AIBU to think some school policies are at least partially responsible for the rise in pupil unhappiness?

[Alittlebitofmin]

A friend’s kid described school like a prison. He is likely to be a school success story set to get really good grades, but sees school as something to mainly tolerate. AIBU to think the school system itself is at least a significant partial reason why teenagers report lower levels of happiness at schools in England? Schools seem increasingly punitive and restrictive, pressure seems high, some children are even made to feel guilty if they have a day off sick.

Yes, attendance figures only look at a number, not the child, schools try to support, but sometimes they are stuck with how to help.

School is hard for lots of children, and a bit boring too.

Phones mean lots of children don't get a break after school, and have limited focus.

There is very limited and effective mental health support for children out there.

There isn't time given for children to process and too much emphasis on Maths and English

Yes I think schools are hideous at the moment. The needless detentions, draconian uniform policies etc. I hate them and can’t wait for the backlash which I can see is coming.

Yes. Phones have been around for decades though. I’m also referring to pupils whose attendance is good but are unhappy at school.

No a lot are unhappy because there’s story and discipline
rather that being allowed to run feral like they do at home

Depends on the kid and the policies.

Kids don't appreciate that certain policies can seem unfair and might make them miserable - but they're done to prevent something even worse happening to them.

You need to be more specific.

Do you think there will be a backlash @Merryoldgoat

I mean - is it the school, or the school environment?

Some people will never thrive in a busy, hectic environment.

I would never opt to work in a company with over 800 employees that all have to take lunch and break at the exact same time.

That is a simplistic perspective.

1. A lot of the British population don't really value education and therefore their children are problem kids at school.

2. We've allowed academies to be totally profit driven so the quality of education our children (more so secondary schools) get now is bad.

3. As a result of the profit driven focus, behaviour management is punative and harsh.

4. End result is the polite, hardworking, submissive etc etc children have a bad educational experience. But it isn't JUST schools fault.

Kids don't appreciate that certain policies can seem unfair and might make them miserable - but they're done to prevent something even worse happening to them.

I think it’s the pointless rules, like the draconian uniform ones, that are being referred to.

YABVU. I think it is 50/50 - School vs home

School experience is a lottery at best - very school and teacher dependent, even in supposedly good state schools.

Parents are the other side of the equation, both in terms of the impact they have on their own children and the impact their children then have on others.

Ask primary school teachers about the issues they see in children even when they first enter the school system. Then ask parents whose children are being bullied, or aren’t receiving the support they need, where they think the problems lie...

Add in makeup, phones, red pill, uniforms...

My experience is that school is very difficult for some students because they are expected to do as they are told, which they don’t have to do at home. Rules at school have had to become more strict to compensate for lax parenting and the students don’t like it. My schooling was much more relaxed, but then the vast majority of students at that time understood that in a classroom you need to sit down, be quiet and get on with it. It was also a given that if a teacher told you to do something (stop interrupting, sit down, stop chucking stuff about) you did it, you didn’t act like it was an infringement of your human rights and start a massive incident about it.

I am, of course, not talking about students with anxiety, for whom I have the utmost sympathy.

Attendance has become a huge issue. Where I teach our attendance, pre pandemic, was about 98%. Now it’s 89%. Some of these students have very real mental health issues, and simply can’t make it in, but some of them are just indulged and have parents who see no value in education.

YANBU. Educational Psychologists have been trying to discuss this for years - schools are pretty toxic and mentally unhealthy. A lot of teachers share the concern.

I wouldn't just blame the schools. The expectation comes from govt./OFSTED/local authority and the schools' policies just reflect this.

theres nowt new about kids hating school. i felt the same way. didn't see the point in lots of it. just did what i had to. escaped at 16.

wearing a uniform and learning stuff you dont want to learn prepares you for real life. the lesson being sometimes you just need to get on with it. even if you don’t want to.

if kids dont learn that skill some are such spoiled brats at home they will never learn the skill of just getting on with it. And end up a failure to launch. Or be sacked from work for refusing to do a task theyve been allocated “because i dont want to, it’s boring”…..

having said that, i’d suggest schools like mine insisting on a certain shade of uniform colour (petrol blue) that asda etc didnt do (navy blue was nearest and considered unacceptable) so you needed to buy proper stuff at expensive prices is wrong.

What backlash?

Schools will never be able to do right for doing wrong.

One person wants a uniform so everyone looks the same, another wants no uniform and people wear what they want. Some want more homework, some want less. Some people like homework on computers or screens, others don't. Some believe sitting and listening to the teacher is optional, some don't. Some believe maths is important, others don't. Could go on and on.

Then you have to add in government targets, policies or latest madcap ideas.

Then add all the SEN requirements, adaptations or adjustments.

Realistically, kids will push ANY boundary you give them, doesn't matter what it is. Remove one boundary, they'll fight another and you can't remove them all.

Then add the increasing numbers of parents who can no longer be bothered to parent in any way, expect the teacher to treat their special little offspring as though they are royalty, and fail to support to school in anyway at all.

Respect to ALL teachers out there - not sure I could do it!

Honestly, though I sympathise with kids not liking school, I don't really understand why it's seen as so much harder now, to be honest.

I was born in the early 70s. I can't say I liked school much, most of us didn't unless we were greatly academic. I work in the education system now and when I think of how we were treated at school versus now, certainly at primary school, I think it's a damned sight less harsh.

Corporal punishment wasn't outlawed in schools until 1986, my first year of secondary. At primary school, I 'd been smacked so hard by a teacher she'd left a red handprint on my thigh. All I did was make noise in the corridor.

And it wasn't just corporal punishment. Once it was outlawed, teachers still had recourse to the standby sarcasm and humiliation that you simply don't see to anything like the extent you used to.

Nobody gave a shit about your home life or mental health unless you were being beaten at home. These days, as staff, we are constantly on the watch for changes in student behaviour, and way more aware of domestic situations and their impact.

In some ways the rules are more draconian than my 80s schooling, particularly regarding uniforms, but to be fair, I'd take isolation or being sent home over a day of 'witty' sarcasm from the teacher about your wrong socks/shoes/whatever.

Our feelings weren't the least bit relevant or considered. Parents usually backed the teacher, if you got in trouble you rarely told at home because you'd just get in trouble again at home.

I don't know why mental health among children is worse, but I can't help wondering if the fact that most of my peers didn't have expectations, sad though it is, that school was anything other than something you had to do, maybe made us more philosophical about it. We accepted boredom, and poor teaching perhaps more than we should have.

There were songs about it. 'Dark sarcasm in the classroom'. Never a truer line, there. We were just another brick in the wall, but we didn't all fall to bits over it like we were the first generation to not like going to school.

Some of us, a bit older than me, staged protests in the 70s about the violence from teachers, which is partly how corporal punishment became a thing of the past. I think my cohort accepted too much, probably because by secondary school we were just glad we couldn't be hit.

One thing I never see discussed in these threads about kids not liking school is the impact of the shortage of teachers. Kids have loads of cover lessons these days, it can be one a day. Everyone knows that a cover lesson is a doss lesson where they don’t expect to do very much. Behaviour in cover lessons can be appalling. Kids will actively cheer when they see they’ve got a sub. (Kids have also complained that I’m never off).

But who wants to spend their time in lessons where there’s lots of pissing around and no work being done? Lots of kids get fed up of it, and when it’s their GCSE classes and they don’t have a permanent teacher, they know they aren’t learning what they need to.

Then this feeds into draconian behaviour systems because behaviour is terrible.

I was absolutely miserable at secondary school in the early 2010s and the situation only seems to have worsened. School did feel like prison and it baffles me how they think this is a good environment for children and teens, especially when their success in school is a determining factor in where they go next.

What really doesn’t help is a generation of parents who encourage their children to rebel against school, rather than support the school and help their children to value it.

But also, schools are just too big.

My niece attends the same school I did. It was strict then and it is strict now. The rules have barely changed. However, the pastoral support is far better a pupils at risk of being excluded are identified and helped.

IMO, mobile phones and social media are a major problem. Both are addictive and are bad for mental health. Not just the child / teen actually on it (which is an issue) but in many cases parents are on them too much.

I thought school was like a prison. I liked learning, but didn't like rules- especially around uniform.
Then I worked in a factory for a summer after my gcses and realised that work was also like a prison. Except school was more interesting than working in a factory.

I think kids forget that teachers also have to follow lots of rules. As do lots of other people in work.

I often find it's the worst behaved kids; those who pretty much do what they like anyway and wreck it for the rest, who are the most vociferous about school being like a prison. They generally tend to mean that school doesn't let them get their own way all the time, or has or things in place (hello 1 way system/ toilet rules/ no physical contact) to try and manage over 1000 people in one space.

Sorry I was typing slower than my brain - I mean the younger / newer teachers moving through the ranks who have experienced the harms and will make changes.

Nothing sinister!

Like all things? It depends. My school life in the 70s and 80s was awful. Bullying by pupils and teachers was rife. Humiliation was accepted. Racism and homophobia were tolerated. It was not inclusive at all.

My kids loved their school days. They are at University now and still talk with nostalgia about how happy they were.

100%.
Not just unhappy, not equipped for the world when they come out.
What some schools are doing to pupils now should be criminal. Detention for wrong shoes? Stupid. Isolation for chat back? Crap.

The BBC had a programme about one academy down in Cornwall a few weeks ago.