How much of secondary is behaviour management

[Rayn22]

That's it really!
Taught primary for 20 years and thinking about making the transition to secondary. Have not looked at how I go about it yet transferring and training and would probably do spanish as fluent!
It is just a thought at the moment but what puts me off is behaviour management. I want to teach not constantly manage behaviour. I am aware of the work load etc so not naive but have no experience of teaching post 11 except having 4 teenagers!
Just can't face the next 20 years sat on little chairs! 😂

It depends on the school but no, it isn't really like that. Especially once you have established yourself. But have a walk around the school before you accept the job as you will get a feel for behaviour pretty quickly. Also look for student behaviour on Ofsted reports.

To my mind - and this is just me guessing here because I'm not a teacher! - it would be more behaviour management in the lower years because half the kids in the class won't be interested in learning that particular subject so will be liable to be messing around. Whereas in the GCSE and A Level years students will have actually chosen that particular subject to study (hopefully!) so are more likely to be interested and engaged in learning.

Very much depends on the school. My last school was huge on behaviour being lead/tackled by SLT so that teachers could spend more time teaching. They had good strong tactics in place that meant teachers did not deal with much past the first infraction when SLT and behaviour team then took aver. Other schools may not be like this.

You'd have to consider each school and their behaviour management policies/systems individually.

Sadly not quite true as the hardest years for behaviour in my last school were Y9 and Y10, with a few rogue pupils in other years and some true die hard Y11’s who refused to wise up.

Y7 and Y8 were positively cherubs in comparison.

This. I can’t imagine behaviour management is worse than in primary where they’re still learning basic norms and boundaries.

I’m secondary. I like it.

OP I went the opposite way to you and went into primary teaching after 10 years of London secondary schools. Also MFL like you.

Hand on heart, I hope to never go back to teaching at KS3 again. If I could just have KS4 and KS5 in a school wherr MFL is optional, yes I'd consider secondary again. Otherwise no. I'd rather stick with primary. Even teaching Reception (which I hate) is easier and less stressful ime!

Yes it is. It is partly lesson planning and partly behaviour management. I think you also need to consider learning how languages are taught in secondary. Being fluent is great, but MFL teaching is different to other subjects.

I think lots of schools might want a second subject or mfl too.

Teach at an independent school. Behaviour management is not that much of an issue at the private schools my daughter attends/attended. Kids are for the most part decently behaved and certainly no horror stories about teachers being insulted or anything like that

That's easier said than done unfortunately 😕