Teachers, is this behavior normal in your school?

[CheekyBuggersIsPuttingItPolitely]

My DC have attended the same secondary school.

All three have been shocked by the behavior of their peers. Fighting in hallways, smoking in toilets, children walking out of lessons, laughing in the faces of teachers and general disruptive behavior.

My older two have coped well with the disruption, with Dd1 getting great GCSE results, she has however decided to take A Levels elsewhere.

My youngest however is finding it hard, she gets very stressed when people misbehave and is complaining she hasn't actually learnt anything yet in her first weeks at school as the teachers are having to spend the whole lesson disciplining children.

Do you think this is the norm, or are my children at a particularly challenging school?

It is just so wrong isn't it, we wouldn't expect to have to work in those conditions, yet our poor kids have to put up with it!

Unfortunately no girls' schools, and unlikely to get in anywhere else, we are already on the waiting lists for the two schools we put as top choices.

My only consolation is my older two seem to have come through unscathed, so hoping DC3 will cope as well, just a shame they have to 'cope' with this stuff.

THIS!!! A million times over.

I went to school in Germany many years ago and Germany had a proper grammar school system where kids were streamed into 4 different types of schools based on their a performance at primary (no entrance exams). The good students went to gymnasiums (grammar school equivalent). Every area had several gymnasiums and there was no issue with over-subscription. Wherever you lived you could go to a good local gymnasium. The quality of the education at the gymnasium was very high and student behaviour was normal. It was also absolutely possible to move up or down the different schools depending on your grades. To me, this is a MUCH fairer system than the crazy English system where you have to be rich to live next to a decent school or go private and where it's more difficult to get into a grammar school than to Oxbridge.

The German system has been roundly criticised as being hugely unfair and biased.

Grammar schools for the smart then what, if you're a nice but not academic kid you get thrown into an also ran school where anything goes? No, no, no, no no. So wrong.

Kids shouldn't have to put up with crap behaviour. But let's not pretend a) crap behaviour is the sole preserve of the lower achiever and b) that removing some kids solves the issue.

More PRUs and behaviour/other units, yes.
More support in exuding those who aren't coping or suited to school. Who then attend behaviour/other units where they get supported in accessing suitable training and guidance.

What it takes is wholesale reform focused on those who are square pegs in the round hole of school. Which then leaves the round peg kids to crack on with schooling

The quality of the education at the gymnasium was very high and student behaviour was normal. It was also absolutely possible to move up or down the different schools depending on your grades.

Possible but not likely. I have German family - non who have gone to a gymnasium - and they feel very let down by that system. Moving schools is a big deal. Moving sets within your school is not. The German system is nuts. It’s all well and good for the kids who are stamped as academically able at the end of primary. The rest are basically written off as a lost cause by the age of 12.

No it’s not the norm. I just recently left a school that was red hot on behaviour. They understood that a few kids disrupting the lesson for others was not acceptable and their behaviour policy sorted things out fast. GCSE results this summer we’re outstanding to back it up.

I would be looking for another school if you can.

Also teachers shouldn’t have to deal with behaviour after the initial incident. They should be free to teach the class and the disruptive pupil should be removed and dealt with away from classrooms so that other children can carry on learning. SLT should take over if the disruption isn’t easily solved.

The thing about everyone saying that we have choice which school we send our dc to, we don't, yes you can put choices down but you don't get a choice which school they select. Parents near me selected schools & got none of their choices, their kids were sent to a failing school at the other side of the city. At ds school there were kids that were feral, nobody could control them, school did nothing & left kids like my ds to suffer the consequences. Grammar schools would still leave the less able but well behaved children to have to put up with it.

Grammar schools are not the answer. They will help more gifted children but what about well behaved less able children? Do they have to put up with disruptive behaviour?

OP I work in primary and we have a few very disruptive chn for various reasons. I don’t know what has changed apart from lockdown but we have an increase in chn not being toilet trained before school and not respected authority. It’s very worrying when5/6 year olds hit the headteacher!

• respecting

Another issue is that many primary schools for the best of reasons do all that they can to manage children with very challenging behaviour. This includes allowing them to wander around, spend time in a separate room with a TA or sit in the head's office calming down etc etc. This sounds great in one sense as they are genuinely trying to keep these kids in school rather than exclude them. However, these kids do not have a normal school experience. They often come up to secondary without EHCPs and with no diagnosed special needs. They are used to being accommodated in this way. At a large secondary, they then cannot cope or won't comply and cause havoc.

No that is absolutely not normal for my school... but I work in a selective private school. You can see why I chose to move into the private sector! I did see some of that type of behaviour in my PGCE in the state sector, but maybe not quite as bad as that. Really awful.

This is exactly why we need grammar schools
No no no. This makes comprehensive schools WORSE!!

DD's school sounds similar, a lot of very disruptive boys needing constant attention from teachers. Her maths teacher is good and shes in the top set but because teacher is head of year he gets called out of class 4 or 5 times every lesson to deal with disruption in other classes. This year seems particularly bad, I wonder if timing of covid is partly to blame, some kids seem unsocialised! I think DD will probably be Ok because she's bright but it's not fair to her and the others that want to work, and she finds it very stressful.

@Benjispruce4 , I'm actually a TA at our local primary, have noticed a definite downward trend in listening skills over the last few years, but in general the behavior at my school is OK, I think one reason I'm so shocked by the secondary school kids behavior is these schools are only a mile apart.

DD3's school has a strong discipline system, in theory. If they misbehave their name goes on the board. 2nd strike (including challenging the fact that they have had their name written down on the board) - behaviour hub. Where it falls down, I think, is that some of those children are so disruptive, that they can't be managed in the hub, so get sent to the special needs block, which is where the kids who can't cope with regular classes are put. It was a disaster for DD2, who couldn't cope in a class of 24, and ended up in a room with kids who were throwing stuff, causing chaos, etc. She ended up completely out of school for two terms, got an EHCP, and has just started at a (very expensive) independent specialist school. I think that if it had been managed differently she might still be in mainstream.

Apologies for incorrect spelling of behaviour, my laptop keeps auto correcting to American spelling, and I'm not proof reading!

Grammar schools are not the answer. They will help more gifted children but what about well behaved less able children? Do they have to put up with disruptive behaviour?

Yes! And also the very able pupils whose uneducated parents do not know the system! That was me. Top of my year by far, interviewed at Oxbridge, got a PhD now, but from a poor area, poor family, free school meals etc etc. I actually had a grammar school nearby. My parents didn't even realise it was an option. Even if they had, they would have never have dreamed of travelling 20-30 mins to take me to school when the local school bus stopped at the end of my road. Grammar schools cream off those who would likely do well anyway, and leave pupils like me in worse schools as a result... and so social mobility gets tougher and tougher. It really isn't just about (or even mostly about) ability.

@BeanieTeen and @GuyFawkesDay Well, I have been through the German school system over 20 years ago (graduated in 2003) and it was certainly a million times fairer than the UK system.

You definitely didn't have to be an academic genius to get into a gymnasium. There were so many of them in every area that any normal ability child got in. The vast majority of kids were of very ordinary middle-of-the-range ability with a few academic kids. My best friend failed maths and the majority were averagely academic at best.

The second tier school only went up to the age of 16 (Year 10) so anyone wanting to do the German Abitur (Years 11-13/ A-level equivalent) switched to a gymnasium. Our school gained many new kids at that stage.

The third tier schools were for the kids as described in the OP - those who played cards during classes and couldn't care less about school.

Kids with SEN who couldn't be in mainstream education went to specialist schools of which again there were many.

Then you had the fourth category of mainstream schools - comprehensives where everyone could go, but they were rough and most people avoided them because you had the few academic and well-behaved kids in the same class with those playing cards.

Idiotic politicians campaigned about how the system must be changed because everyone is equal and therefore everyone should go to comprehensives and similar rubbish. Well, the result of this is now a huge increase in private education in Germany, which was virtually unheard of when I went to school. Because in order to avoid the kids who play cards during class, parents now have to pay privately. How is this a fairer system?!?

Yes it is in many schools. Can be down to a mix of things. Catchment area, school behaviour policies and the impact of covid. Our school seems to be coming out the other side of a particularly challenging stretch of behaviour. The policies for managing it have been tweaked this year and the y11's who left were the hardest year group whose behaviour went of the charts after covid and lockdowns. Our lower year groups are much more settled and adapting to the new expectations that have been introduced.

It's rubbish for your daughter though, is there any option to move schools?

Normal but I do work in a particularly challenging school.

Well, that was not the system in Germany. Everyone knew of gymnasiums and you automatically got allocated one near you after primary school. No entrance exams, no tutoring, no craziness. There were kids from extremely poor families there because they were free. You didn't have to pay in any way to get in.

The problem starts at home. Kids who are taught that feral behaviour is okay, shown feral behaviour by parents or allowed to run riot because parents are absent (literally or just checked out). You can't, in a six hour school day, 175 days out of 365, force normal behaviour on kids who have parents who condone their utter lack of respect. Not unless you abandon all other subjects on the curriculum and only teach them how to behave. There isn't time.

It’s a home issue for sure. Couple that with schools having less power to suspend/expel.