I’m more amazed that other people are shocked by this. I thought schools were like this everywhere.
God, no. There’s so many great schools out there with great staff.
When I was on placement, I was shocked by how the school had resigned itself to being a place where kids were violent and pulled out of lessons by SLT every day. It was like, “how can we stop this once it’s escalated?” not “how do we stop this happening in the first place?”. The school had recently started doing the Paul Dix method, no idea whether they were doing it properly but I know lots of teachers are not a fan of his. It became a place where teachers were under pressure to keep violent children in their classrooms, had no actual sanctions to give them, and then had to call SLT. And that’s nothing compared to some schools.
The staff were actually excellent teachers, and the head was lovely, but the leadership was weak and it felt as though they didn’t have high expectations at all. Everyone was worn down by it all and saw no way of changing it. It’s not always that the staff are terrible, but when you’re dealing with children hurting you and some parents then siding with their children it’s very demoralising. I can see how some teachers get to that “why am I bothering?” point and that’s really bad for the children.
However, there are so many amazing schools. The school I work in leaves me feeling very supported by my SLT and I’m almost never firefighting - always actually able to teach without battling behaviour.