Common problems at secondary school- your experiences

[hls]

As part of some research I am doing, I wondered what were the most common problems your child has experienced at secondary school- anything from teachers picking on them, friendships going pear shaped, homework problems - anything at all. Need to see if there are any common themes.

Any ideas?

My 2 youngest are still in secondary school, when they go back they'll be in year 10 & 11. I think their main problems were bullying and also inexperienced teachers.
I think the bullying stems from the fact that the school have no real way of disciplining some of the more uncontrollable children and having sat in on a teacher's class it dawned on me that she had absolutely no consistency and was more interested in being their mate than being their teacher, so in effect had no chance of controlling 25 fourteen year olds with raging hormones.

DS1 goes back into Yr 9 next week.

His biggest problem in the early days (apart from missing the bus home on day one!!) was the yr 10/11s being horrid to the new yr 7s, mainly at lunchtime. It was not a major problem, and the issue only lasted for a few days, so I'm guessing this is more likely to be the new Yr7s being new rather than the yr 10/11s being overly obnoxious iykwim?

He did have an issue in Yr7 with one teacher (who thankfully retired that year). I put it down to a personality clash, so didn't follow it up, but subsequently found that there were issues with this teacher (this discovered through a conversation with the Head of Year, not through hearsay). I also acknowledge that this was one teacher out of a hoarde of very good staff (ime/o).

My issue with secondary school is that I'm never sure when to follow stuff up, and when to let things lie. I was spoilt at the primary school because the staff are almost always accessible, whereas this is just not possible in secondary school, and you have to wait for the required person to ring you back (which they always do at my DS's school, although sometimes it can take a while, or seems to when you want to sort something out, lol). This is NOT a criticism of secondary school, just an observation.

General communication could be better, but given that my DS is fairly happy at the school, I can live with this.

Lack of aspiration and inspiration
Everything aimed at lowest common denominator
Very poor communications
Sub teachers
No team sports (only boys' football)
Very little drama / music

fembear

do you attribute those things- lack of aspiration/inspiration etc- to the school and staff, or to the pupils? Ditto lack of communication- coming from the top, of from a child?

i asked all the schools we were interested in if I could visit on a non-open day. One said "No" three said "Of course - ring for an appointment" one said "Of course - pop in any time and don't forget to bring you dd" Guess which one I chose!

A big complaint at our nearest high school is that the loos are always locked and children have to ask for a key. Year 7 girls in particular find this acutely embarrassing (particularly if they have to ask a male teacher). Parents are always campaigning about this, but the Head is unshiftable.

That is a tricky one. We have had an open door policy (re loos) for a while, but had to lock them after a spate of pupils shitting in the middle of the floor (I'm not kidding)

I'm not in favour of locking the loos, for the reasons that you give, but I was also vey sympathetic to the needs of the poor cleaners, and the rest of the girls who needed the loos

Ok, looking back on the two years since my son started secondary school here are the problem areas

1. Lack of communication - not enough parents meetings and no easy way of communicating with individual subject teachers. I appreciate secondary teachers are busy, so I don't want to pester them unless very urgent, but I miss the quick 2 minute chats I could have with teachers at primary school at pick up or drop off time. There is no system in place AFAIK that makes it acceptable to email teachers or write notes with a reply expected.

The result of feeling more cut off is that I have less grip on what my son is meant to be doing at school homeworkwise or the standard of work he is meant to be producing, so it is harder to support/check up on him.

Teachers' comments in homework diaries and school books are often too cryptic and ds won't tell me the whole truth. In two years there have been just two parents meetings - not enough!

2. Pupils openly selling sweets wholesale to other pupils in school. I know secondary school children are not toddlers, but I find it amazing that these little businesses are tolerated, especially as the school has done away with vending machines selling sweets.

3. The school wanting parents to pay for school trips by cheque only and not accepting cash. This is really inconvenient to those of us who cannot guarantee to have money in our current accounts all the time. School cheques can take weeks to be presented IME and I have been charged £35.00 by the bank for a bounced cheque of £5.50.

4. Not enough guidance on homework expectations. See point 1. My son apparently has no holiday homework, but I am wondering if he should have been doing something as he will be in year 9 when he goes back and SATS are looming.

5. Not enough advance information on why year 9 SATS matter, choosing GCSEs and how any setting or streaming can affect GCSE choices and results. I would like to know this right from year 7 - just a general meeting or even a print out with info would be helpful.

Another point - a big problem we have is the earlier start to the secondary school day - 8.30 am instead of 9.00 am.

As ds also has a longer journey in the morning, this means he needs to get up one hour earlier than before - around 6.30 am.

In year 7 this earlier morning routing, plus the stress being at a big secondary school meant he was off sick far more than in year 5 or 6. I was told by a school secretary that it is quite common for year 7s to fall ill a lot (the sick book was full of year 7s) until they get used to the new routine.
It took over a year for ds to get over this, during which time he missed 3 or 4 weeks in total of school. Far too much.

Ds is good at getting up, and being on time at school but even now two years later, he comes home exhausted and falls asleep on the sofa for an hour or two. I try to get him to miss his nap and go to bed earlier at night but he resists this a lot. It is a constant battle of wills.

If only school started at 9.00 am, it would be easier and I don't think ds would have missed as much of his schooling in year 7.

tigermoth - with any luck your ds's school haven't said why the SATs matter up to now because they simply don't matter. Their results might have some effect on how he is set for GCSE subjects, but most probably not as his work throughout Y9 will be seen as more significant.

and the GCSE/setting information will be forthcoming during Y9. For the vast majoirty of parents and kids, Y7 is too far away from GCSEs to start thinking about it. Lots of things can change throughout Key Stage 3. If the school is on the ball they will start talking to your ds about his options in the Autumn term and there will be (or should be) a parents information evening to discuss SATs and GCSEs.

SATs are only important for the senior managament of the school and how the school is rated.

I think that Y7 is a hard year for the parents maybe more than the pupils to some extent, just for the reasons you give at the beginning of your post - it's a big change from lots of personal contact with the teachers at primary school to almost none. The absence of this type of contact must be hard to adjust to.

Something that we do which helps with the Year 7 thing if for all form tutors to make phone contact with all parents 2 weeks into the new term. Just to make contact and see if there are any issues that need dealing with.

We also have a progress day. School stops for teaching for a day. All kids (with parents/carers) have a 20 minute review meeting with form tutor, checking that they are making progress, if there are any issues in partucular subkects etc. This has over 95% attendence and is very positive.

We can then make priority appointments with subject teachers for the next partent.teacher meeting evenibng, if there is a need.

Oh yuck MB - how horrible - and how naive am I!

hard to believe, I know. I could hardly believe it myself.

We have had used sanitary pads stuck to the walls as well.

When I went into teaching I was of the opinion that locking toilets was barbaric, now, having seen some of the things that the kids get up to in them (one was set on fire a few years ago, we needed the fire fightersto put it out), I'm not so sure

yes, we have also had similar, including taps being deliberately left on and flooding everywhere.

Tigermoth, we are only supposed to do one parents evening per year for each age group we teach, although our Y7 tutors do see all parent about 6 weeks into term, BUT, as according to union rules are then alllowed time of in lieu which creates pproblems for schhol staffing.

Also we don't give holiday homework (apart from Y10) as the students don't know what teache they are going to be having

Well, our toilets were unlocked at break - when there was a member of staff standing at the entrance - and really we were discouraged from letting children out of class to go to the loo.

We don't give homework over the summer holiday either. We don't know who will be taeching them (with the exception of year10-year11 ). But I do think that the kids deserve a break.

How much of a problem is lack of continuity? I mean in later years, GCSE and A Level where instead of one teacher through the course, there are four, five, six or more teachers? Teachers who didn't really know the syllabus and were just filling in for three weeks or so and marking time?

Don't have teenagers myself but have lovely nephews and this was their big issue.

Where I work we try very hard to make sure that the kids get continuety of teaching through years 10-11 (gcse years) and the sixth form. It doesn't always work due to staff illness/ maternity leave, that sort of thing.

We aim to have as many child as possible taught bt subject specialists at GCSE. So they get biology taught by someone with a biology degree, physics by someone with a physics degree etc. This doesn't always work, when it comes to physics, as we are short of physics teachs. So I teach some, but to be fair I do have an A level in physis, and also did a fair bit of biophysics in my degree. So GCSE physics isn't that tough to cover!

At A level children are only taught by subject specialists.

In the KS3 years we all teach everything, buy that isn't an issue as the work at that level is fairly basic

My nephew's A-Level Maths group was taught by 9 teachers over the two-year course, including one full half-term being taught by a supply teacher who not only did not have a degree in Maths but did not do Maths A-level and was not competent (in his opinion) to teach the course.

I realise his generally good school did not intend for this to happen but I find the mere fact that it did happen to be quite scarey.

The thing is , things like this are sometimes unavoidable.

I 'lost' my year 11 kids last school year because my dh was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not only did I need time to pull myself together (teaching is a very emotionally charged job), I also had to spend time taking him to chemo appointments/ see the macmillan nurse/ meet the grief and loss councellors that will be working with my kids, I also needed time to spend with my dh while he was still fairly well.

So while I was sorry to 'let the kids down' I actually had things that I needed to do more. these things do sometimes happen, and it can be unrealistic to blame a school for illness or staff getting pregnant.

Oh I'm sorry for your DH and your family, Martian .

I realise these things are unavoidable. It just surprises me there isn't more or better institutional backup.

Money. That is the problem. you can't afford to have people on staff, not teaching.

When it happens , and we know that the leave period will be longer, we do call on supply teachers to take up a short term contract (say to cover a maternity leave). These tend to be fully qualified subject teachers, many of them recently retired from full time teaching

If the sick leave is sudden, and short term, then you do have to fill in, either with cover supervisors or other members of the non teaching staff.

But it simply isn't practical to have a science teacher waiting to do a science cover, IYSWIM, on the off chance that someone has flu.

I think 9 teachers in two years would be a very rare occurrence.

Hard to find supply Maths teachers, as they are in such short supply. Surprised they had a non-specialist supply for A level. In that situation it would be more usual to swap in someone from a lower school class IME.

Yes, I thought it would be a rare occurance. It's just a bit unfortunate for the children who are affected. I wondered why they didn't use the other maths teachers myself. Anyhow nephew did get into his second choice of university, so all's well that ends well.

agree that 9 would be very rare. They might have started off with two teacher though, we do at A level.

We also tend to swap round so that A level and GCSE classes are more 'protected'. I lost all my classes except the A level ones last year. Dh has stablelised out a fair bit, so I'm teaching a little more this year, but I still mostly teach the sixth form

Jury service also causes awful staffing problems.......