Behaviour policy with no consequences whatsoever.

[Bangbangcauliflower101]

At school, we were told to get rid of the rain clouds in our classrooms and only put children’s names on the sunshine.

Last year I had a child in my class (8 yo) mainstream school who would shout at me daily, refuse to do any work, refuse to go out to play so I missed all of my toilet breaks, hit me with a tennis racket.

No diagnosis, no apology from parents, no backup from line manager, it was just his way or nothing regardless of how me or his classmates felt. If I sent him to the Head, he’d come back to class covered in stickers for being so good and eating biscuits smirking at me.

This year, I have a child who continuously disrupts lessons by making noises, never listening, shouting out, throwing things, being rude, calling children names, swearing and so on. Not only this but this child in particular is incapable of accessing any of the Y3 curriculum without 1:1 support and even with support he throws objects at the adult helping him and needs about 100 reminders to focus per hour. Despite countless meetings with their parents who insist he is just the same as all the other children his age, nothing changes and they will not acknowledge that he needs to be assessed in order to support him properly. In fact they have told the school in no uncertain terms that we must not adapt our lessons to suit their child’s learning disposition.

It is infuriating that there are literally no consequences for poor behaviour and my usually well behaved children are now starting to clock on to this fact and are beginning to act up themselves.

Why are behaviour management systems being removed in schools? I get the whole not shaming thing but any teacher worth their salt wouldn’t be overly-shaming children anyway. They’d just be giving consequences for poor behaviour to teach children where the line is.

I’ve found myself going against the behaviour policy and keeping children in at break to teach them that they can not get away with disrupting lessons but I don’t understand why teachers are no longer trusted to deal with children’s bad behaviour and why parents are so reluctant to back us up.

I understand you and agree with everything you have written 100 per cent. Who are these Headteachers who are going in this ridiculous direction? If you are a Head, are you being told to go down this route? Are you scared of parents? Are you brainwashed? In what universe do you hit someone, assault someone, hurt someone, abuse someone and end up getting a treat?

This approach is causing a lawless society and is highly dangerous. The lack of consequences means that there is chaos in the classroom, other children can't learn and then they start thinking they might as well join in with the disorder. I have mentioned before that I work in a school with none of this nonsense, but we are a dying breed. We tell children off, they have to behave in our school, it's calm and praise is given for working hard and doing the right thing, not the wrong thing. There is such a thing as tough love, and our children know it. Children behaving terribly, disrupting their learning and others isn't love or care. It's quite the opposite.

Behaviour is being mentioned time and time again. Praise good behaviour, a good telling off for bad behaviour, like the old days, is simple and effective. Stop complicating it!!! The school system (in an increasing majority of schools) is setting up children to fail. As soon as they hit adulthood, the treats stop, the help stops, the sympathy stops, the lie they are fed that people are warm, fluffy and forgiving, results in a terrible mental health crisis with young adults who simply can't cope with the real world, which is nothing like what many schools present. It's not just schools, parents have taken this approach too, but it's just absolute nonsense.

My advice is get out of there. Find one of the few remaining schools, where there is discipline. There is support, love, care in addition to the discipline, but children need to know where the line is. This soft approach (taking away the clouds and the like) simply doesn't work.