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.

No idea where you work, but work has never been tough like this for me. Have a contract, have adult rights, have nice colleagues, have respect, can go to the toilet when I want, can eat when I want, start and finish when I want, and of course no PE!

There's several layers to it

Government/ OFSTED:
Dull, "academic" curriculum with heavy focus on testing outcomes
Chronic lack of funding
Lack of support agencies including PRUs, specialist schools, NHS services and other services such as educational psychology
Blunt policies such as attendance not recognising medical needs

Schools:
Some schools have excessive, outdated focus on formal uniform that doesn't reflect wider life and can cause sensory issues. More practical uniforms could reduce issues of comfort and affordability.
Some schools are excessive over minor issues such as not looking at the teacher being treated punitively. Unfortunately focusing on the little things can often trigger resentments that cause the big things.
Lack of resourcing (see government) causing death by powerpoint as it's too expensive to use a wider range of resources.
Constantly following the latest educational "trend" reducing stability
Staffing issues in recruitment triggered by government/ OFSTED pressures affecting work/ life balance.

Behaviour:
Poor behaviour makes life harder for pupils with a greater need for calm and triggers restrictions on things like toilet access, and regularly interrupts learning.
Reduced time for breaks/ lunch caused by a combination of behaviour and resourcing for support staff.

External factors:
Mobile phone/ social media/ internet misuse
Poor parental support towards education, resourcing and upholding school rules.
Growing cultures of individualism and rights... minus the responsibilities
More children with complex home lives
Increased poverty since 2010

It's not any one thing, and there's no universal experience. But schools are expected to do more with less than they used to, and schools are judged by one-size-fits-few policies that expect everyone to be above average automatons not complex humans.

Parents need to parent and support teachers - Johnny isn't always right, that's the biggest change in recent years, children actually thrive on the security of safe boundaries. Rules and boundaries are part of life.

My youngest son is being treated like some kind of problem by the teachers at his school. He is not a problem, he is a little boy with suspected ADHD, but the school policy is to not test for any SEND issues if they don’t think the child “needs support”. My older son was throwing chairs around a classroom and regularly locking himself in the toilets and STILL they refused to assess him. (He’s autistic - it actually took just 4 meetings and 1 weekend).
My younger son’s attendance has been poor this year, due to him being sick on a Sunday night. Obviously we got it investigated and it turned out he has an inflamed duodenum. When it was swabbed it came back negative, and the doctor and a shrink sat with my son for over an hour and figured out that “School stress” was causing the inflammation and making him sick. The doctor wrote a note on the spot saying that my child needs a soft start in the mornings, he needs anxiety checks throughout the day and a referral to CAHMs (through the school as that’s impacting him). We discovered this LAST October. Guess what still isn’t happening?? Yep. And despite him being milk intolerant, he’s been forced to eat cheese on pizza, milk chocolate and butter. He’s been given a cup of milk as the only none-dairy choice (a cup of weak squash) had gone. (we don’t have the option to send packed lunches: they have to eat school dinners) it’s all on his medical record, I swear the teachers are trying to make him sick.
This is an 8 year old boy: he’s been on the transfer list since he was allocated that school. I hate it, don’t trust the teachers or any staff and I personally think they’re trying to push all the parents with SEND kids to breaking point so they don’t have to deal with us.

I think it’s the complete breakdown of boundaries and discipline that has presided over kids’ unhappiness.
School was far stricter when I went (40 years ago) and even stricter than that when my parents went (70 years ago) but most people were reasonably happy because they had no choice but to accept it and do as they were told, and so they never really thought about doing anything else. No one told them that school was unfair or that they had mental health problems so people did what they had to do.

YANBU- my children have already experienced guilt for having the odd legitimate day off for sick bugs, etc. because their school is always banging on about attendance in assemblies.

I’ve made it clear to my children that when they are unwell the best place for them is to recuperate in the comfort of their own home under my care, and that Mum always has the final say, not school. I’m not into sending very unwell children into school to struggle on infecting others just to up their figures- it’s neglectful mothering.

Many pupils in my parents' day were incredibly unhappy at school, especially the schools with a lot of corporal punishment.

General bullying was completely normal, plus overt racism, sexism, homophobia. Physical fights were common.

I regard myself as pretty well educated but I don’t think I’d be capable of teaching my daughters to a high standard across nine GCSEs. I would be able to teach them two foreign languages though, which is more than they are getting at their school.

I went to a convent grammar school in the 80's- it was strict and it had it's problems but I think overall there was a general respect for pupils and the teachers - no one ever stopped me going to the loo during class if needed, no one thought they had the right to decide whether I wore a blazer or a jumper. I was allowed to wear a coat in a classroom if I was cold. I had a choice over my bodily functions - hot, cold and toileting - you'd think that was basic, we did at the time - who knew a school would think they had the right to dictate these things year later.

We ran a lot more feral in the 80s. And as a generation were much happier.

Teacher's not always right either. I'm sure you know that already.

The whole toileting issue (children needing to go more & this getting on teacher’s wicks) is 100% the result of everyone being surgically attached to water bottles.

When we were kids, a couple of swigs from the water fountain and a carton of Um Bongo in your packed lunch box meant nobody was running to the toilet every 5 mins!

Do kids in the UK really have to go to isolation for forgetting a tie?

At my school in the Netherlands isolation was a rare and feared punishment. It was basically the step before external isolation which was the step before expulsion. At this point your parents would have to come into the school for a serious conversation.

More regular punishments were the 8 o'clock start if you were tardy the day before or after school detention, which was either an hour of sitting in a classroom doing homework or picking up trash from the school grounds.

No uniform so I never got in trouble for forgetting a tie but the 8am starts I was very familiar with...

No, it's not the fault of individual schools (in many cases), it's the fault of successive governments.
The curriculum is NOT designed to be useful in the world of work, exams are mainly tests of memory, rather than the ability to use skills.

Teachers are rapidly being deskilled, by the encouragement by OFSTED and others, in the use of commercial online schemes with scripts that anyone could use.
I sincerely hope that there is a backlash coming soon.

Yes in some schools.

Internal isolation is in some cases used in very damaging ways. It shouldn't be legal but it is.

No, this is rubbish.
Maybe a 10 minute detention at break, but there is no way this would be an isolation. You could end up with hundreds of pupils in isolation.
Isolation is serious, it comes before exclusion.

I work in a high school and to be honest appart from the drop in students behaviour, kids will do stuff we never dared to when I was at high school. I don't see the expectations being much different. I remember my parents getting complained at for me being off sick and we are talking over 30 years ago. Our school had high expectations of uniform even more so then the school I currently work in. I hated high school and couldn't wait to leave, my husband felt the same about his high school also and we went to school in totally different parts of the country.

At the school where I worked, the problem was that there were too many parents like you for me to cope with, rather than any kind of malice. I was expected to organise all those special arrangements and more for about 15 out of 30 kids, plus all the normal teaching and with rarely any classroom assistant. It was impossible so I quit.

In some schools, isolation is indeed used for small misdemeanors and in very damaging ways.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yzlnp6p52o

Same!

I will give you an example of what happened to my friends child. Started secondary school, no issues throughout primary, smart, well-behaved child. I am not just saying that for the sake of it, she's a lovely kid.

Then secondary hit. She got a detention in the winter for still having her coat on, first thing in the morning putting her things in her locker. Then she was called up on every single little thing, detention after detention. Her behaviour DID deteriorate because she was utterly frustrated and she was an 11 year old child, not yet equipped to handle things like this - a child! She was accused of doing something she denied, mum (my friend) was called up to the school. They watched the CCTV footage together and no, it was nothing to do with my friends daughter.
BUT, because the protests of innocence from the child at the time, or 'answering back' as they called it, she was ordered to write an apology letter to the teacher. The child then said she would, but only if the teacher wrote one to her to say sorry for accusing her incorrectly. It went down like a lead balloon but the kid was right! Let me know, what does that actually teach children?

She got expelled shortly after, the school just didn't let up. The frustration both the mum and the child felt at that school - a once smashing, smart kid was ruined by that school when school should be a part of our happy memories. Mum had to get her back into education, to convince her that it was worth trying again.. She's a flipping great mum, she really is. She has since gone to another, is happy, doing really well, she's advanced in one of her subjects she's taking it a year early. What's the difference? Well, not treated badly for one, understanding children are, well, children for another and while uniform is a must at her school, she doesn't get detention if she gets a little bit of it wrong one morning. It's respect.

Academies are not good places. I understand children need structure but you cannot do it at the detriment of the children's education and anyone, anyone who deals with children should know they are not all the same. One size does not fit all.

Watch the BBC documentary. Google children's experiences. I honestly think that this period of teaching will be looked back at with shame.

Agree that secondary schools are toxic, negative and just pretty grim. I have moved my DD to another school which is known to be much more positive and overall has an ethos that values teens, we were lucky to get a place. Her old school was just miserable, detentions dished out left right and centre but not for attitude, rudeness, mostly for uniform issues or very minor issues. My DD must have been 1 of about 10 kids in her year who never had a detention over 2 years out of 190!!
Some great teachers but they didn’t last long at this school. I think most secondaries are just like this now, far more concerned with results and pushing kids with little support. But I do know that there are some, they are a rare breed though l, that value creating a positive environment and providing good pastoral care and unsurprisingly do much better!

I completely agree with this. I was born 1970 and find this post extremely accurate.

Academies are not good places.
In some cases this is so, so true.
In our area there is one trust that is known for being ridiculous.

OK, here's my tuppence-worth. A pp mentioned education not being generally respected - I agree with that , look at popular culture, films, TV and notice the dearth of characters who see or benefit from education as a means of advancement. It's all "follow your dream" and quick wins/ luck/ entrepreneurship.
Secondly, social media, screen dependency (parents too here) do affect attention span and expectation of "entertainment" rather than a bit of slog and grind to reach a goal.

And linked to the two above, a sense of personal responsibilty, fostered and promoted in an age-appropriate way is often lacking in the more draconian school environments. I had a sad encounter in a school with a troubled and angry kid who yelled "You can't control me!" as a cry of defiance. I told her "I don't want to control you, I want you to understand how to control yourself".
Great schools do that - show kids how to manage themselves, understand delayed gratification (sorry, but parents that's on you too) and that motivation and success isn't always about "fun".
Best school? Motto is "Happy and High Achieving" - because they go hand in hand.