My daughter is the kind of child who should absolutely love school in the way I did. She is fairly sociable, she loves a routine, likes to know the rules and follow them, she is academic but more that that she loves to learn.
She does not love school, she barely tolerates it now. She’s in her final year, has a place secured for uni, and I’ll be really surprised if she lasts til next year.
She finds many of the rules and procedures absolutely pointless. The focus on uniform rather than behaviour does her head in. There is no attempt on management to address any of the issues pupils raise, but they are quick to find a “solution” to the problems which arise from them. For example, they have long complained that too often WCs are out of order. This means trying to go at break or lunch means you can miss an entire break time waiting to go. So, more kids were asking to go during class times. Their solution? Locking WCs except at breaks. We raised merry hell and put a stop to that, but they still refused to do anything about the broken toilets. If you have PE first or last period, you still have to wear uniform to and from school. There aren’t big enough changing areas for all the kids, so this would have really helped. Instead, they have to queue up to use the changing areas, and lessons are shorter. They introduced a one way system during Covid. They decided to keep it, so now instead of turning left to go down stairs to your class just below, you have to walk the length of the corridor, go down stairs and walk all the way back. This actually leads to the corridors being fuller for longer and kids needing much longer to get to class. They sorted this by introducing a ten minute changeover time between classes, so again, classes are shorter.
None of this helps the kids, I’ve no idea how it helps the schools.