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?

Im irish living in Ireland and had a school refuser through secondary school. He wasn't alone in being one, there were definitely others.

During this time I worked with the school to get support for him, they suggested reduced hours, later start times, sending work, a drop in room he could go to when he felt overwhelmed.

They didn't fine us, report us to Tusla/Dept of Education or penalise him for it.

He didnt have an IEP or a diagnosis or anything, this was just what they did to support when he needed it and I was greatful for it.

He finished school with no absences in the last year, went to college and is living a happy life.

The comparison was England and Ireland, not the UK which is a combination of several different education systems.
On average Ireland regularly outperforms England on global rankings for attainment.

We relocated at Christmas to a Scandinavian country. Dd2 started secondary school here. No uniforms.

You get a week or two extra holiday here from school if the pupil is doing reasonably well and you don't ask for time off at exam periods. It's no big thing here at all. A avarage student won't spoil their life because of a holiday.
The school just notes legal absence if a child are absent because of sickness, doctor or dentist.
If a pupil has more than 10% non legal absences in a quarter the school must contact the parents. If non legal absences reach 15% or more in the same quarter the headteacher is obliged to notify the municipality but it don't happen a lot because pf the legal absence policy.
Dd2 has got two weeks off as legal absence this summer to go to England. It has to fit with DS (in UK) og Dd1 (in Scandinavian) studies and work and of course our workplaces. It's not always that simple to plan around an international family.

I really don't miss English schools.

I hate how strict schools are now - kids end of resenting school and teachers instead of respecting them.

I went to a comp in the 90s and things like detention were rare and for very poor behaviour. Kids now get them for very minor issues, it’s insane.

my dad was a secondary teacher for over 30 years and he hates the way things went. He felt the rules were getting worse and worse and all it did was create negativity and put kids in the wrong head space.

That’s interesting about the Irish constitution, I need to look it up. Maybe that’s why I’m so aghast at hearing a school saying they won’t ‘release’ a child when the parent wants them released. Like, WTF are you talking about you won’t give my child back to me 😅

My DC also didn’t do religion in primary school, there was him and another little girl, school made every accommodation and it wasn’t an issue in the slightest. Curriculum in secondary is much more broad ranging and theological so he does do it now.

What evidence do you have that IQ scores differ between generations? This would be incredibly difficult to quantify, not least because millennials have probably less experience as a generation of selective education systems that was a form of IQ test. I'm not sure who would fund research to find a difference in IQ scores according to dates of birth as I can't see the application of this. Please may you quote your data source? It would be a very interesting read.

Btw for the number 1 achievers… the Danish…

Here’s their attitude to holidays…
https://www.reddit.com/r/foraeldreDK/comments/1i9uaoq/holdninger_til_ferie_uden_for_skoleferie/?tl=en

Danish headteacher:
Headmaster here.
Be careful in the first years, a lot happens socially and being away for two weeks can be a very long time in 0th grade. In the weeks leading up to the holidays, a lot happens socially, trips out of the house and other things. Orient yourselves in the yearly plans and feel free to ask the class teacher beforehand when it makes the most sense, or when it would at least be a shame for the children not to be at school. In addition, I would like to mention that if your child has many days off from school - illness or otherwise - then think about that too, it is typically here that the school starts to react negatively to holiday notifications.
Personally, I think it's lovely with parents who like to travel with their children and see the world and explore foreign cultures, if it's to lie by a pool in Crete while the children are looked after in the play area - then don't.

If you worked closely with TUSLA welfare officers you would probably call it by its correct name.

Everything I have said is googleable.

For IQ specifically you can search the Flynn effect.

For the first time in history it has reversed. Gen Z still high attains, but have broken the trend.

I’m a primary teacher in Dublin and we are seeing a lot more school refusal these days !

This, DD is a handful but she knows how to behave when required. This is a direct response to the deteriorating behaviour in schools, the only way to keep the majority safe is to impose order to deal with the minority. The majority of kids are fine but we seem to have an increasing minority of children who have no ability to self regulate and their parents have no interest in helping them either.

FWIW I grew up on a really rough council estate that produced not 1 but 4 murderers to date, and countless criminals, social services were a constant feature on the estate. While I was raised by a hard working single mother who placed value on education, I grew up surrounded by poverty so I do have some experience.

I didn’t miss anything with that post. That mother had asked for flexibility until her child could attend a physio at the end of the month. She wasn’t asking for a permanent flexible arrangement. And the school refused to work with her. I just find that so shocking.

Our department of education is who is ultimately responsible for governing the schools. Surely a central governing department specialising in education having overall responsibility for education, is better than a branch of the local authority? Honestly, it’s just something that blows my mind, it’s so bizarre to me.

Well this, theres very little cultural enrichment going in is there? Mine in primary only cares about the pool and orange slushies which is fine but I wouldn’t pretend that missing school is ok. In a few weeks in primary you can miss an introduction to fractions or how to subtract or add by carrying over. DD is ahead and she would probably be fine missing school for a few weeks but we would never do it because it sends the message that we can just opt out if something more fun comes up. Our holidays are according to our budget and thats fine.

Denmark 0th grade? Look up plans? It's a glorified nursery. The school will be "It's fine - happy holiday" to any week requested if the child is an avarage pupil. Even if you go to Crete.

Huh, I don’t think she’s saying don’t visit Crete. I think she’s saying don’t just lie by a pool in Crete.

Yes but I found that interesting. We were considering an autumn holiday for us all this Oct. Our son will have just started reception.

This teacher sounds reasonable so now considering whether that’s a good idea with the socialisation aspect.

I think schools should be more open about when is a good time and bad time to go away. Saying never go away in term time I obviously don’t agree with.

It is ridiculous. I'm a primary school teacher and we would be hauled over the coals if we treated children in the way they do at secondary school. Ridiculous restrictions on toilet use, uniform policies that are far stricter than any workplace, isolation rooms for forgetting a pen. My DD's cohort this week have been made to continuously line up and walk backwards and forwards from.the playground to the classroom in complete silence because a few kids dared to talk in the line - spectacularly poor behaviour management to punish everyone for the misdemeanours of the few.

The punitive environment caused my very well-behaved autistic teen so much fear she ended up unable to attend. The good kids are terrified - hardly a conducive state to learn in - yet a minority of badly-behaved kids continue to disrupt lessons. Detentions and isolation are so frequent that they become meaningless and ineffective for kids like this.

We have very few options for schools in my area unfortunately.

I suspect there's far less sex/drugs/vaping in the toilets at primary school. Odd to compare the two.

If you look at the stats, you'll see that certain non white British ethnic groups do far better than white British, especially working class white British boys.

What Ireland has achieved has nothing to do with homogeneity. It is all to do with a culture of mutual respect between schools and parents, and a perception of equality across society. Everyone does the same curriculum. Everyone does the same major exams. The curriculum has been tweaked in the last couple of decades to make it more relevant to varied learning styles and to encourage wide engagement with education to age 18.

The British education 'system' is a hodge podge designed to create an elite and to make sure the rest 'know their place'. It's amusing for me, living in the US, to see the disbelief of Britons who are contemplating a move to the US, and US residents here on MN advise them to look into the public (i.e. state) schools and forget everything they know about how education works. It is so difficult for them to imagine publicly funded schools with state of the art facilities and annual budgets in the $$$$$millions. And no uniforms!!! How could a school possibly function if students pull on whatever is on the top of the bedroom pile on any given morning and sally forth...

The vast majority of Irish schools are publicly funded, non fee paying, and while facilities couldn't hold a candle to the average suburban American school, the perception of an egalitarian system makes a huge difference.

She's saying don't drag the children along and dump them at the resort childcare facility.

Bring them with you to include them in all the location has to offer in terms of activities and interesting stuff. This broadens their horizons. Dumping them with babysitters does not.

Irish students get significantly more summer holiday time than English students do too, fyi.

Could it be that noses constantly to the grindstone just results in sore noses?

I totally agree with you. The overly keen discipline and bullying teaching style at my kids school seems to have two main effects, first it freaks the hell out of the 'good' kids inducing levels of fear and anxiety to the point that they all 'need' sen diagnosis and 'quiet space' during school time or just go full school refusal. Or makes the 'naughty' kids, the ones dealing with issues at home, to f-about in school requiring sen diagnosis for ADHD...
I guess it's a bit like big Pharma causing a problem so it can fix it. The school system creates all these problems within the kids that then need to be fixed externally for a huge amount of profit.

Step inside an English classroom to find out.

Attendance at my school is currently under 90%, meaning that, on average, kids miss 19 days of school a year. So almost a whole month. On average - for some this is a lot more. 19 days is 95 hours of learning, not including tutor time and assemblies. Try catching kids up who have fallen that far behind. Kids see taking time off for their birthdays as a right. How does that prepare them for the real world?

Uniform adherence is shocking. We're not strict, but there are rules (which are regularly broken). In every classroom, you have at least two children who will not even vaguely wear what they are supposed to. As a result, in every Science class, you will have at least 4 kids who will refuse to wear basic safety gear correctly, every PE class has 1-2 persistent refusers (who do not wear PE kit), every cooking class has complaints from the parents of the child whose uniform is ruined because they wouldn't wear an apron. We are not talking about preparing kids for business wear of ties, we are talking about kids refusing to follow basic rules of dress - meaning they will end up kicked out of construction work, catering, hospitality or anywhere else later on that requires them to wear uniform if they continue their habit.

Discipline is even worse. I maintain order in my classroom. As a result, I am not a popular teacher. It does not suit every child - those without any discipline at home end up hating me and refusing to work. But my results are, on average, much higher, because most kids cannot work in an environment in which there is not calm, order and consistent rules. Most SEND kids learn better that way, too. Sometimes, I get told to watch so-and-so, who has a really good relationship with one of the children who hate me. In the vast majority of cases, they achieve that by being matey with those kids - to the detriment of the rest of the class. Kids in my classroom learn that they do well when they follow my rules. Just like in work places, which will also not tolerate lack of work, swearing, throwing items or wilful destruction of materials.

Parents need to start backing schools. I have been teaching a long time. I have seen the shift from being able to ring home and getting parental backing to the persistent backlash we are facing now. I used to be able to phone a parent to tell them that their child had been throwing food at another child/ set fire to their work/ told me to fuck off and I knew that the parent would ensure it wasn't happening again. Or they'd try, at least. Nowadays, 50% of the time I ring home only to get a mouthful of abuse and have my skills questioned.

Children used to come back from a holiday ready to learn. The first week back in school used to be the quietest; a Monday morning used to be a lovely lesson to have with a generally unruly class. I now find Mondays the worst - because kids are often left to do as they please at home and they come back to school dysregulated. So now I spend my Mondays laying down the law again in order to be able to teach properly the rest of the week.

I do use common sense. Blazers in 30 degrees heat are not a must. Hair colour does not influence outcomes. Total silence is not always a good thing. Kids who have just come out of a 2 hour exam will not be in a state to learn about kinetic energy the next lesson.

Strictness has its place, though.

This is the issue. Soft touch parents who don’t like discipline.

Not all schools are that strict. Bear in mind you only hear about the complaints on here and it is only one side of the story. The vast majority of children come to school most of the time and never have any issues with the school about being off sick. Covid and then the number of parents who now work from home did increase the number of absences a lot in the school I work in. It has gone back to normal levels now though. At my school all staff get sent a copy of the absences every day which makes it very easy to spot patterns. I used to teach a child who took nearly every Thursday off because he didn't like his timetable that day. His mother hadn't noticed it was always the same day and genuinely thought he was ill a lot. Other children get burnt out and do take quite a bit of time off. I feel a lot of sympathy for them because they are just not suited to the school environment and I really hope that when they leave school they find a job that suits them.