Teachers on strike over poor behaviour

[Monvelo]

Just wondered what people make of this. I think it's unusual and quite a big deal? Seems to indicate not just poor behaviour in the school but also a lack of faith in management. This is the only secondary in Tewkesbury so parents have no choice in where their child goes to school, unless they get into grammar in neighbouring towns. Surely it will effect the schools ability to recruit and retain teachers.

https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/tewkesbury-strike-abusive-pupil-behaviour.html?fbclid=IwT01FWAPv9G5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR5cy2cYhUJQaT40DxYEeVahonD3BPG3uOgR2NiebIh3eei121xPzRI3YsOFoAaemKAEEH2GL-OziYFbfrLzWUQ

good on the teachers! Fully support them

Good for them. It must be bad to push them to this.

What steps could the school take to reassure parents that they're taking action?

Good for them.

Hopefully the inconvenience of a strike day pushes parents into actually parenting.

I think behaviour is the tipping point for most teachers tbh good on them for raising this

Do you mean action to support the teachers with regards to the agression and violence they face?

Yes, action to deal with the issues, support the teachers, and reassurance parents of the not-shitty kids.

I doubt it!

Wishful thinking, I'll admit!

My dcs' school said behaviour deteriorated after lockdown. My youngest has left now but I know they brought in a stricter regime. I see people complaining about it on local Facebook groups, but I'm sure schools are only as strict as they need to be for the intake they have. Sometimes that's very strict! We had a good experience of the school, but my kids were well behaved.

I really do think we should stop schools and the rest of the country being held to ransom..
”ooh you can’t expect people to have consequences for their actions and be permanently excluded.. that’s so unfair! What about their future!?! You’ll be sending them to a life of crime and benefits!!”
there’s no personal responsibility at all!

They could at least suspend the troublemakers. That then should make their parents step up and parent their kids. Too bad if it's the only school in the area - a bit of inconvenience to the child and the parents might make them realise that having to transport their misbehaving brats every day to an alternative school ten miles away will be troublesome!!

i fully support this.

It sounds like there is a small bad group of kids and SLT won’t take steps to discipline. We all knew kids like this at school, who thrive off being disruptive and refuse to attend detention and parents now back them up.. “oh Jimmy is bored; the teacher has got it in for him; he’s got ASD he can’t help it; he can’t do detention or he’ll miss his bus…”.

If the kids are this disrespectful to the teachers, imagine how they treat each other. Secondary school can be “a prison sentence with no parole” for kids who want to learn and have to put up with these kids in class and even worse in breaktimes.

It’s not the SLT and governors on the front line being abused every day.

It’s not the SLT’s kids living in fear of bullies and chaos in the classroom.

How can a child feel safe if the teachers are not allowed to give out discipline that actually works? And yes that means isolation and suspension and expulsion.

How can a teacher teach when they are being sworn at, ridiculed, heckled and threatened?

Imagine having a boss who didn’t want to protect your safety . It would drive me to go on strike.

There seems to be a facebook page 'Tewkesbury Academy needs to change' with nearly 800 members so I'm not sure parents are to blame here as they seem to be begging for change and lobbying their MPs. Parents cannot control what goes on when DC are in school and IME school culture makes a huge difference to behaviour. A teacher was stabbed a few years ago. Parents concerned their DC are suicidal. Parents of SEN DC on the facebook group report begging the school to submit their side of EHCPs, EHCPs ignored, no pastoral care. This sounds like management are letting teachers, children and parents down.

Saw this in the news about a large group of 16 year old boys in a different school in NI intimidating female teachers and being suspended
https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2026-01-15/principals-behaviour-alerts-and-suspensions-over-toxic-masculinity-concerns

Good for the teachers! My DC are at another school in the same county. They have a similar group of troublesome students, but the SLT are hot on it to minimise disruption, if the stories I get told from DC are anything to go by...
Staff at Tewkesbury deserve the same.
On another note the county PRU needs expanding (or another one opening). It works well with the students it has, but it can't cope with demand.

Suspension only works if kids and parents see it as a punishment. Many don't.
The kids are still allowed to play on devices, go out and about and generally have a day off.

I mean, it could be a push to get rid of a SLT certain members of staff don't like; or it could be that teachers have genuinely had enough of bad behaviour.

I think one of the problems is that what was seen as discipline in the 80s and 90s (and I don't mean the cane) is seen as too harsh nowdays. Both too much and too little is expected of children. They are not mini adults. Their opinions are not of equal value to an adult's, because most of them have no ability to even imagine consequences. Children are encouraged to question teachers without it being taught that there is a time, place and a way of expressing your opinion or questioning someone elses. And that, sometimes, you just do what you're told without answering back or questioning. It's like they have lost the ability to judge people and situations and behave accordingly. There's no fear of teachers, so there's no reason to do what they ask. It would have been seen as unbearably humiliating to be shouted at by a teacher when I was at school. Now I go to pick up DS and I can hear teachers and SLT BELLOWING all over the school and kids still running riot. There are no punishments for the bullies; there's rarely support for teachers who just need a principal to stand in the room and say this behaviour isn't good enough and they expect more.

We should also devolve responsibility to individual schools and teachers. They know their area; they know their kids and they know the style of teaching that works. They should be allowed to do that rather than every kid learning exactly the same thing, in the same way, at the same time and all being taught to pass exams rather than actually become educated.

Another problem is that some people will push and push and push until they can't go any further. You have to set expectations from nursery/reception and carry them on throughout education. Schools need to actually have reasonable discipline policies, enforce them fairly and tell parents when a severe issue has occurred. If you let a kid get away with being constantly being rude in class, it will grow into them trying more and more things (throwing paper aeroplanes, which become chairs, which becomes turning over tables and punching other pupils and staff) to find out where the limit is. (And the problem isn't just schools, it's that there seem to be a shocking number of people who either don't know how to parent or can't be bothered to parent. There are loads of shittily behaved middle class kids in DS's class. Their parents are lovely...they also want to be their child's best friend or, frankly, are too tired to actively parent, so choose the easy option of letting their kid do whatever they want. They then question sadly why their kid behaves the way they do or, worse, they don't even recognise the kid's behavious as completely unacceptable.)

The problem is the system is broken because schools can rarely exclude externally or suspend permanently. There are scarcely any alternatives. This is why schools have internal isolation rooms. These rooms are often populated by the same children, who are generally a nightmare to deal with and take up time away from students who want to learn.

I think that teachers do a fantastic job with the tools they have but in the main they start on the back foot. SLT plays a vital role in how schools are run but in a lot of cases their hand are tied and they are unable to get rid unless all avenues have been relentlessly pursued. The parents of these children are typically unconcerned about their children’s behaviour until it comes to the crunch and then they fight hammer and tong to keep their children in school.

Education has become so inclusive it excludes the vast majority as teachers deal with low level disruption constantly. Even if these children do not attend, schools have to make every attempt to get them in for safeguarding concerns and attendance measures.

As a previous poster said behaviour issues range across the board. One of the naughtiest children in my son’s class lives in a beautiful home, parents are both medics. They laugh about his tricks and high jinks, and are annoyed when school try to contact them as they are too busy.

It is ludicrous. I honestly cannot wait until my children are out of the system. I honestly do not blame the staff from striking, but I can guarantee that the same kids will be back causing havoc.

We had teachers on strike for the same reason here in Northumberland not so long ago at one of the local high schools. It's a very serious issue.

My sister is a primary teacher but is retiring a couple of years early as she says the behaviour in primary is shocking too.

This issue really needs.to be addressed otherwise teachers are going to continue leaving and education will be disrupted for kids who want to learn.

What the solution is I don't know but I think some parents really don't help. I also think inclusion at all costs benefits no-one. The idea is, in theory, a good one but in the real world is proving disastrous.

I have been ridiculed for saying this on here before, but abysmal parenting is a national emergency now.
It is not just the minority of violent kids, it is the kids of parents who cant accept their kids being in rge wrong - it is tge parents who cannot set and hold a firm boundary for their kids, it is the parents who let screens bring up their kids, it is the parents who infantilise their kids, never giving them independence, allowing them to experience risk. This is why we have a generation of anxious kids, with no resilience, no respect and no concentration span. What sort of society are they going to create?

Dd is on a long distance train and saying there are MULTIPLE people without tickets arguing with the inspector so they are having to involve police at the next station. Those people and a lot worse will be having kids and bringing them up to be just as antisocial as they are.

Look at the number of posts on Mumsnet from parents moaning their child has been told off or put in detention/inclusion/excluded. Apparently none of these sanctions were fair and their child absolutely denies being in the wrong, and mummy knows this is true! So glad I’m retired.

There was a thread yesterday from a first year teacher, who had worked her socks off to get a bottom set to respond positively. She was thinking she was rubbish at the job and had lost confidence after one incident and was in tears.

It begs the question whether those sets should have inexperienced teachers, but then I had a group like that with many years of experience and they nearly broke me.

The bigger question is ‘why’. We can all hypothesise and we can bemoan the days when corporal punishment was permitted. No one is suggesting a return to that. We are in a situation where it is becoming apparent that the range and increase in neuro diversity, poor or no parenting, inclusion for all, endless diktats and u turns by successive governments and Ofsted, are getting us to the point of collapse of the entire system.

I had a discussion about violence with a former police officer. He faced violence on a daily basis. But, he had colleagues and tools to protect him to a certain extent. A teacher is often on their own, with nothing to protect them from an angry and violent mob.

Low level disruption- not low level when it’s constant and escalates. If teachers like the first year one decide to leave, if experienced teachers retire early or are removed because they are expensive, if parents don’t parent effectively and consistently, if the infrastructure in schools is allowed to crumble, if there are few sanctions available to alleviate the poor behaviour, the system will collapse.

But as I've said upthread the parents here seem to be begging for change, and given the silence on the Facebook group since 2025 I would imagine they have been legally told to shut up and put up. The teachers have been clear with media that their compaint is with SLT. The parents and teachers sound equally desperate for solutions.