82% of teachers surveyed say pupil misbehaviour is widespread at their school

[noblegiraffe]

It’s not just untucked shirts either:

“with more than half (57 per cent) saying they had been verbally abused by a pupil in the last year, 18 per cent having been threatened with violence and 14 per cent having been physically attacked.”

Just to balance out the threads of parents complaining about schools enforcing the rules. Maybe there’s a reason for it.

www.tes.com/news/behaviour-widespread-problem-say-82-teachers

Ofsted thinks that behaviour is at least good in the majority of schools.

But when Ofsted are in, SLT are out in force and kids are told ‘don’t you dare show us up’.

Ofsted may also be whisked past the worst classrooms, so how can they judge?

Fascinating that this got no posts.

It's hard to comment on that just as a parent. I certainly have no knowledge of what goes on in secondary school other than reports of my own DC's behaviour (which I'm told is fine) and what I hear from my DC.

Is agree that report's not good though.

I only have experience of my DDs school which has mostly excellent behaviour and detentions are vanishingly rare. But I am aware the school may be one of the exceptions rather than the rule.

At a school I worked in, the 'characters'always had 'enrichment activities'off site during Ofsted. Survey sounds pretty accurate to me (sadly)

Had Ofsted at my DDs school this week. All the ones with behavioural issues were sent to another school for the duration of the visit. Would believe that survey!

I entirely believe it. I wonder how many teachers have been undermined by SLT in front of a student in the last year?

I’m so glad I have left but I miss what teaching was like when I started and I’m only talking about 9 years ago!

Yes. It's why I left teaching.

Fascinating that this got no posts.

Because it is easier to criticise teachers when you are not one, but harder to criticise parents when you are one. It’s a little too close to the bone and people don’t like the spotlight on them.
I also think that people don’t like to think they may be part of he problem. Look at most of the above posts ‘I agree but it’s not happening in the school my DC goes to’ etc.

I don’t think it needs criticism of parents necessarily to be supportive of teachers.

Teachers are being regularly verbally and physically attacked, there’s a massive recruitment and retention crisis linked to this and the MN response is a tumbleweed.

The narrative around behaviour in schools over the last few years seems to have been entirely focused (in the media and on MN) around ‘super strict’ schools and silly school uniform requirements. It almost felt like poor behaviour issues in schools had been sorted, which can feel quite lonely for a teacher still struggling.

This poll says, to me, that nothing has changed, it’s just being brushed under the carpet. Teachers are still leaving teaching because of poor behaviour, and Ofsted seem to be totally blind to it.

One of the reasons I'm leaving. I'm fed up of being sworn at, shouted at, constantly under some kind of attack, for daring to try to get the little bastards to learn something. And then being made to feel like it's my fault I am being treated that way. Fuck that shit.

The only remotely surprising thing about your post is that the % who say they have been threatened with physical violence is so low I would have put it at much higher.

Noble I completely agree that behaviour is rubbish in a lot of schools. A lot of the time low level disruption is actively encouraged by parents "oh they were only asking for a pen" etc provided as justification. The level of entitlement from students and parents is unbelievable at times.

Super strict schools are an answer and do work. I'd be reluctant to work in one as they can be associated with horrendous workloads.

The lack of response to this thread is in stark contrast to 99% of teacher bashing threads.

The narrative that behaviour is bad in schools seems to have totally disappeared though. People seem to accept that the workload is bad, but any teacher struggling with behaviour ‘can’t control the class’ rather than it being a national problem.

Before Gove there was far more acceptance that teenagers might deliberately cause problems for teachers and be difficult to control.

That sense of it being the teachers fault if a child misbehaves predates gove I think.

I agree there is an expectation that dealing with behaviour is part of the job of teaching and that behaviour problems come from it not being dealt with properly so its for the teaching profession to sort out amongst themselves.

I read the article and actually think the more shocking statistic is the amount of teachers who have experienced abuse from parents.

What changes would you think would help teachers receive less abuse?

I’m wholly unsurprised about abuse from parents given how low the opinion seems to be of teachers in general on here.

Baffling when people say ‘oh you can’t badmouth teachers on MN, they’re loved on here’.

The abuse from parents statistic doesn't surprise me at all.

To get rid of parental abuse would require a societal culture shift now. Teachers are berated for anything they do in the classroom nowadays. Parents think their "rights" allow them to come into school and speak to staff like crap. We've had to use an ex bouncer head of year to physically remove a parent from the premises she was so rude and violent. We had also phoned the police but needed her out.

A lot of MN simply fail to believe this side to teaching exists because they've never seen it.

I find MN more balanced that the school playground! Things can and do go wrong in schools and its ok to ask for advice on what to do, and some parents are making a fuss. but unlike when parents come into a school and make a fuss, you do see other parents saying they are being OTT about things rather than nodding along and teachers can be more honest in their response.

I teach in a smallish secondary with a lovely caring and positive ethos. I love it but I still deal with bad behaviour every day. It's the same old couple of kids in an otherwise nice class scenario. Some kids have huge huge problems. Some kids, as always, are arseholes. Many families have multiple children who behave badly. But generally it's not particularly hard to deal with, just annoying.

I'm only part time so I don't find it too wearing, and I'm experienced enough not to take anything personally, but the real difference is that we are really well supported in our school with a robust behaviour policy and SLT who will step in. I've worked in schools without that and it's chaos.

There's nothing worse than lovely kids looking at you sadly while badly behaved ones are stopping you from teaching. Parents need to be accountable for this and schools need to support teachers so this can be avoided.

PS @noblegiraffe you told me going back to teaching would be fine - just finishing up my first year back and very happy!

It’s not only the bad behaviour of the minority, it’s the lack of support and negativity, telling me that I am a crap teacher if I am not able to teach something meaningful in your classic “bottom set”: an assortment of the year’s worst performing and worst behaved pupils. Only one or two of them proper bad sheep, but when they’re all together in a subject that’s hard and that they hate... Mayhem.

Not a lot to say other than those that those that have verbally abused and threatened me have been back in the next lesson.