How does your school manage disruptive children?

[subcircus]

DS is at a mixed private school with class sizes of about 20. By very bad luck he now has 3 boys in his class who continually disrupt the learning environment. Continually being rude to teachers and shouting out. The children in question have been doing it since juniors so appear to be unmanageable and unfortunately here to stay.
the school appear reluctant to remove any children from the school due to financial constraints. How do other private schools manage these situations? Is this typical in other private schools as well or just an Unfortunate situation.

How old is he now?

how many form entry? does the school have sen/pastoral staff? mixed class or boys only?

private schools though often encourage and want more robust class participation and open discussion. is the teacher expressing difficulty or is your son telling you about this?

He is year 8. It is a 3 form entry and mixed. My son tells me that the children are disruptive and having to be taken out of classes. One child has been suspended about 5 times but it seems to make little difference.
Other children have also said about the disruption but don’t seem as sensitive to it as my son. I do think he is intolerant but then I wouldn’t want the person next to me rocking/singing whilst I’m trying to learn. He takes learning very seriously.

They only set for English and Maths and he is very happy in those classes as the children are engaged. It makes you question whether it is worth the money - and whether a state school that set for all subjects would even be better!

I taught in an independent boys school for 5 years and the bright but naughty type of boy was far from uncommon. Most teachers were good enough to manage that kind of character through good teaching; weaker teachers would probably struggle and try to raise it with the tutor or the housemaster which was never very effective. We might (as tutors/ housemasters) get the pupils’ parents involved if it was persistent or but it was generally thought that if they’d passed the entrance test it was more or less on us as teachers to engage the pupils and make sure they weren’t disrupting learning, and good teachers did usually manage that. I think if other parents were complaining though or it was really an issue in all lessons then it would have very likely have been escalated and got into the territory of ‘we think there might be other schools better suited to your son’ and the parents would be strongly encouraged to move them. So if I were you, I’d be asking for a meeting with someone at school (like a housemaster or whatever equivalent role) and also putting your concerns in writing. The school might be able to change class groupings so your child is less affected or it might spur them on to do something more effective with the disruptive pupils. If a private school gets a reputation for allowing bad behaviour it is a massive issue for them and in the current climate I can’t they would want to risk that. Otherwise, like you say, why bother paying the fees!!

So anecdotally I had this at school too - mixed private school with a group of students who were just wild. There were also dangerous things that happened too!
Fortunately by the time it got to GCSE they streamed everyone so the 'naughty' ones were in a class on their own with the stricter teachers. However, nothing really changed in the class until parents went in (not my parents, but other parents from the class). I would ask to speak with the form tutor or head of year, or if you can, head teacher.