Teacher speaks about lack of classroom support and abuse in schools

[HettyMeg]

Teacher from Inverurie talking about lack of support assistants. She's visibly upset and talks about the violence and abuse she's experienced. This is not acceptable!

Is this becoming more widespread? My child is nursery age at the moment so I am not personally knowledgeable about primaries but I have heard a few stories like this, very concerning.

www.facebook.com/share/r/1GMgQEDnpG/

It’s terrible teachers are being put in such unsafe situations daily. There must be teachers who’ve been repeatedly injured, off with PTSD and unable to return to work.
But these are the cases the teaching Unions should be taking to court.
Its unacceptable that teachers should have their health and careers ruined as some pupils are inappropriately placed in environments they cannot cope in

In Wales the staff in at least two schools have been supported by their union to organise a school-specific strike due to behaviour. It has helped in one to an extent- perhaps a bit of healthy peer pressure happened between parents most of whom dont want the school closing made the parents of the worst behaved kids step up? Has this happened yet in Scotland?

It happened at Bannerman High and Kirkintilloch High but I don't think there was any change as a result.

Should the Scottish Government introduce parenting classes for all new parents? These children haven't come from nowhere. Twenty years ago, classes weren't packed with out-of-control SEN children. If these problems exist to this extent in S1, parenting must be a big part of it. I'm sure addiction to screens by parents plays a role.

And if schools are so short-staffed, can schools encourage volunteers? I think that an issue there is that SPV checks cost £60, which schools don't want to pay. In England, criminal record checks are free for volunteers. More adults in school spending some one-to-one time with children helping with reading and so on could make a real difference.

By my logic, ultimately it must come down to the lack of discipline by parents.

When I was a child at school (late 1960s early 1970s) many years ago, we had 40 to a class covering two years with just one class teacher. The whole school had just 4 teachers (a head who covered for occasional absence and a part-time secretary). So 160 children in the whole school. During my time at the school, there was just one child that caused a few issues (mainly in the playground) and he was often suspended for long periods of time and was eventually expelled and placed elsewhere.

Now, (my DD is a teacher) there is a much higher staff to pupil ratio and fewer children per class but behaviour is out of control. I therefore don't think that the problem lies with the schools so it can't be fixed by adding a few more staff. It is a whole society issue that is much harder to solve.

Respect and good behaviour start in the home and we need to come down much harder on those that are out of control. I am not sure what the solution is, but we need to stop looking at schools for the solution - help needs to start earlier and focus on the home environment long before these kids start school.

I absolutely agree that parenting is the main issue - but 'inclusion' is also a massive problem. We need to reopen specialist schools for children with significant additional needs. It's not 'inclusive' to put a child with significant learning disability in mainstream - it's getting on for neglect. It's expensive to re-establish specialist schools but if it means better outcomes on average for all children it's worth it. There is no evidence that pushing children with additional needs into mainstream results in them getting better qualifications. We also need a government backed return to meaningful consequences- detentions, suspensions & expulsions. The negative impacts on the majority are more important than keeping the minority of disruptive children in school.

I've been there too.

It's not really parenting.

Most children want to learn, are well behaved and parented well.

It only take a couple of violent children in a classroom to hurt others, hurt the teacher, destroy the classroom. Before, children would be sent home for , for example, leaving a classroom and battering another pupil. Or, throwing something at a lsa and hurting them. These would be exclusion of that school type offences. Now, they are kept in school. This is the difference. So, they continue to hurt others. Even the pupil's parents don't understand how extreme their behaviour is as when the parents were in school, someone acting like that would be excluded permanently.

Is a class of 20 unusual in Scotland or is that small? I’m reading this as a teacher /senco with an interest in SEN but I’m in England-my Y1 classes have always been 30, if not higher (despite the ‘rules’!) and hadn’t had a class TA for many years, which is awful.

I’m in a teaching union and one of their main foci currently is what’s going on in Gaza and going to marches about it. It drives me mad. Whilst I’m sorry about Gaza etc, teachers in Uk schools are leaving in droves and getting assaulted.

Inveruie is a tiny place. I went on holiday there. God knows what the cities are like if this is happening there

My child has been the target of frequent assaults by a variety of pupils. Sometimes a pupil will be excluded for a few days which would give my child some temporary relief but sometimes they have to go back into class the next day to find the perpetrator sat in the same class, the day after the police have charged the attacker with assault. What am I suppose to say to my child when they say they are scared to go to school as they are scared they will be attacked again? There’s not much I can say when I, my child and the teachers all know full well it’s highly likely to happen and no one has any powers to stop it. It’s madness.

And that’s why I moved my child to private school..

So it's down to the Scottish government then. When I went to our local hustings for this coming election, the Green candidate said that SEN children "are often very intelligent and deserve an education", as if the only 2 options are SEN children not being educated at all or them being in mainstream. None of the other candidates responded to the comment. There doesn't seem to be any hope of change.

Not a popular opinion I suspect but I agree.

More help also needs to be provided to parents with children with diagnosed conditions (as opposed to badly behaved because they're poorly parented).

The politicians in charge apparently believe that not having SEN children in mainstream classes is discriminatory (in a bad way). They also say that Scottish children need to learn to live with with people with SEN / disabilities, as we do in our wider society. That makes no sense, in my view. All children would benefit from the availability of different teaching spaces, using different methods and specially trained teachers, to suit the needs of different categories of children. I also believe in setting in schools - so that all children are taught in a way and at a speed which suits them and helps them to reach their potential. At the moment the focus is on the lowest common denominator, with standards going ever downward.

Children do better when parents support their teachers, rather than undermining them, and value education.

All children deserve an education and often it’s the SEN child who’s the victim of the violence rather than the perpetrator. No child is getting an education currently. Things have to change.

I retired from the Scottish secondary sector. The maximum in S1 and 2 is 33; it's 30 for older children, except for practical subjects where the maximum is 20.

I recall being astonished when I was informed that Drama doesn't count as a practical subject.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/in-the-classroom/class-sizes.html

I retired and then did a bit of supply - I've been away from teaching for over a year.

During a training day for supply staff, the emphasis was on 'trauma' and the effect on pupils. My impression is that pupils who exhibit violent behaviour are often deemed to be exhibiting a trauma response and that this is being treated as an additional educational need.

To be honest, that's how things were being treated 20+ yrs ago, albeit with different language. It's worse now.

I've already shared some of my experiences on these boards, so I won't rehash them.

Yes, I agree - it's often the quiet child with ASD who is the victim.

Having a violent child in a class - whether a victim of trauma or not - if just spreading trauma to far, far more children. One traumatised child throwing chairs and hitting kids and beating the teacher and other pupils to a pulp results in 32 extra traumatised kids. And no one has had an education either. This is one of those things that saves short term cash (shutting PRUs and special schools) but costs 10 x more (uneducated future workforce and anxiety through the roof).

I totally agree.

I have been teaching for 15 years and approaches to behaviour management have changed massively since I started. It used to be you would have a traffic light system and have a consequence in place (not saying I agree with a particular method). But now the line of thinking has moved towards restorative justice where you have restorative conversations with children and the onus is on changing behaviour intrinsically rather than relying on external reward.

In my opinion the new approach is not working. A primary school aged child needs to know there are boundaries. When they realise that there are no boundaries or concrete consequences it’s fair game. I’m seeing children from p1 up attacking staff (this is in middle class area), running riot, swearing and absolutely no consequence except sitting in the heads office for a bit and getting lots of extra attention. Eventually they end up with a 1:1 support assistant following them about all day which means a class loses its learning support.

I personally don’t think this issue is to do with screen time or ASN. Yes, I think there are some children who shouldn’t be in mainstream, but there are also lots of children who can be in mainstream ( even with asd etc) who behave like that because they get away with it. They are also supported by their parents and parents don’t seem to have an expectation that their children are respectful.

My daughter has ASD and it’s really difficult trying to work out where she’s being badly behaved and where she’s having a reaction to something sensory or over stimulating. We do need to learn to manage these needs in the classroom WHILST also having an expectation that the child knows they cannot be violent or abusive. I believe children with ASN are capable of understanding this. And we aren’t giving them enough credit nor doing them any favours with the current system.

As it stands, I’ve had enough. I think I’m a good teacher but I want out.

The issue I have is if one child kicks off and there are no consequences, other children kick off. When my child was P5 they went through a particularly tough period of repeated physical assaults and their classmates regularly told me that nothing ever happened to their attacker. Now that wasn’t the case. Meaningless restorative chats were happening but there was no obvious punishment, and behaviours certainly weren’t changed.

Violent and disruptive actions need to be punished and need to be seen to be punished by the whole class to stop other kids acting up and to teach them that if they report attacks, action will be taken. Justice will be done to them. But if you read the antibullying policies of every school, violent actions are just unmet need, or some other such liberal nonsense. And so violence is not at all addressed and gets ever worse.

Twenty years ago many of the ASN children were in specialist schools that have since closed down.

@Stickwomble Just for clarity - is the decision not to discipline children the Scottish government's decision? Or does the Headteacher have any power to discipline children? What would happen if a Headteacher decided to go back to the old regime of bad behaviour leading to consequences?
Teachers are obviously at the coalface here, and teachers are heavily unionised. There's clearly an enormous amount of evidence that the current policies are not working. Why can't the government be persuaded to backtrack? Who is gaining from the current situation?