Daughter always put next to badly behaved boys

[Curlywurly78]

I don’t know why my 8yr old daughter is constantly placed next to badly behaved boys. She gets bullied, humiliated by them and is just told to ignore them. What message are schools giving young girls??! They are teaching our young girls that it is them that need to find ways of tolerating bad male behaviour when in fact the boy themself needs directly tackling. It’s another school year and yet again my daughter is put next to a boy that says such vile things and yet other quiet, studious kids are put into ‘good tables’ and almost seem protected against the few bad eggs in the class. If anyone is a teacher out there - why is that?? My daughter limped through to the end of term last school year with a boy that constantly would not leave her alone and now we have him again on the same table and an even worse boy sat next to her.
very upsetting and I can’t sleep tonight feeling cross about it. The new teacher is avoiding speaking to me so will have to speak to headteacher.
im so concerned at what schools are directly and indirectly teaching our young girls. We wouldn’t advise a woman in a domestic abuse situation to just tolerate it and ignore would we?! We know that won’t solve the problem and the fundamental issue is with the boy/man. Arrghhhh!!! Sorry to vent, would love to hear other thoughts on this.

I can relate. I used to sit next to a boy in maths class in secondary school and he wasn’t disruptive to the class itself but as I wrote with right arm he’d use his left to knock my arm on purpose making me mess up. He did it constantly and it annoyed me. I was very quiet and shy and wouldn’t speak up. These were like 15 year olds.

My dd had this is school too a few years back. She was best friends with a girl who was later diagnosed with high functioning autism. From age 6 dd was expected to help with her when she wouldn’t come into school or to help her when she had a meltdown. My dd wanted to help but I stressed to the teacher not to use my dd as a support as it’s not fair on her.

Have them sit on their own if they are disrupting the leaning of the child they’re sitting next to?

In a small room crammed with 33 bodies, that just isn’t possible.

In a situation where there aren’t enough alternative provisions for the pupils who need it, not enough funding for additional support for the children who need it, not enough space and very few sanctions-teachers have got a very limited choice of things they can do. Spreading out children like this across the tables is one way of managing it.

Parents saying teachers should just ‘find a different way’ is one of the reasons 40,000 teachers year leave the classroom.

Yep I was taught to do this.

I refused. I think this is why a lot of girls drop things like computer science because they know they are going to be sat next to the worst boys in the class.

The first opportunity I got to do my own seating plan the 5 girls in a call of 30 were moved to sit together.

OP complain

We had this. Daughter became target of one of them for constant sexual comments. They were 7. We made a big deal of it as it is sexual harrassment. He was kept away from her and targeting her got him immediately removed from the room and sent to the head's. Eventually, he lost his fixation. It only came out because dd had previously loved school and suddenly didn't want to go in.
OP, talk to them all. Email so everything in writing. Quote their anti bullying policies. Ask daughter for words he uses and if sexual escalate the hell out of it. Say someone at work wouldn't have to put up with this, why should an 8 year old? If it is repeated behaviour it is bullying. If this is going on, they aren't keeping her safe. She is not going in until this is solved.

You sound pretty silly tbh. Are you saying there are no differences between boys and girls? I was bullied at a very young age and I can tell you, when it's a boy doing the bullying there's a higher chance of violence, sexual threate etc. I remember genuinely fearing for my safety when bullied by boys. Please stop pushing your irrational ideology on people because reality, biology and sense will always prevail.

Dd was a studious child and actually really enjoyed sitting with the more badly behaved boys. Explaining work to them helped her understand it more deeply. She felt quite protective of them. It certainly didn't hurt her socially or academically and even now she's at university she enjoys volunteering.

She wasn't bullied though, in fact the boys seemed to really like and respect her. She's still friends with a couple of them who all seemed to sort themselves out over time.

It happens a lot in schools. Boys needs dominate in schools because on the whole they are louder and more demanding. They dominate the spaces in the playground as well. Curriculum decisions are often made to suit boys because they are harder to engage. There are also all sorts of small things you observe during lesson observations that favour boys. I think boys are great and have a lovely one of my own but I sent my daughter to an all girls school.

The problem is how to organise a classroom. 32 children, limited amount of space, tables and chairs.

Can’t put the children with disruptive behaviour together or the behaviour is worse and parents go in to complain about the behaviour and how it’s disrupting the learning if the class, so teachers have to split them up up. Problem is the well behaved children end up sitting next to them because what else are they supposed to do?

Teachers are doing their very best with limited resources, with increasingly complex needs of children in their class and parents who have increasingly complex needs too and can contact school every 5 mins via the wonders of technology.

That said, no child should feel they don’t want to go to school because of the behaviour of others.

I don’t know what the solution is but it’s not as easy as just move a child. Seating plans are really complex and can take a long time to organise. I don’t think parents realise the difficulty when you have lots of different parents saying “my child can’t sit next to..”

Also have a daughter this was done to- to the extent that she was forced to sit inside at break time with one particular boy who 'chose' her because he was too overwhelmed and violent on the playground so had limited outdoor playtime. i complained, and was told that there was no issue because she hadn't raised it. i refused to allow it to keep happening as she didn't deserve to miss out because of another childs actions. i don't think all teachers still do this system- but enough do that girls are impacted by it daily all across schools.

My DD had to put up with this as well.
She was in a class of 16 with only 4 girls.
The girls were all split up and put on tables with 3 boys because apparently they were a calming influence on the boys.
But it also meant they were never able to sit with their friends whereas the boys did.
So I took DD out and sent her to an all girls school instead where she thrived.

Ah they used to do this to me and my bestie (a well behaved boy) in primary school. Good memories. The naughty boys still went to prison a few years later so don’t think it worked. 😕

We’ve been through this in primary and secondary.
In secondary we have been struggling for DD (has ASD) to attend, one of the triggers being noise/bad behaviour. So they then sat her next to badly behaved boys, it actually stopped her going in.
She has been sat next to badly behaved girls but generally is the issue they won’t speak to or engage with DD instead.

The main problem with this plan is it doesn’t work!

But this isn't ok, expecting women to compensate for men and letting their own performance and learning suffer.

I never mentioned gender in my post

This happens to well behaved boys too (not all boys are naughty or disruptive can we acknowledge that). My ds is a sensible hard working kid and is often used as "the good influence" by teachers. I only intervene if his learning is being impacted. Mind you disruptive kids can impact the learning of the whole class no matter where they are sat. Sadly it's become a lot more common.

Yes it was the practice at my DDs school to put misbehaving boys next to well behaving girls. Sorry @Yazzi it was never the other way round! Of course girls can be bullies and boy can be well behaved, but never heard of a poorly behaved girl being put next to a well behaved boy. Girls don't tend to act up in the classroom like some boys do.
She hated it and while not consequently bullied she said they were not exactly good desk mates and she resented the fact her friends sat together while she had to be used this way.
She eventually asked if she could go to an all girls school.
I went to a state school and in primary we were often sat alphabetically- guess whose name was in between the two class bullies! Spent years perfecting a stony countenance while feeling totally humiliated inside.

What's the ideology, sorry? That little children should just be treated as individual children, one whole gender not demonised as "naughty boys" and the other gender forced into this "good girl" role that damages them too? I was certainly damaged by it as a child. When we teach very small children that this is how the world is, we actually perpetuate it onwards, hurting both girls and boys.

There's a world of difference between "are you saying there's no differences between boys and girls" and OP saying the problem with the child sitting next to hers isn't that it's a naughty child, it's that it's specifically a naughty boy.

Sorry about your school. To counter your anecdotal experience with my own: I just asked a whatsapp group with 5 primary teachers in it if they do this, and 3 replied all agreeing they mix challenging behaviours with non challenging behaviours, but that gender doesn't come into it.

Absolutely this!
I don't think a lot of parents have any idea just how difficult it is to teach and manage a class these days with no where near enough support, both for the children and the staff! That's why I left over a year ago. It's crazy.
Having said that, no child should be bullied and if I were you, I'd try to approach the teacher and if things aren't resolved, go to the headteacher.

Exactly the same for my DD. Because she was sensible and hardworking she had a disruptive child next to her all the time. Tables changed but it just meant a different disruptive child.

She was so glad to leave the boys behind when she went to the girl's grammar and really blossomed.

She's at university now, doing a STEM subject with a mixed group of friends.

People asking what the teachers are supposed to do instead...deal with the bad behaviour? There should be clear punishments & suspensions for any child disturbing the class. It just shouldn't be tolerated. I accept that child might have issues that need work, but they can't be allowed to interfere with the human right to education that the other 29 children have.

No, we should not stereotype but from what I understand boys and girls develop at different rates.

We went to a talk by Steve Biddulph (?) about raising boys years ago and that is pretty much what he said. Later in gaining fine motor skills and less mature for a long time.

I did a placement in a school for children who had been expelled from primary school for bad behaviour. The Headteacher welcomed me and described it as a school for naughty boys. Well naughty boys and one girl. Out of about 50 children in the school there was only one girl.

I had this situation and complained to the school. If anything things got worse. Its almost as if schools try to give bullies more access to their victims

There should be .. but there isn’t and for every attentive parent there is 2-3 ( being generous) that see school as a babysitter service so don’t give their kids boundaries or rules. Add in the parents who want to be their child’s best friend means instead of teaching we are spending ages teaching basic manners

My daughter has just started at primary school and I worry about this. She was repeatedly targeted by another child at nursery - he would hit and push her. It really affected her confidence and we had to kick up a real fuss to see change.

I was a very quiet child, very gifted for my age and loved to follow the rules. I couldn’t tell you who I sat next to most years except for one year (year 2 or 3 I think) I firmly recall being sat next to the only boy in the school that ended up being permanently excluded and eventually went to prison. He was a horrible bully and extremely disruptive. I would cry and ask the teachers to move him but it didn’t change. Horrible memories.