Work Experience disaster 14 yr old

[Sula1978]

I have a well behaved 14 year old son. Slightly shy, academic, sporty and keen to be a teacher. My son decided to apply for his work experience at the local primary. It's near our house and his sister goes there. He has just done three days there and has been crucified on the feedback.

We explained to him on the first day to politely introduce himself to the head, go to his mentor with any issues, be helpful and most importantly enjoy it. Got there day 1 and no introduction, no induction, no mentor and left in a cupboard on his own for lunch. The teacher clearly did not want him there. She gave him no chair and left him outside the class sticking worksheets in books for 3 days. He went back to his own school today to a letter from the Primary school saying he was caught playing rock, paper, scissors with the 6 year olds and was seen to pretend bowl a cricket ball along the corridor. He had a bad attitude and was a poor communicator. He's so upset as thought he had done well but was called out of class today to explain.

Should I speak to the Primary to ask why he was crucified or leave it?

I don't really think 14 is enough of a gap from your own time in primary to be back in a school for work experience. Not your son's fault in any way.

Whenever I've had work experience children in (primary school) I've had quite a comprehensive booklet to fill in for feedback. There are obviously safeguarding rules (for everyone's safety) with sending a 14yo off to do reading outside of class for eg, the same with playing football at break with much younger children.

Staff need somewhere child free at lunchtime, not with children they maybe taught 3 years ago listening in to conversations which are often confidential. You can't expect 14 year olds to be aware of this and lunchtime is often the only time staff can discuss children. Obviously, a cupboard is not OK.

I'm sorry your son had a bad experience.

I’m not a fan of work experience for 14 year olds. I have heard this kind of thing so many times. So many places have neither the time nor inclination to do any sort of planning or care of the young people and those left in charge of them always seem to be the most unpleasant!

It has been many years since I was that age and I remember it with horror. Nasty people - even from the perspective of age and adulthood - and only negative takeaways for me.

I have. It was a private nursery/ prep . Really lovely, articulate, good prospects, dare I say, well spoken y10. They were vile and very similar to what OP said. I was her form tutor and I contacted to say we wouldn’t be sending her again and we’d got her a placement in mums hairdressers. The secretary was like: “That sounds much more suitable for her.” Poor kids! Really sorry for OP’s lad. That’s going to be hard for him to get his head around.

This is quite sad as my daughter’s primary often has ex pupils coming back for work experience and they are given quite a lot to do and seem to have fun helping the younger kids with reading etc and being extra pair of hands. Quite a lot of the year 7s come back in for the odd day to talk to year 6 about secondary and help out as well.

We've ended work experience where it clearly wasn't working out. We have a duty to safeguard our students (primary) and if the work experience pupil fails to follow rules or behaves in an inappropriate way then it can't continue.
(We do recognise these are children too so there would be reminders first and a discussion about expectations. But our teachers aren't there to babysit.)

If that his 100% true and not just his perception. I'm not saying the school was great and he was in the wrong but I think further detail is necessary before deciding.

When I was that age my friend got a placement in a hairdresser. She took objection to having to sweep up hair all day so stopped going in. They made her write a letter of apology to the salon.

What doesn't make sense is that if there were problems with DS' behaviour, and I genuinely don't think there was, why didn't the primary school get in touch with the work experience coordinator during the placement?

Even if he didn't go equipped with contact details, they would have known the secondary school or could have asked. They also knew the family as his DSIS goes there.

What a 14 year old did who wasn't given clear instructions as to what to do, played with the children, and appropriately.

Could the alleged, 'bad attitude,' possibly have been more frustration at gluing in pages in work books for 3 days with a teacher who didn't want him there?

Really hope he isn't put off teaching by this.

Sounds like the primary school should not have agreed to the placement in the first place. Having a 14 year old is actually an extra child and they can’t be given any responsibility to lighten the teacher’s load. Most places don’t offer WEX to under 16s now.
They shoud have shared the feedback with him and not just sent to his secondary school though.

To be fair, I’m 35 years old and successful in my traditional professional job, and I still might play rock paper scissors with a 6 year old if I came across them in a school environment.

And I wouldn’t be appalled if I saw one of my colleagues pretending to throw a cricket ball on the corridor while he was pacing up and down on a call for example. Now a real cricket ball would be a different thing…

But if those examples aren’t so overtly unprofessional that I, an actual professional of many years, would balk at, it’s hard to see how a 14 year old would know better.

I’d be furious, and there’s no way I would let this lie, not least because it will have badly dented your ds’s confidence and self-esteem. Did they actually know he was only 14, or is he tall enough to be mistaken for an older child?

I would ask for a meeting with whoever organises work experience at your son’s school and let them know how poor you think this is. He was left to his own devices, given one mundane task for the whole placement, apparently not expected to interact with the children, and then slated in his feedback. It sounds to me as though he’d been ‘foisted’ on a teacher who was reluctant to have the bother of hosting a work experience student, and took out their displeasure on your ds.

When a school is organising work experience placements, they have a responsibility to communicate expectations to both parties - their student and the employer. Obviously expected standards of behaviour from the student, but also expectations of the employer to provide interaction with different members of staff and a varied involvement with what happens in the workplace. If an employer isn’t prepared to do that for a student, then they are not a suitable placement and should also be given feedback that their behaviour towards the student (your ds) was disappointing, and asked why, if they thought your ds’s conduct was so poor, he and the school weren’t informed at the time.

I’m not a teacher but have had a few work experience kids over the years and find this so sad.

What were they expecting? Work experience isn’t meant to be free child labour, it’s about giving a young person their first taste of work. You have to plan suitable enriching activities, supervise properly and provide real time feedback and guidance - if they couldn’t be arsed, they shouldn’t have accepted a work experience student.

I hope the OP complains to the secondary school very strongly! No more ‘placements’ should go to this primary. (And I wonder whether given his age & that of the pupils, there may also be some welfare/safeguarding issues here.)

No appropriate supervision, engagement or suitable programme of structured activity for him.
Unfriendly behaviour from staff.
Unfocused feedback, purely negative (no constructive suggestions) including criticism for engaging with pupils.
No feedback sought from him at the end.

I have been responsible for arranging work placements for students in my workplace. It is - and should be! - hard work. Really time consuming if done properly! They need a well thought out structured programme- with a variety of activities and other staff members. Some of it should be ‘learning based’ and some ‘doing based’. They’re told the programme when they turn up, at the introductory meeting with the person with overall responsibility. They need to be monitored by someone who’s alert to the possibility things may go wrong. Yes they get feedback at the end but this is reviewed - and purely negative generalised feedback would never be given. Plus THEY are asked for feedback! We want to learn from their experience!

Some workplaces are just crap. Some people are lazy and selfish. Some managers are weak. It sounds like that’s what this poor boy encountered. I hope he can put this behind him.

OP this happened to me 30 years ago, same thing, went to a school got ignored by all the adults so ended up hanging about with the kids which I loved! I decided I wanted to be a teacher and was devastated when I got such bad feedback.

I went to Uni to do something else but spent a week helping my friend out at her school as she was a teacher. Behaved exactly the same way with the kids, got told I was amazing with them and should really think about training. So I did and ended up teaching for 15 years, and judged Outstanding by Ofsted each time u was observed. I no longer teach but that's a different story =)

So long story short, they were dicks and your son shouldn't be put off.

We explained to him on the first day to politely introduce himself to the head, go to his mentor with any issues, be helpful and most importantly enjoy it

I wouldn’t have gone up to the head and introduced myself as a PGCE student, let alone a work experience student. I would definitely have waited for them to come and talk to me.

He’s 14. He sounds immature. It sounds like maybe he was messing around with the kids when they were supposed to be listening or lining up? I don’t see anything wrong with those examples if he was doing them at play time, but it depends on the context.

I definitely don’t think you should complain to the school!

DD did her work experience at a primary school and was properly supported and supervised. They sound utterly shit.

I would tell DS he was really unlucky in this experience and you will back him 100 %.

I really feel your your son, what a horrible experience for him! I used to be a TA within a primary school. Some teachers are wonderful, welcoming and supportive- some are the complete opposite and see work experience pupils and trainees as a huge burden and inconvenience. Heads and deputes can again be fab, some can be so unapproachable and cold with staff. It sounds like your son got a raw deal.

I would contact his school and explain his side of the situation, and maybe ask for work experience to be repeated somewhere else? I am sure he’d have a more positive experience. His self esteem will have been knocked with this and it sounds like it is unjust!

What are your thoughts @Sula1978after all the wonderful advice you've received?

In my experience of having 4 sons most 14 year old boys are pretty poor communicators anyway.

Your poor lad. I had a similar experience doing work experience at my local primary around the same age. I was a well-behaved kid but shy and pretty uncool-looking at the time (specs, fringe, braces). And an only child, so not used to little kids. My week there included:

-being left on my own with a class of nine-year-olds for 15 minutes and yelled at for not being able to control them (they were all singing when the teacher got back and a group of small boys told me I was ugly when I asked them to stop)
-being told to 'just sit with' some very new infants who were drawing in a corner but not talk to them or interact. I doodled flowers on a piece of scrap paper to keep them company and got a major dressing down for it (god knows what I was supposed to be doing).
-put in a class of 5-year-olds, doing quite well reading with them until one very affectionate and stubborn little girl started hugging my leg and wouldn't stop when asked. Was told I was "not allowed to touch the children".

The whole experience was an eye opener. Did me a favour though as I would have been a terrible teacher and it showed me there was no point going down that career path! You've got to have some common sense and confidence and I had absolutely none of either at that age.

I'd ignore the 'rock, paper, scissors' and pretending to bowl a cricket ball examples. Children like playing 'rock, paper, scissors'! I'd be more concerned about the sweeping statement of 'bad attitude and communicator'. The school didn't provide any interaction, no mentoring, nothing really productive to do and even left him on his own at lunchtime. You need a meeting with your son's secondary school - ideally the person organising the work placement - along with your son. He needs to feed back to them as well, if they didn't provide him with a positive experience. I work in a First school (Foundation to Year 4) and often have work experience students in, both school and college aged. They are treated as a member of staff, they interact with the children, generally help in the classroom etc. They certainly aren't left to their own devices. The problem with school based work experience placements is that a lot of the time, a school may take a student because that child requires a placement - any placement - they aren't always interested in working in a school, and their attitude is 'I'd rather be anywhere else but here". Clearly, if your son wants to be a teacher, then a work experience placement in a school, is exactly the right placement for him, but it sounds like the wrong school. I can't imagine if you son genuinely wants to be a teacher, he'd be displaying a poor attitude, he'd want to do his best.

I’m going to be controversial. I think you should suck it up, and explain to your son that ideally it would have gone better for all of the reasons you’ve mentioned but that sometimes people or settings aren’t really geared up for work experience and it just doesn’t work out. That’s a really major life experience in itself.

Working experience is becoming increasingly problematic for safeguarding and insurance reasons… schools can only really use placements that meet their safeguarding requirements, and are set up to accommodate teenagers who are still students. This really limits options basically to other settings where there are children, small owner-managed businesses, or placements where a parent can go too to facilitate or supervise.

Your son hasn’t had the best experience but I don’t think it’s necessarily anyone’s fault. The primary school aren’t obliged to take work experience students let alone make it anything other than a safe experience for them.

Honestly, talk to your DS about sometimes things not working out despite best endeavours, and move on.

When 14 year olds are doing work experience, the main part of the experience is getting along with the other staff, and fitting in to a routine, it's obviously impossible for them to do a lot of the 'work' as they are unqualified and immature, so they will be given simple tasks like glueing stuff and tidying. To isolate him at lunchtime is appalling. If any of his behaviour was inappropriate, it should have been explained to him at the time. I only ever had to cut a work experience short (in a library) when the boy was purposely really rude to other staff, terribly lazy, and refused to do anything except play games on the computers, so preventing library users from using them. All my tactics failed, I ended up sounding like the supernanny from hell!

"behave professionally" my god, he's 14!! I've been a teacher for near 25 years and still any excuse to not behave professionally and have a laugh I'm in!

Playing rock paper scissors with some 6 year olds is hardly dragging them down some dark, teenage rebellion world is it!

That reminds me of my lovely primary school teachers. I’m sure that is why I am generally a happy person now.