Lack of discipline in schools is the fault of head teachers

[GooseyLoosey]

I was listening to the radio yesterday and the Chairman of the National Association of Head Teachers was being interviewed (about an OECD report that smaller class sizes do not corelate to better education, but that's a whoel other thread). He said that poor discipline in schools was not the fault of parents or due to any societal trends but due to poor head teachers.

He argued that what maintained discipline in a school were effective sanctions put in place by the head which all teachers imposed and which the head back them up with. If a head cannot impose discipline, the implication was that they were ineffective and weak.

Do you agree with this? There is a huge bullying problem in my son's school and I was recently told by a teacher that they "just did not know what to do". That seemed wrong to me at the time and was the first time that I have really questioned the management of the school as it does not appear to me that that should ever be an appropriate response.

The Head is an incredibly influential and powerful figure in a school - they do make or break a school. But totally agree that it is tough for any teacher or head to deal with kids coming from discipline free homes where the parents actively undermine the teachers.

Ds is apparently not well-behaved at school so I discovered at parents evening. Since he behaves at home and at out of school activities I put his ill discipline fairly and squarely down to his teacher

Presumably he attends out of school activities through choice. He's at school because he has to be so the two aren't comparable. I think you have a responsibility to work with the school to ensure good behaviour, not undermine the teacher. Also at home I doubt he's accompanied by up to 30 other pupils where he has the opportunity to show off, egg others on and be egged on by his peer group.

I told ds's teacher that ds likes getting detention so maybe she should think of an alternative punishment for him. She was speechless

Given the limited sanctions at the teacher's disposal, what punishment do you suggest she imposes?

He's in a class of 14. I told her at the start of term that if he's interested and engaged he would be her best pupil but if not he'd be her worst. Not sure what else I can do. She tells the class what parents have told her in confidence which means I won't say anything to her as I know what will happen. Not every teacher is a credit to their profession.

Not sure what else I'm supposed to do. If I was his teacher I'd be changing whatever they do for detention (I don't know the details as neither the teacher nor ds would tell me what detention consists of).

If you're not showing your son that you and his teacher are a joint unit, then you are allowing him to play you and the teacher off against one another.

He is responsible for his actions. Even if his teacher has appalling behaviour management skills, then he could still choose to be well behaved. He's not choosing that, and so he needs to take ownership of his own behaviour. As do you, rather than being glad that the teacher can't control him, and you were right and she was wrong.

mollieo if he's in a class of 14, can I assume it's a private school and that you're therefore paying for this? Save your money and send him elsewhere - preferably somewhere that you have the faith in to back up the school in their attempts to educate him and work in partnership with them. After all, this current teacher that you speak so disparagingly of won't have her life blighted by your son after the end of this academic year. You, on the other hand, will be dealing with the consequences for years to come.

Perhaps you should support his teacher and take responsibility for the sanctions and withdraw something he does value MollieO

completely and utterly agree with other posters here mollieo...the danger is that if your disrespect for the teacher, demonstrated here, comes through to your ds in even a small way...then he has a licence to take the piss.

It has to be a teacher/parent partnership for education to work really well.

"Not sure what else I'm supposed to do."
Maybe stop gloating rejoicing that he's apparently well-behaved for you and start taking responsibility for the fact that he is playing up at school and, whilst it's his lookout (and yours) if he mucks up his own learning, he's also disrupting the learning of the others in his class.
Start introducing some sanctions at home for that if nothing else.

the behaviour tzar must have heard leanandsay www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6191802

Gosh. I'm surprised by some of the responses. I do have respect for good teachers. I don't have respect for ds's. He wouldn't know that though. A boy has been removed from ds's class because of this teacher - the parents left without notice which meant paying a term's fees for this school plus a term's fees for their new school.

Another parent told the teacher in confidence the best way to motivate her lacking in confidence son. The teacher told the whole class - 'X your mummy said xyz about you'. I know this because ds told me and he was shocked. I thought he had made it up until I also heard the same from the parent in question.

Other parents have seen the head to complain about her. I haven't done so yet as I don't want to make ds's school life any harder for him than she already makes it.

He has gone from an academically very able and well behaved child in yr 2 to a child in yr 3 that is 'below average and struggling academically and is the only one in the class not on track for yr 4'. 'Distracting himself and others and wanting help from me with his work' - if he is struggling then why isn't she helping him? 'Reads and decodes very well but doesn't understand anything he reads' - and yet hasn't had reading test since March last year when his reading age was three years ahead of his chronological age. October parents evening he was in the top third of the class now he is at the bottom.

I asked to see the results of assessments she had done in yr 3. She said the class hadn't done any tests. I queried that as I know from parents in the other yr class the boys are being tested all the time. She then admitted they were tested but I wasn't entitled to see them. I asked for the assessment she would have done at the start of yr 3 - I'm not entitled to that either. They apparently didn't do SATs equivalents in yr 2 even though his yr 2 teacher gave me the results (and she is deputy head so I hope she knows what she's doing).

I've been mulling over what she said and considering whether I need to take things further and I think I have to. As for home sanctions. If she cannot be bothered to tell me when he gets detention and why then I'm not going to do anything at home.

MollieO, I'm a state school teacher and I'm sitting her on a Saturday afternoon assessing writing. I haven't had to give the children a test: I'm just reading their stories and marking off progress against NC level descriptors.

I do this every week. If you asked me, I would know each child's level (plus thoes of most of my colleague's class in Y2. I would imagine that most teachers in the maintained sector posting on this forum would be able to do the same.

You are being short-changed.

mumbles that is what I think too. Unfortunately this teacher has form for being difficult and she seems to enjoy her reputation. For the first time ever I sat at parents' evening this week thinking that 'I'm paying for this!'. Not acceptable at all.

Considering that yr 3 is supposed to be a consolidation year from what they did in yr 2 I was very surprised that ds is struggling as much as she says he is, particularly when he did so well in yr 2.

Ds is vocal, opinionated and has an advanced vocabulary for his age which doesn't always go down well with teachers. Of course I'm used to him but I understand he is a bit marmite. In yr 1 he had reading support as he had visual sequential memory problems. One Senco couldn't stand him and said as much. The other Senco said he was a ray of sunshine and an absolute delight to teach. That was despite both of them taking him for a lesson each per week and doing the same work.

I've also had a badly behaved ds in primary school who was fine at home, appalling at school. I totally blame the school. We had sanctions and discipline at home. Ds was badly bullied and the school refused to do anything about it, it was all ds's fault, another boy in ds's class was bullied and they had a whole day of circle time as to why this other boy shouldn't be bullied. To ds that was the last straw. That all came from the head.

Once there was a school trip, boys were misbehaving so all got a lunchtime detention, except that on the day of the detention the football team had a match. The boys on the team could go to the match and miss the detention, the others still had to go though, no other detention was set for the chosen few. Sometimes it's very hard to accept and follow the rules when they are blatantly unfair and the head doesn't even follow them themselves.

Not all teachers are the paragons of virtue that are on mumsnet. This is not teacher bashing. Ds had a couple of fantastic teachers, but they were thwarted in their actions to help ds by the head.

Ds is now at a school where discipline is fair and consistent and is no longer disruptive. in fact he's a totally different child.

strawberry that's good to hear. Ds hasn't always been a paragon of virtue at home but he has long since grown out of behaving badly. Discipline is strict (I'm a lone parent so it has to be). I know I'm stricter than a lot of his friends' parents. I'm hoping he'll move schools for yr 4 but I feel I still need to sort out his current school issues now rather than leave them.

I checked his reading comprehension today and he looked at me as if I were mad when I asked him to explain what he'd read. No doubt that he understands completely. He does his homework by himself and doesn't struggle so I'm really clueless as to how he can be so different in school. If he were older I'd put it down to a personality clash with a teacher but I don't think that applies when he is 7 and she is late 40s early 50s.

It's not the fault of one group of people.

Yes heads need strong and workable sanctions.

Yes they need to be used consistently and effectively,

But also students should not come into school with the attitude that they can be aggressive, tell the staff to fuck off and generally get their own way to the detriment of everyone else. Where do they learn that is acceptable?

Schools don't create these issues but it's the school that's expected to solve them.

Arf @ the thread juxtapostion on my 'Threads I'm on'

'Lack of discipline in schools is the fault of head teachers'

followed by

AIBU 'To have called the headteacher a t??'

QED

I checked his reading comprehension today and he looked at me as if I were mad when I asked him to explain what he'd read. No doubt that he understands completely.
I was very surprised that ds is struggling as much as she says he is, particularly when he did so well in yr 2. really! Could it be this teacher is more honest than the Y2 teacher ...

As a teacher in an outstanding PRU, I would say that there are no horrible, nasty, disruptive children.

Children who are poorly parented or in diabolical home situations often develop behaviour difficulties and may need special support. Also children who have undiagnosed conditions or traits of conditions also may need specialised support.

Sadly the policy of integration without funding appropriate support for these children often results in classes being disrupted, particularly where there is a lack of understanding of how to manage these children effectively.

bigTillyMint: what do teachers in PRUs make of what he says, particularly the latest recommendation which seem to be along the lines of 'spot early and intervene swiftly and effectively, to achieve successful return to mainstream', and also using the academy policy to encourage specialism and innovation?

mrz Good point. Not sure about that. If the year 3 teacher is being honest then that doesn't say much for the deputy head or school senco, does it?!

All I go can go on is how he reads at home though isn't it? I'm not in class with him. He is reading the Mr Gum books at the moment at home. He reads them to me and then takes them into school to read. It means that he has to fill me in on the story in the evening. I've checked what he's told me and he doesn't make it up.

I'd also hope I'd be aware if he didn't understand what he reads. Occasionally he'll ask me the meanings of words but not often. There is also no comment in his reading diary to say he doesn't understand what he reads at school (he reads to a teacher every day, but rarely the class teacher).

I've drafted a bullet point email to the head which I'll sit on for a couple of days. I think my main concern is if ds is genuinely struggling I really don't want to wait until the July school report and exam results to find out just how much he is behind. That seems a very odd thing to me as surely the teacher would want to be doing something now to help ds improve?

If I have someone working for me that requires additional support and training I do something about it as soon as I discover there is a need. I don't just leave it to get worse, which seems to me what ds's teacher has done with him.

In Y3 there is an awful lot more expected than the ability to recall and simple understanding what you have read. Can he read between the lines and use inference to work out motives and can he understand why the author chose to use words and patterns of words on the page, does he understand the use of onomatopoeia and metaphor for example.

Yes - I just checked with him! He does a mix of reading, factual, fiction, poems. As a teacher don't you think it is a bit odd not to have made any comments about his lack of understanding either in his reading diary or last term's school report? Could he suddenly be struggling just this term? There was no hint of any problems in his last school report.

The summary comment from his teacher in his last school report:

"X approaches each new activity with a willingness to succeed. When X listens carefully to instructions, he can work hard in order to do as well as possible in all subjects. He has coped successfully with the new demands and challenges of Year 3 and is always willing to help other children and adults. He enjoys playing with a number of friends in the playground, joining in a variety of team and imaginative games."

The head wrote:

"A polite, helpful and thoughtful pupil, X has settled well into the new school year and it is pleasing to note the effort he shows in most areas. It is somewhat disappointing to see only a 'C' grade for effort in music, however, for he has a nice voice and could do very well in this subject. I look forward to following X's future progress and seeing an improvement in music."

Neither of those comments or the other comments in his report would give me a clue about the extent of his apparent struggles.

Yes it is very possible for a child to suddenly encounter something they find difficult

But in all areas of school? His teacher was keen to say that he was struggling in all subjects, not just the ones she taught. I'm wondering whether an ed pysch report may be the way to go to help both me and his teacher understand what is going on? I'd have to pay but if it elicited something that helped then it would be worthwhile.