cycle.

Pupils have parents that don't respect the system, those pupils grow up to not respect the system, and instill the same ethos in their children.

The cycle contimues.

If you and other parents want a better system then you need to respect those that are trying to teach your children in the system that you have created.

Teachers do not go into teaching to be tyrants, they go into teaching to try and make lives better.

What happens in that they are beaten down by years of abuse by SLT, pupils, parents governments and media (both MSM and SM) and when they have the gall to complain they are told to stop whinging, get back to work and stop teaching wrong.

BloominNora

The teacher who doesn't have a seating plan, only implements seat moves as part of the behaviour policy not as a weird powerplay, chats to the kids, sometimes lets them get loud but lays out their expectations at the start of the year. That's the teacher that can say "Quiet now everyone, its time to work" and they are listened to.

Except that this isn't true.

I totally see your point, Wait.

My EU country is 3 points from the England on PISA scores.

We take children out of school for holiday/family reasons without fines, sick children are staying at home without the school harassing the families (I remember the thread where a child was in hospital, and the school expected daily call! Ridiculous), children with limited capacity go home early (and some posters on this thread calling Red flag parents suggesting the child should miss PE and RE when in pain, WTF!). And parents decide at which age their children walk to/from school on their own.

I agree with the poster from page 1, that the England is setting more and more rules to be doing something, often mixing correlation with causation.

Yes, poor attendance correlates with worse outcomes - but bullying families with great attendance about a few missed sessions and families with as good attendance as health allows about something they can't change won't do the trick.

I'm not saying everything is perfect in my country, just that the UK approach seems really weird, making life harder for those whi parent well.

As a primary school teacher in Ireland (who has also taught in England and the North of Ireland). I can confirm that school refusal is not alien and I have seen more here than I did in the UK.