Standards of behaviour at schools

[Ringoringo]

My sisters kids are at high school (one of the top 20 in Scotland) and is appalled at the standard of behaviour there. She says bullying is rife, violence to teachers is common place and a group of disruptive pupils who’s ages range from s2 to s5 appear to be ‘untouchable’, being charged with multiple crimes (shop lifting, vandalism, assault, mugging) with seemingly no consequences. Is this accurate? Are there any teachers here? What can / should be done to reduce disruption in schools?

Are you sure she wasn't pulling your leg?

Fairly standard in many places but I'd be quite surprised in a 'top 20' school.

The answer isn't popular- reverse presumption of mainstreaming and open up a huge number of new schools.

Is it in Linlithgow? I read about 2 teenagers being charged for vandalising Linlithgow Palace and I was slightly surprised as I thought it was a middle class area with a good school.

This is absolutely standard in majority of schools, even top 20. There is a severe lack of consequences. Most schools have little or no consequence system. Behaviour has to be literally criminal to be excluded at our place (and sometimes not even then...)

Behaviour in the school I work in is at an all-time low. An increasing number of pupils have no regard for consequences and low level disruption is barely dealt with. Teacher shortages don't help - all classes are packed to the gunnels - and there is a severe lack of funding for outside agencies that would have run programmes to help support problem students. And my school is not a 'bad' school.

What council? Some councils (eg Glasgow) have a no exclusion policy. This has been reported as a fantastic step by the previous head of education. On reality it means pupils who hurt others, even on a near daily basis, are kept in class and continue to assault others around them. It's terrible and no one seems to care on a national level.

*In reality

Top ten school and we have behaviour like this. Violence, misogyny and severe constant disruption in class. Supposedly behaviour has fallen off a cliff since covid but in reality I think it's a combination of privileged middle class parents saying 'not my child' and complete failure to address issues by SLT. Little to no consequence for bad behaviour including violence etc. Agree with the above comment that insisting all kids are mainstreamed really doesn't work. I am despairing of our education system, was so much better here when I was growing up. Had been considering retraining as a teacher but having seen what I've seen in a 'good ' school you couldn't pay me enough!

I would agree. My child is in one of the best schools in Edinburgh (supposedly) & was assaulted in a lesson.

The school's approach was awful - one of the bullies was made to apologise, the other refused & their punishment was to miss PE for a week

The council has a non-exclusion policy & the school would not involve the police - I reported it but had no ownership as it happened in school time/premises.

And agree with others that there are no consequences so the bad behaviour continues.

It's not something I recognise as routine in my kids' school, again one of the best for results in scotland. Yes there is the odd nightmare child who is disruptive and badly behaved, swears at teachers. Probably gets up to all sorts out of school too - but can't really see how shoplifting and vandalism out of school is something teachers should be dealing with. These nightmare kids usually disappear in S3/S4, they're not interested in staying on for Highers and school is glad to see the back of them. And most of the kids are in school, learn and achieve, they aren't tolerant of bad behaviour any more than the teachers are

While they are still in school, there appears to be a zero tolerance of the serious disruption - teacher calls the head of department or school office and someone arrives to remove the nightmare pupil so the rest can get on. Minor disruption is more a "three strikes and you're out" thing. School do seem to be on top of who the nightmares are and purposely keep them apart in classes - harder to be disruptive when there is no-one else backing you up.

It is true that total expulsion is not a thing - there does seem to be an unofficial shuffling around of problem children to local schools. When DD was in S3 she suddenly had the problem child in her year disappear off to a school in Glasgow, and a problem child from another school in Glasgow appeared in her year in East Dun. Sort of a "we'll take X if you have Y" arrangement rather than chucking them out completely.

I think if the public could see what goes on in an average school they would be shocked!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65575599 Poor teachers and pupils having to deal with this. Everybody deserves to feel safe in their place of work or

Whoever said upthread "not my child" syndrome is absolutely right.
Parents gave no idea.
I blame the curriculum as much as anything. It is stupefying for a majority of kids.

Under 25s in Scotland have quite literally nothing to fear from authority. I'm only surprised behaviour isn't worse. There are no negative consequences even if they're caught, arrested and charged with a serious crime (unless they're planning to go into a very small number of specific jobs) and many feel there's nothing to look forward to so why bother.

Bad times. Glad I'm middle aged.

(if I had kids I'd probably be teaching them they need to fight back)

'not my child' is totally to blame for this. Any consequences schools try to impose are often met by kickback from parents. Any blame is laid at the staff's door. The number of verbal and physical assaults by parents on school staff is through the roof.

I don't recognise everything you say, but I do think there's a lack of discipline and consequences, there seems to be a trend towards 'all behaviour is communication' type stuff rather than punishment for poor behaviour.

My son was as involved in a violent fight with another child at school, the police got involved and passed it back to the school to deal with as both boys had 'clean records and good families.' I said I would support the schools in any sanctions as a result but instead they had a very soft talk with DS about his feelings and gave him a pass to get out of class if he gets anxious. Wtf these kids were punching lumps out of each other and the answer is to give them a special pass!? My son doesn't have anxiety and quite enjoyed the moment of 'fame' that this incident brought. What he really needed was an authority figure to speak to him about the consequences of violence. Of course we did that at home but I feel school or police would have gotten through to him better and school should have put some sanctions in place.

So if this is how schools deal with violence and poor behaviour then really there is no hope.

Two violent incidents at my child's 'top 10' school on Friday that they know of. Both incidents involving S2s. One was boys attacking a boy, another a boy attacking a girl. Both sets of perpetrators have done similar previously in the sane school. 😔

My DS is at one of the 'top' state schools in Scotland, he was assaulted twice in the space of a week by another kid in his year (both S2). First attack was on school grounds, he got suspended for two days then second attack was at the bus stop. I put a message on the local fb page looking for witnesses and I had four mums pm me about various bullying incidents at the school. Apparently someone's son was assaulted so badly he ended up with a skull fracture. School have been trying to sweep it under the carpet and claim it was an accident!

The kids who assaulted my own son is known as a local terror - vandalism, theft etc. The day after DS was attacked by him for the second time, he started a fight with another kid in the local chippy and got his arse kicked. I laughed at that one, my only regret is he probably never got hit hard enough!