Parents expect the education system to raise their kids for them. They neglect their duties as parents until they're old enough to shove them off to school then get pissy when they're not devloping well, failing exams, etc. The buck should stop with the parents. Education isn't a right, and society's views for the nost part in this day and age are back to front.
It's not a teachers job to toilet train kids, take abuse, be threatened, assualted, or reform.
Hey, this is where my daughter will be going to school when she's older! Thankfully it's a few years away yet (she's 4) so hopefully things improve by then. Otherwise we might try and get her into a different high school.
This is undoubtedly a touchy subject, but from all the anecdotes I've heard, from my mate's relative who is a teacher there; my wife's friends who have kids that go there; my neighbour whose kids have friends that go there, all say the same thing: it's the Romanian kids that cause the majority of the trouble. Is this school just unlucky with their batch of children or is there some bizarre Romanian cultural thing whereby school is seen as some unimportant side show? Genuine question.
Yeah it is touchy, if you start linking behaviour to certain groups but frankly you see it for yourself when teaching different places. I’ve taught traveler children in one of my training schools and they stood out as being rough, always getting into fights and having strange, antisocial behaviour. One would seemingly forget where he was, get up in the middle of a class and wander around pulling stuff off the walls, pulling pages out of books, or going through people’s belongings, and you’d ask what they were doing a few times and suddenly it’s like a light would come back on and he’d remember where he was again. What was a lot less funny was getting a bit handsy with the girls, no sense of boundaries, he’s grab teachers by the sleeve to get their attention too.
Other parents should be supporting them. It’s their kids who barely get any work done in lessons or have to suffer the worry of another episode where some brat kicks off and verbally or physically abuses their classmates or damages stuff. Lessons activities they were looking forward to are ruined, etc, they can’t ask for help with their work because some other dickhead is monopolising all the teachers time with their behaviour.
The teaching time lost to strikes is nothing compared to the cumulative loss due to the unmanageable behaviour of a minority.
Threatening teachers, not attending class and disrupting other lessons? Yeah, the teachers are right here - Fair play to them. They shouldn't have to put up with children who have received poor parenting.
It's not just parenting. A lot of classroom teachers' grievances in this respect are with senior management and the trend towards restorative discipline and inclusion. Both these things are good solutions in some cases. But the "nurturing" approach to discipline very often just doesn't work and empowers certain pupils to continue to be belligerent and disruptive. And it's usually put into place by senior staff who do not actually have to teach often or at all. When it fails, as it obviously will in many cases, the blame is thrown back at the teacher. So if there are a few kids in a class who are just determined to be disruptive and are *enjoying* the process of frustrating the teacher, it ends up with the teacher's competence being questioned. That's a big reason why teachers are striking over this.
Totally agree. Parents are part of the issue. SLT who are incompetent and obsessed with restorative approaches to nurturing approaches are the biggest issue.
My union rep is working overtime, fighting for staff to have their voices heard regarding behaviour. It falls on deaf ears, and I believe strikes will happen eventually. They need to know how shit they really are.
Sounds like a never-ending uphill battle. So if you had full authority what changes would make a difference? Or maybe a better question what are the 3 key policies you would implement ( again assume you gave full authority) , why would they be beneficial and what are the downsides?
Cheers
Remove barriers to permanent exclusions. This does actually scare kids because psychology shows teenagers care deeply about their social groups. More than anything. If you threaten to rip them away from this, it's a massive concern for them and it will keep them in line.
Adults of kids with absolutely no behavioural needs should be charged a fine for every time their child is suspended.
Smart phones should be completely banned from all schools. Across the country, no questions asked. They survived before they had them, they'll survive again.
Appreciate that.
I think I’m right that the govt are piloting the phone suggestion? Hope so and it’s followed through
The exclusion idea is so simple and obvious. Without this threat there is no incentive to change behaviour.
Just need to find a workaround to ‘every one is entitled to education’
I hope this week’s strike has an effect and is the first of many nationwide
Good luck to all teachers going forward
My SIL was called up to her daughters high school about her behaviour (threatening a teacher). The school said to SIL that she needs to work with them to help her daughter. My SILs response? "Work with you? I don't get paid to work with you". Fucking hopeless. Genuinely fucking depressing.
Neighbour's kid is a right little shitbag who regularly starts fights.
Father is a financial advisor, mother is a doctor so you would think they are invested in their child.
No chance, dad is proud his kid isn't some 'nancy boy' who is going to get pushed around. He boasts about how many times he's been called in and how the school is wrong about their spoilt little angel.
Middle class people are worse at parenting
There's far too many children who arent even potty trained at 6 yo...
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/teacher-potty-train-children-expect-28134640.amp
I genuinely thought that idiotic mentality was almost gone. Especially in adults. It was typical in my youth that if you could fight you were cool. The "harder" the better. Most people grow out if that but there's still the few that are stunted in their high school mentality who go on to raise their kids the same way. Bet the guy will be the first one to be enraged if someone battered his son.
He really does have an inferiority complex that's actually very funny to observe.
Humble bragging about multiple holidays, mid life crisis Ford Mustang with extra loud exhaust, expensive watches, massive conversion/extension to house, child spoilt and indulged at every opportunity. It's all there.
But the sad thing is hearing through the walls all the shouting and arguments.
Bring back Borstals. Teachers shouldn't be living or working in fear. Thugs should be arrested and reformed, parents want to absolve their responsibilities let them visit them on weekends.
In all fairness from someone who experienced the other side, a teacher hit me. They also had a very minor punishment, just a couple of years, they were banned from teaching.
My sister told a support teacher that she was pregnant, who then brought in the head teacher and was on about involving police (she was 16, her boyfriend was 15, same year). Luckily, when my mum got called into school, she pointed out quite rightly that the original teacher wasn't allowed to tell anyone else. It then got all brushed under the matt
There's also now been two teachers who have slept with 6 form students.To put things in perspective, my school is pretty high up in Wales for the area. So if the things I've spoken at happen at my school, you can bet they've happened elsewhere.
So, the whole system needs to be reformed. There need to be real punishments for students and teachers
Yep kinda, it's split between that and Secure Training Centres for lower risk offenders privately run, we already have the framework in place that could expanded, really laws need to be enforced and courts need to lower the thresholds for sending them there, probably with another lower tier with like a reform order for like a school year that wouldn't be for criminal punishment but a temporary state guardianship.
There are two methods of torture with goal to get the person to cooperate that differ almost entirely fundamentally. One involves degradation, pain, and actual torture. The evolves becoming there friend. The later is proven to be more effective.
The goal of talking to a child is to get them to understand their feelings, to understand their actions and see why their actions are bad, in order to get them to stop. It is a method that works and leads to fewer broken.
The one thing that must accompany it is accountability/consequence and it is the lack of that that is leading to arsehole kids, which doesn't mean hitting it just means something that negatively impacts them.
Sometimes you need to stop the violence first before you can be there friend.
When children learn from a hound age there is no consequence for violent actions what does that teach them?
It's a fools errand and someone bigger and badder in the real world will get them or they'll end up in prison.
Small acts done in child hood by responsible adults who have their interest at heart stops major f ups in later life
You also need the right people to be those friends. The thug kid isn't likely to be very receptive to the timid 23-year old English teacher, but the ex-army reformed thug teacher they'd admire isn't teaching.
But the ex army reformed thug teacher is absolutely appalling if you're a shy, quiet kid who needs a lot of nurturing and is terrible at their chosen subject (typically PE).
That's true, but he doesn't necessarily have to be everyone's teacher. He can be a specialist who has his own classroom and takes the kids who need him under his wing. Plus let's be honest, the meek nerdy kids already weren't enjoying PE, it's not a big loss if they continue to not enjoy it. They probably aren't learning anything from it anyway.
That's the entire problem with PE. The kids who need it most don't get anything of value out of it. I just learned how to forge notes from my mum and fake conveniently timed migraines.
Yeh it's one thing to not like PE, but the way it's taught and teachers playing favourites and not giving a toss about the rest (certainly how it was at my school) actively puts people off exercise.
It took me years to realise I actually do enjoy it and am not completely unfit!
I learned more about fitness from 30 mins reading Reddit as an adult than I did in years at school. PE teachers just don’t give a shit if you can’t play football or rugby, or run cross country.
Yeah I had one PE teacher that recognised their might be something wrong with me. (Wasn't diagnosed with a disability until I was 21).
He was a sweetheart, the rest made me feel like shit on front of the entire class when I couldn't or refused to do things I knew I couldn't do.
Yeah, I recognise that. I'd love to be able to go back and tell my PE teacher that the skinny kid he mocked because he didn't know the rules of rugby would turn out to be a multiple Ironman and running coach. And maybe would have done it a bit (twenty years!) earlier and better had he actually been encouraged at school.
Because we have a crisis in physical activity levels. PE being an act of ritual humiliation for kids who aren't naturally good at the sports PE teachers like doesn't lead to teenagers confident or even willing to take part in exercise.
I was that meek nerdy kid who didn’t like PE. I can tell you the reason most kids like I was don’t like PE is because it’s not taught properly.
It’s always just like “go do cross country running today.” That’s great when nobody teaches you how to actually do it. It’s not difficult when you’re not the asthmatic kid who always comes last. But teachers don’t care about that kid, they don’t care about doing shorter distance runs to build up stamina and teaching about how to pace yourself.
The sports I could have been good at like high jump, javelin came around like one week a year. And never really receive any instruction either because it’s not football or rugby so no one gives a shit.
My experience is any subjects like music, art, PE, are all taught by people who don’t give a shit about the kids who need help and only want to focus on the stars who make them look good.
And do you know what would stop him slapping her across the face again?
A quick slap back by that teacher with measured and controlled force to let the child know that they cannot wander around hitting people bigger than them or they are going to get seriously hurt one day. Otherwise they will get through life and will think violence is always unanswered until either a highly violent man or prison gets them
As someone with a bit of a background in psychology: they might be more correct than you think.
Actually, you both are. You just don't realise it.
Take Donald Winicott's famous line about it being 'inadequate' to always like your adopted child. He based this conclusion on the fact that the majority of adopted children held very foundational attachment complexes due to being without stable parents in their life. As a result, they would often deliberately annoy adults around them in an attempt to gain their attention, because they deeply feared losing the attention of the regular adults in their lives.
Take this same premise and transplant it onto the setting of the kids in school who like to be annoying to get attention and you've got decent validity there, I would imagine.
In such cases, a harsh and punishing response is actually what the child is looking for (though it may not consciously appear to them that way) because it reassures them that someone actually cares about them enough to be angry about them.
I don't know how well borstal style setups worked to help those kids though, but policy should also be guided by past statistics and qualitative data where possible.
The problem is the lack of safety and consistency at home. Social Care resources are too stretched for early intervention and promotion of positive parenting, without that then any boundaries that teachers implement is never reinforced.
Without significant funding to invest in children then it's just a constant cycle
I asked a child why they were misbehaving more than usual, rather than tell him off. They told me of their current home situation, which had been reported to school. Yet nobody had told a single person in their classroom. And today was the nervous day. Nobody supported them, until I was unprofessional.
Teachers are often not supported properly by management. Something has happened to teacher training over the past 20 years, behaviour management is follow the schools behaviour policy. The policy is often unworkable and/or not supported by management.
Then covid did a number on children. Stuck in a home bubble of behaviour that they normalised. It worked both ways. The good kids were less tolerant of poor behaviour, and complained more, the poor behaviour escalated.
Yes, we need to invest in our children.
I mean that’s all very well, but it takes time and often requires specialised experience and knowledge, which a “normal” classroom teacher can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) be expected to have.
More to the point, the majority of kids who _aren’t_ disruptive also shouldn’t have to put up with the arseholes ruining their learning experience.
An efficient system that identifies the arseholes early or replaced teaching assistants with people trained to deal with them and remove them if necessary leaving teachers to teach kids who are prepared to be taught seems like a good way forward.
Is there any actual evidence its these kids acting up? Seems like the reddit solution to every problem is to simply inflict more suffering on those involved until the problem resolves itself. I don't see that working here.
I suspect most of these kids are acting like this because their parents (and society) doesn't give a shit about them.
How dare you even think of asking them to stop.
Mummy's precious angels are just expressing their big feelings in a way most comfortable to them, if you can't handle that maybe you're just not cut out for teaching
(Sarcasm aside despite my overall total lack of interest in academia outside the odd wag and lateness and mostly just skipping homework I never dared treat teachers badly. Not only school consequences, but my dad and mum would have also delivered consequences)
A few generations ago, adults "disciplined" children through fear in this country. Now the shoe's on the other foot. Abuse an animal and sooner or later, it'll fight back.
Borstals did fuck all lol...
They didn't reform anybody and the people who went were basically left behind.
You don't punish the child because the parents are a waste of space, that is the quickest way of creating a shitty adult.
If the kid is already assaulting teachers then I imagine their chance of becoming a non-shitty adult is about the same whether they were in a Borstal or out of control in a regular school unequipped to deal with them
Hmm, maybe we need to be supporting parents right from the start and breaking the cycle to be sure the child has a chance.
Maybe we could have something called 'Sure Start'?
Some parents just don't engage with these resources though, either because they can't or because they don't want to. And realistically all the parenting advice you could ever need is available for free these days, it's a will problem and a resource problem.
Certainly the vast majority of these cases are the knock-on result of overworked isolated parents. Poverty and disconnection from community are the root causes here.
But in the meantime while we address those, the immediate response to the already violent teens and kids is severely inadequate and puts other kids and teachers at serious risk.
Hauling the little cunt to the front of the class and caning its hands *might* be productive. Repeat offenders get that treatment during assembly. Not that I'd ever break Reddit's TOS by advocating for such a thing.
I wasn't a great student, I misbehaved and hated school, but I understood that school was necessary, would make me smarter, and benefit my life.
I'm with the teachers. Any parents defending their kid's shitty behaviour at school rather than sorting it is disservcing their own children and fucking us all over.
I support the principle, if you can strike over poor health and safety in a factory you should be able to do it over poor safety in schools. However I'm not sure how much the government can do about it, best they can do is probably to exclude the kids to put pressure on the parents and if that doesn't work send them to somewhere like a borstal.
if your kid can't behave you have to come to school with them and sit in their class to manage their behaviour.
kidding but also not really. you have to inconvenience parents in some way.
Honestly, the parents of many a problem child, if anything seem to be happy to have them taken off their hands for the day, so I think this would be an idea.
Even decent parents can have a tendency to treat schools like daycare instead of a fundamental institution of learning.
Most schools have some kind of classroom set up for pupils who for one reason or another that can’t be in standard classes - so it would be less of a safeguarding issue if they were all regulated to a special parent/pupil class.
I mean we fine parents for taking their kids out of school for holidays, but there is no point forcing parents to send their disruptive kids to school who frankly are a net negative presence for 90% of kids and staff.
When you use sarcasm to make a point, you need to build on what the person the said - if I’ve already brought up safeguarding concerns, you’d be better off playing with the idea I’ve already mentioned to address it than pretending it was dismissed altogether.
Also the focus of the two comments were on Parents taking responsibility, so acting like it’s to specifically punish the kids in some way doesn’t really flow either.
OK, I do want to actually try and answer this better, because I think that bringing parents into classrooms is one of those suggestions which sounds reasonable but is actually a strawman when you look more closely.
The reason I went with safeguarding is because the OP did not mention safeguarding, they implied that it was an unserious suggestion for parents to be required to accompany children into classrooms.
There are basically three big problems with this as a suggestion (which is probably implied in why OP immediately dismissed it as a joke)
A lot of parents work, are students themselves, or have other caring responsibilities e.g. for younger children, disabled children or relatives - they may not be available to sit in classrooms with children. It's ludicrous to suggest that parents treating school as childcare are somehow chancers when our entire society is set up with this as a norm. Even during COVID schools remained open for the children of essential workers, because it is recognised that schools-as-childcare is a fundamental part of the way our economy/country works.
Increasing the amount of untrained people in a classroom where some of the children (esp if more than one, which I understand is common) are disruptive doesn't sound like it is likely to help the situation. Is the teacher also supposed to have responsibility for ensuring that the parents are actually supporting their child and not sitting on their phone or trying to manage behaviour in an inappropriate way like yelling at them (possibly even in a language that the teacher may not understand) or bribing them with disruptive things that the other children are distracted by?
Then the safeguarding point, which is often dismissed and easily be in terms of the fact that parents can already volunteer in classrooms in terms of reading support etc. If you pick a parent at random, it's very unlikely that they pose a danger to school children, especially when there are other adults in the room.
However - the safeguarding concern, when we're talking about behaviourally challenging or disruptive children - this is a very different story, because that is not a random sample of all the parents in the class. Children who have problem behaviours are MUCH more likely to have parents who genuinely do represent a safeguarding risk because living with parents who are violent, unpredictable, abusive, or chaotic is highly likely to cause children to copy those behaviours or act out because nobody has ever taught them any reasonable coping skills for everyday emotions like frustration and disappointment. Or they may have parents who are overly defensive of their child and will be reactive towards any staff member or other child who they feel has slighted their child. Or they may have parents who had such a terrible experience of school themselves that they have a massive chip on their shoulder about school, or anxiety around school. Or any combination of the above. Of course not ALL parents of children with disruptive behaviour will pose a problem to other students - some are doing their best but don't know how to solve the behaviour either, but you can't pretend that the "problem behaviour parents" don't exist because if you've spent any time in schools or spoken to any teachers you know they do. It's one of the challenges of working with these children and changing their behaviour because you're often working against what they are experiencing at home, and it doesn't always meet the threshold for social services involvement. (Or they are involved but it doesn't meet the threshold for removal for example).
How is this "less of a safeguarding issue" if you take all of those children and parents including the disruptive ones and put them all in a classroom together? It might be less of an issue for the children in the main class. It's a huge issue for all the children in the special class who can't be in a normal classroom possibly through no fault of their own. Do they not deserve safeguarding?
I can see that the intention is either to punish parents or try to get them to have some input into their child's behaviour at school, and not to make things unpleasant for children. But the net result is you have children in an extremely chaotic and even more disruptive situation. It doesn't seem like it would work to actually improve behaviour or learning of those children. The only thing you've achieved is hiding them away - which is what we used to do decades ago, and decided was unacceptable. I don't think the way that it's been handled is good (force all the disruptive kids back into schools and don't actually equip schools or teachers to cope with them) but I don't think we should go back to relegating and ghettoising them either.
I suggested putting them together as quick fix to make the safeguarding process (potentially limited the scope of dbs checks etc) easier - you’re right in the sense that either the parents behaviour (I.e failing checks) or essential factors like needing to work to live would probably stop most parents actually being able to it. It’s like careless drivers who get to keep their license because how much they need to drive to work etc.
And unless the classroom is in its own building outside of school, it literally couldn’t happen.
It would be great if teachers had all the support and staff to deal with these children themselves, but they don’t - or if children’s services we’re able to deal with problem parents, but they don’t.
Thing is for every child with disruptive behaviour , there are 20 children who get reduced education and time spent with them because of them. And that’s what’s actually frustrating people.
So - *practically* it isn’t any easier or more likely to have the resources to expend to support the product of bad parenting than forcing parents to take responsibility for the issue (or removing their parental responsibilities all together).
People come up with suggestions like this as a form of Triage to protect the many more children who do not require this level of support to not just learn themselves, but to prevent them being a danger/disruption or others.
I understand the impact on the other children. That's exactly why in the past it suited us for the disruptive children to go to separate schools or "go missing" and nobody tried very hard to find them.
You seem to be suggesting that would be preferable. And honestly, I can see that a lot of people would think so. It's OK if that is your genuine view, I just think we should be honest about it and face the discomfort of it, the children don't just vanish because they are absent from the classroom, they are real people too, who will grow up into adults and live in society alongside the "good" children who are able to access school.
I don't think the causes are as simple as "bad parenting" and anyway I don't think people are bad at parenting for a laugh and if you force them they would step up. I think people are bad at parenting for (again) complex reasons but it essentially comes down to they don't know how to or they are not capable or something is getting in the way - much like the same things that are the underlying reasons why some children can't/won't/don't sit quietly in class and get on with their work.
I don't recognise the use of triage in this context - could you explain what you mean? My understanding of triage is about allocating resources to a person or problem which is in most urgent need of them, which to my mind would mean you allocate the resources to the children who are causing the issues, not the children who are doing well in school already.
You can try saying it’s not treating these kids and parents like people or pretend it’s about making them invisible or “missing” - but nobody suggested bad parents are bad it “for a laugh”.
This isn’t some secret, my comments weren’t veiled, and I don’t think anybody else’s is - if you thought people were *trying* to mask their feelings, I understand why you’re confused.
Saying these parents and children’s need specialist help, but not at the expense of everyone around them who directly suffer because of their behaviour/attitude is not really a contradictory statement.
I might as well be suggesting *you want children and teachers to suffer*, to protect the feelings of the parents and children directly responsible for their suffering.
So if I was *forced* to choice between helping 20 kids who want to learn and teaching professionals who have trained to do just that, and appeasing some sense of “fairness” for one disruptive child and their parents who are “trying their best”, but in practical terms, failing to achieve what most people would consider very basic outcomes for raising a child, yeah I’ll choose the 20 children and the professional.
If you don't come to the school then you get billed £20 a day - £10 goes to the teacher as a bonus for dealing with your little shit - £10 to the school. May as well make them pay to improve the experience for the rest of the school.
They were shut because often they didn't actually provide any useful education because those kids weren't seen as worth educating.
That's wrong too - I do think there's an argument for providing separate facilities for the kids who need more intense input but they need to be well designed and run so that they actually get the best out of the kids that they possibly can. That's expensive.
So to "help" the problem kids they don't provide any extra support to the school who were already unable to handle them, and they are now stuck with them disrupting the entire class of 30 kids, as well as not actually learning anything themselves.
So instead of improving the schools designed to help them they screw everybody.
Yes my darling is in a class with 1 of these kids I am very biased.
If your solution to boredom is putting the whole class in danger you are a problem, or if like a girl near us you get expelled every 6 months you are a problem.
If you have a bunch of kids all cooped up day in day out with no outlet. What do you think happens?
Behavior is always compared in state vs public schools one has fields, sports, classes, teachers, TAs and support
The other has people in charge who couldn't care less and sell of fields and make questionable decisions regarding resources.
Children acting like cooped up animals as that's basic what they are at this point doesn't make them dangerous good Lord.
I agree kids are meant to be too still these days. Coming home from school and staying still all afternoon rather than roaming using energy and imagination.
You only need to read your local Facebook group to see why, kids are demonised for being loud, playing games and just having fun.
Most classes have multiple levels working on the same work, having extra support for the children who need it would free up teaching time.
Having extra support with in a classroom so you aren't the only adult in charge of 30+ kids would be nice.
Having smaller class sizes would also be beneficial
Maybe more consequences for parents - but not sure how that would work! Sometimes head teachers seem to mollify parents more than support teachers though - if it comes from the top that bad behaviour isn't tolerated, the teachers would at least feel more supported.
I also think it was a massive mistake cutting Sure Start type programmes. Yes, there's an upfront cost, but the wider costs to society when kids have bad starts is higher. It's classic short-termism.
Adults should be allowed to discipline children. Currently, they're not able to do it without risk of arrest and being dragged through the courts. And it's very negative for society.
If you're talking about corporal punishment, most studies on it have shown that kids who are subjected to corporal punishment are more violent, not less. You're teaching kids violence by beating them. They just don't use it against you because they fear you.
I'm not advocating for corporal punishment, but equally things have gone too far now. Adults are scared of bad kids. Do something they don't like, and they go running to the authorities. Read Lord of the Flies.
Kids need directing and sometimes controlling; they need to respect adults. Currently, they have no reason to. They have the power and they know it.
A family member is a teacher. She’s been hit, kicked, sworn at, had chairs thrown at her, children who refuse to do *anything* all lesson, parents who have turned up after school and sworn at her, verbally abused online, the list goes on. Some of her fellow staff members have been bitten, too.
She teaches children who are 9-10 years old.
She’s nearing retirement, has been a teacher for almost 30 years and the last ten or so have been hellish for her. She leaves at 7am and gets home at 7pm, exhausted.
I worry about her. I would support any kind of support or awareness about how terrible things are.
My sister is a primary school teacher (I think her students are 8-9 years old) and about 2 weeks ago she was bitten twice in the same week by a child. He was finally temporarily suspended for 2 days, after having also previously bitten her the year before!
Not to diminish this because no teachers should be treated like this - but I think there needs to be improvements on the teachers side as well as the students.
Like I remember starting primary school full of confidence and being a happy kid. And I left school at 16 hating it and having like 3 GCSEs - yet I was top of the class for SAT scores etc, it was all because the enjoyment for it just got pushed out of me.
I can remember in primary school getting told off for something I didn’t do multiple times just because the teacher didn’t listen. And me having this “adults are always right” kind of mentality being a kid and not being able to stand up for myself.
Then middle school just hating it a year or two in, getting picked on with no help from anyone. I used to have health issues that made me need to go home and had a supply teacher once tell me off in front of class for feeling ill and needing to go home because “I’m never there and when I am I just go home”. I remember a teacher kicked a desk into one of my friends.
When I was doing GCSEs I missed loads of time. I can’t remember a single teacher actually checking on how I was doing or asking me to stay behind a minute and just saying “how can I help” or talking to me about how I would be doing in the coursework and exams.
I remember teachers telling me at work experience not to bother putting anything related to working with computers because they just don’t get those. No effort to show kids anything other than what working retail looks like.
And every single music lesson I had throughout school was all focused on the teachers per students who could play or who could sing and join the choir. Every PE lesson was just an embarrassment of being the asthmatic kid coming last at everything because they never taught anything.
So yea, teachers need more support. But they need to do better in a lot of areas too because if I’d had any help whatsoever I could have done so much more without having to struggle for it. And school wouldn’t have been a thing I dreaded daily.
My wife's a teacher. She's 5'3 and has had sixteen year old boys towering over her, threatening to rape her, saying they'll "get her" outside school, that they know where she lives. Kids have stolen things from her bag, thrown things at her, made nasty TikToks about her. She's recently been having some days off because we're going through IVF and the kids, only knowing she's "at an appointment" have told her they hope she's ill and she deserves to be for "ditching them".
She's overall a popular teacher who gets on well with most of the students. But there are some with massive behavioural (and just social) issues that she can do nothing about other than log the behaviour as a concern. She's lucky if support staff actually turn up to remove problem kids from class.
She would be a social pariah at her school if she reported it, the school would be on out and out denial gaslighting and would lie / minimise the truth to the police.
She's onto a loser if she did that. School's SLT would protect the pupil over the teacher.
I work in a residential unit. We had a resident seriously assault another resident and the victim wanted to press charges. Police asked what punishment we had given, as they felt it would be unfair to put them through the court system for punishment if we had "already punished them" with something like detention.
I suppose this why they have to strike instead. It feels like people (including many parents) do expect them to put up with it.
Unlike emergency workers who have had some kind of recent acknowledgment they shouldn’t have to put up with certain things as “part of the job”, for teachers it’s the other way around.
This is truly appalling and you, and of course your wife, have my full sympathy and support. It sickens me that this happens to anyone, let alone someone who has spent years of time and money to educate the next generation.
The part about “ditching” the school hits home for me too. The lack of support from higher ups is absolutely a contributing factor to the degradation of our education system.
My wife quit teaching in 2017/18-ish and by god am I glad she did. It was bad enough then; I can’t imagine how it would be now.
I’m so sorry your wife has to go through this — and that you have to go through it too, at a remove. I remember what that was like all too well.
Christ. I don’t think I’d be able to deal with knowing my wife was going through that.
That would make most people quit.
It’s such an important profession too.
Those kids during the past 10 years will have been raised by my generation (gen-x) and millennials (the oldest ones are mid-40s now). We fucked-up somewhere, whether it's over-compensating for hero generation / boomer parents or having grown-up in a hyper-consumerist 'me me me' era I don't know.
Screens are an easy excuse. It comes down to just shit people being shit parents. I probably played wayyyy to many video games when I was older and didn't behave in ways described in this thread.
When I left secondary school (which granted was over 10 years ago), the worst kids were always the ones who spent their entire existence hanging around parks or pub car parks, bullying anyone who dared come near them. Sure, they might have occasionally played Fifa or something, but I constantly saw them on the streets. I don’t think it’s screens. I think it’s due to a lack of respect from parents.
When I left secondary school (which granted was over 10 years ago), the worst kids were always the ones who spent their entire existence hanging around parks or pub car parks, bullying anyone who dared come near them. Sure, they might have occasionally played Fifa or something, but I constantly saw them on the streets.
I don’t think it’s screens. I think it’s due to a lack of respect from parents.
When I left secondary school (which granted was over 10 years ago), the worst kids were always the ones who spent their entire existence hanging around parks or pub car parks, bullying anyone who dared come near them. Sure, they might have occasionally played Fifa or something, but I constantly saw them on the streets.
I don’t think it’s screens. I think it’s due to a lack of respect from parents.
100%. There’s been a real shift in attitudes towards “naughty” children.
To play devil’s advocate, in many circumstances this is outside of parental control. Parents are busier/work more hours, both parents are working so there isn’t a parent who has time to do homework/read with/talk to their child. But that doesn’t explain the uptick in violence/aggression from kids.
In my opinion, and I don’t have children so perhaps I can’t comment, but nevertheless: I think it’s a respect issue.
I’m a millennial. I love and cherish my parents. I had and still have a very open, honest relationship with both of them where I was able to talk to them about nearly everything and anything. However, the one standout line from my childhood/adolescence was “I’m not your mate”. Friendly was good. But we were not friends.
I didn’t *want* to do things like wash up, tidy my bedroom, do my spelling/homework, go to bed early on a school night. I wasn’t *allowed* to spend my whole evening on the computer or playing PS1/PS2. I *had* to have responsibilities and respect for my teachers because they were adults.
That doesn’t seem to be a given anymore.
Agree with a lot of what you say, for me the whole 'we're mates' culture is a big part of the problem.
Busy parents, whilst more households have both parents working it's not a new thing, plenty of parents worked in the 70/80/90s. The difference might be the 'me me me' culture that became prevalent since the Thatcher/Reagan era which rubs off on the children.
My niece is 8 and has thrown chairs at teachers, toys and almost anything that isn’t nailed down.
She’s been excluded from school more times than I can remember.
She’ll screech until she gets what she wants. For a while she didn’t have to wear the uniform into school to try and keep her quiet.
All her mother does, is make it worse by telling her she needs to express her individuality. She’s always given into every whim that child has.
My sister also threatened a teachers life in conversation with another parent and is now banned from the school grounds as a result.
I just feel awful for the school (I certainly wouldn’t want to deal with my niece on a daily basis)
If you had an unlimited budget and resources, how would you treat your niece - with the aim of turning her into a happy, well-adjusted member of society in a few years' time?
I mean I’m not a psychologist but I think a large part of the problem is that she has been removed from her mothers care and placed with other family members multiple times in the last 3 years.
I personally don’t think the contact she has with her mum is beneficial but social services seem to disagree and they keep sending her back to live with her mum. She hasn’t lived with her mother for more than 2 consecutive weeks in the last 3 years as there’s either a reason for her to be removed again or my sister drops her off with a family member and isn’t seen again for at least a week.
If I had to make the decisions, I’d just scrap her contact with her mother completely. Her behaviour always worsens when she’s around her and gets better the longer she’s removed from her. I’d also get her into therapy as she’s been abandoned over and over again over the past 3 years. Part of no contact with her mother would also mean she’d get to stay in the same household permanently instead of being moved back and forth.
Unfortunately this won’t happen as Social loves sending the kids back to their mum. I also have no input on any of this anyway as I fell out with my sister 3 years ago over her treatment towards other family members that are picking up her slack.
I mean she’s done this to all 5 of her kids to some degree.
The oldest is 19 and about to give birth to her first child (this is not going well).
The next one is 17 and I honestly think she’ll cope the best with life out of all of them. She’s much more mature than her older sister
The next two have lived with their dad for a while now and I don’t really ever see them so can’t say exactly.
And then the youngest is obviously above mentioned niece. I honestly think she has a decent chance if social stopped forcing her back home and she had no/supervised contact with her mother.
It doesn’t help that when she sees her, her mum tells her that everyone in the family is working against her and are trying to steal her children, etc
She didn’t actually.
Had a really stable home life as a child.
She obviously has issues but she doesn’t do anything to help herself. Jumps from man to man with no concern for the kids she already has.
She just wasn’t made to be a mother. Some people aren’t and it wouldn’t be an issue if she hadn’t chosen to have 5 kids.
She’s very into them when they’re babies but loses interest once they start becoming more independent & difficult to manage around 2-3 years old and that’s when she starts to ignore them and will often have another baby.
This is a very interesting perspective. I hadn’t actually considered the wider family network and their view of a child’s behaviour, it must be very difficult to have family events together (if this is something that you do).
Thank you for sharing. Things can only improve if we’re honest about how things really are.
The working hours are fucking ridiculous. My husband is a teacher and when I say on this site how much he works there’s always some idiot who wants to argue with me, or someone telling me he’s having an affair or something. I mean, it would be a relief if that was what was going on because at least that’s solvable.
Not only do teachers work ridiculous hours that other professionals would laugh at, because they either get compensated or they get time back, but teachers don’t actually get paid for all these holidays everyone loves to bang on about. They get paid pro rata and technically only for a certain number of days. Add to that the fact that for the rest of their professional lives they’re also paying huge premium for holidays they actually do take, and it’s no wonder they’re all leaving. My husband doesn’t know a single person who doesn’t want to leave that job.
I’m with you. This is something parents have regularly brought up: “you’ve got more free time than any of us!”
Well, in case it’s escaped anybody’s notice: when you’re at school from early in the morning until late in the evening, there’s no time for doctors appointments; visiting the bank, general admin, looking after poorly family members, maintaining friendships, ad-hoc plans, weddings, funerals, reunions, entertainment such as concerts/theatre/comedy/you name it.
Most of these places are closed on weekends, and if they are open, they are far busier.
Last summer, my family member spent 14 hours of her Saturday transferring photos/videos of children’s school careers to USB sticks for all pupils in the year group as a leaving for secondary present. On a laptop last upgraded I think in 2018. This is just one example of a task that *isn’t* a teacher’s job, but ends up being one.
Bring back smacking your kids. So many little terrors have just never felt the back of a parents hand. Beating a child is evil, and you must show compassion and restraint, but I'm so often reminded of the phrase:
Teach them with love, or somebody else will do it without.
The rest of the West dealt away with "smacking" and can handle their kids just fine, it's really only the pathologically lazy British that think it's a good first resort.
It's not a good first resort, but leave it on the table.
Your kid hits a teacher at school is a good example of when to give them the first warning, never his your child out of anger or frustration and never use it as the first option but they have to fear consequences.
Had a bloody 15 year old push me on a train the other week on purpose, the way I swung round to start fighting until I saw the size of him, sombody one day isn't going to show restraint, all because mummy and daddy didn't want to smack little tarquin.
I'd much prefer a complete ban on physical punishment - I admit that being a parent is a challenge, a job from which we can't quit or resign, and takes effort - and if a ban is the only way that it'll actually make the lazy folks make an effort, then so be it.
The question I'd ask is why ar teachers so reqst to strike over pay - but not pupils behaviour.
And why to teachers support polices that negatively affect the behaviour of the pupils they teach!
Secularism, crime and disorder act, DEI, multiculturalism, smacking, benefits, and of course the one you are waiting for, good old mass immigration - pretty much everything that has had a negative effect on behaviour and accountability!
Do you honestly think promoting multiculturalism in schools is a bad thing? Same for secularism? As for benefits, have you ever taught kids who live in poverty? They are difficult to teach with benefits the level they are now, they would be worse if there was no safety net at all. As for smacking, kids should not live in fear of adults and kids who received corporal punishment are more likely to act violently themselves (because they are taught that violence is acceptable).
Yes I have mentored kids in poverty with violent parents ! I didn't say teaching , I said supporting policies - sorry you are not educated enough to know the difference.
Lol ! You are just proving my point by bleating all the polices that have made things worse for teachers!
You did not answer my question though: why are those negatively impacting children? We support those policies because they are shown to benefit children. I doubt the children you allegedly mentor want to be hit or to be raised in greater levels of poverty.
A couple of years ago, a kid brought a screwdriver into school with the intention of stabbing me because I wouldn’t let him sit where he wanted and SLT hushed it up. We don’t strike enough.
I see a lot of people agreeing, but what do people suggest is the solution to this? How does the state curb bad behavior in schools?
I live in Ipswich, this high school is in a super high poverty area, the kids are likely brought up in council estates mostly in this area.
Now I'm a liberal kind of person, and I really don't have any good ideas for the solution.
You exclude the kids? they get no education, no jobs, turn to crime.
There's no money to train the teachers better to specialise in this.
There's no money to have any specialists brought in.
But in the short, kids feel like they can do anything because there's zero repercussions on them. Parents should be held much more accountable, but this could lead to further issues. You can't fine people in poverty for this kind of thing and this needs extra support to prevent abuse of the kids.
Basically, invest more into the damn education system.
I don’t know why anyone would want to be a teacher these days. Horrible brats, unacceptable behaviour and attitudes, fucking awful parents, management that continually undermines their position, relatively poor wages. It used to be a position that folk aspired to and commanded respect. Not now, the shite from the bottom of the gene pool has eroded basic human decency and standards.
Boohoo just another reason for teachers not to turn to up work while being paid while anybody else would get a government fine if they kept their children out of school, this is what happens with coddled entitled children and soft arse left wing teachers who cry constantly and can't work out what a woman is
The state has made it very hard, nigh on impossible, to exclude pupils even where they are dangerous to staff and other pupils and violent. I back the teachers in this all the way.
It's an example of our individualistic approach to everything. When we are looking at what to do with disruptive little Johnny, we mostly look at its effect on Johnny and his needs. But how it affects the 29 other children and the teacher is 30x more important than that. So that should be the biggest factor. And most of the time, they'd be a lot better off if he wasn't there.
Even when they do it's designed to mess up the school.
The school not only loses funding for that pupil (not pro rata either they lose the entire years funding but have to pay more than double that fee to send them to another school that will have them. Effectively losing 3 pupils worth of funding when schools already struggle for cash as academies suck them dry...
I work in FE but we have similar problems - I've heard of kids on their 12th "last warning" for behaviour, kids committing indecent acts in public and being let off, lads waiting outside of classes to beat up girls, lads shouting homophobic abuse across the library and just being told to keep it down.
When I said we should drag them to the entrance and kick them down the steps never to return - or even call the police - it was like I was the mental one.
Its a funding thing- more bums on seats means more money into the college so they know they'll never be expelled.
Yup. The only alternative teachers have (and have been taking for years) is quitting the career outright. We've lost countless passionate teachers to unruly classrooms that they have been disempowered to control.
Ugh. Apparently not. The last school I was at we were literally assaulted every. Single. Day. One of the children broke my TAs arm and pulled down a load of shelves on top of a pregnant colleague. We would go home covered in bruises from being kicked and punched all day. By a six year old. And the response we got was ‘what harm can a six year old do?’… we shouldn’t have to go to work and be physically assaulted but it’s normalised like it’s fine and we should just deal with it. It’s honestly horrendous having to deal with violent children who physically assault you regularly. Parents need to be held accountable. We aren’t equipped to deal with the behaviour we’re seeing. It cannot possibly be just on schools.
On top of that, the other kids either normalise this behaviour 'It's just Tommy being angry again.' or become scared to come to school.
I had a violent child in my Year 1 class last year (had to to evacuate daily due to him throwing things around the class) and almost nothing happened until parents started complaining because their kids were crying in the morning scared to come into school because they might get hurt.
In my safeguarding training we were told that witnessing violence (eg one parent beating another) was abuse that should trigger intervention. Yet every child was a victim of such abuse, witnessing violence in the classroom almost daily and fearing they may become a victim of it.
Oh my goodness yes. We were told to evacuate the whole classroom when this one kid kicked off. Eventually they got so used to it they’d just do it automatically and honestly it was super sad to see how resigned they were to it. At five and six. It’s so unfair for them
Evacuate the classroom? If that were to happen when I was still at school, there would definitely be people egging the kid on to be a little shit so they didn't have to sit in the lesson. Instead what they did was remove the little shit so everyone else could actually continue with their lessons. I suppose there's just not enough staff available to do this now?
It's not possible to remove the child. It doesn't matter how much of a little shit they are, teachers are literally powerless. Most students aren't about to risk being hit by Lardo. For fear that he'll try bite them.
I'm not saying teachers should be able to hit kids. But I genuinely think teachers should be able to grab and drag unruly kids from the class.
I was, unfortunately, in the lower sets in school. Failed pretty much everything bar one of the sciences. Had to rectify that in college. I wasn't the best kid, I'll admit. But I wasn't as bad as most of them. I remember seeing a kid spray bread with deodorant and eat it. Another one ran across the tables. This was in secondary, btw.
It sucked ass being stupid. Because it was impossible to learn in the lower sets.
Basically, no, they do not. My husband is a teacher and I’ve had this conversation with him and there’s no expectation that teachers and school staff should be kept safe from violence from children.
A teacher I know had to continually go through hell getting compensation for nerve damage from a chair bring thrown at her.
The council did everything they could to not pay and it was only through the union pushing her to keep fighting that she eventually got a payout.
They don't care.
Yup
I was a teacher in a rough school at one point. I had damn good behaviour management - the kids respected me, they listened to me, they actually really liked me too. We got on really well.
I still, in the one year I was at that school, had chairs/books/scissors/pens/rulers/phones/bunsen burners/scalpels/petri dishes/etc thrown at me, was called every name under the sun, was hit, pushed, kicked, screamed at, sworn at, spat at... The difference between teachers who were respected and teachers who weren't was whether they were actually sorry afterwards.
But, there are no repercussions because SLT are too overwhelmed by the big stuff to care about "low-level" abuse issues, parents simply do not care or know how to parent (one even asked me to give their child a detention because they were disrespectful at home - like, no, you reinforce us, not the other way around) and the kids have figured out that we cannot actually do a singe thing. Detention? Don't go. Afterschool detention? Don't go. Parents called in? Don't go. Suspended? Turn up anyway. We can't do anything until it gets to the point of actually calling the police.
I support it.
I've never seen parents take such a back seat in their kids behaviour and education when it comes to school.
Like how bad do parents need to be where teachers are implementing teeth brushing classes for small children because their parents don't do it.
That has always been the case. Just because you didn't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen. For example see this study comparing figures from the 70s through to the 10s
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282352900_Forty_years_of_national_surveys_An_overview_of_children's_dental_health_from_1973-2013
I'm not arguing that this isn't a terrible way for parents to act but I think there is a narrative in the media that parents are uniquely terrible today and I don't think that's true. I think schools (management and government policy) are failing teachers and the children in mainstream with the highest level of needs.
How interesting. Thank you for this, great read.
I think you're right to an extent but poverty is higher now, so while the standard of living may have even increased from the 70s, there seems to be more children who are poorer and usually have poor hygiene. Teachers have said the kids are much worse behaved and that is down to parents, nobody else imo.
Discipline seems to have fallen massively. I don't mean hitting your child, i mean giving them actual consequences to their actions. I think this is more than just a media narrative. Teachers have never been so overworked, depressed and attack and hurt physically than before.
Poverty was much worse in the past. Inequality is higher now (the rich are richer) but absolute poverty is lower although there has been a slight increase over the past few years.
https://www.economicsobservatory.com/what-has-happened-to-child-poverty-in-the-uk-over-the-last-30-years
What you are probably seeing is the result of inclusion and attendance policies. In the past the children with the most disruptive behaviour or whose parental neglect led to a combination of poor hygiene and delayed development would either bunk off, parents would enforce school attendance only sporadically (and not much effort made to chase either of these things up) or they would be shunted off into ESN (literally, educationally sub-normal) schools which were poorly regulated and many provided next to no education at all.
Even in the Victorian times when education was first standardised you had the normal schools and then separate "ragged schools" for the children who were too poor to have proper clothing, shoes and access to water for hygiene use. Children who are "not fit" for mainstream schooling have been sidelined for a very long time.
By the late 90s with centralisation of records making the numbers clear and concerns about these things growing there was a stand made that attendance needed to be improved and pupils without significant disabilities needed to be included in mainstream schools. I think it's true that in the past, we failed those children by letting them fall through the cracks or be written off and not given an education, but I also think that efforts to change this have been terribly thought out - it's like all the things which have been put in place made the assumption that if you get "bums on seats" in schools, the outcomes will be the same as the children who were remaining in mainstream schools previously, and they haven't bothered to look at all the reasons why some children stay in mainstream schools whereas some children don't attend or why ESN and other specialist schools were set up and used in the first place.
So essentially you have a small number of pupils who require a hugely disproportionate amount of staff time and energy in schools today who would not have been there previously. Teacher training, pay and support has not increased sufficiently to handle this, in fact budget cuts have reduced training, effectively reduced pay, reduced support, increased distance between management and teachers and increased expectations even aside from the huge extra amount of work posed by these children. This creates a knock on effect where the other pupils become distracted and influenced or stressed out and can't learn or behave as well. Teachers are becoming burnt out and stressed and that in turn makes it harder to do their best. It's an impossible negative cycle and the same story is happening in a lot of areas outside schooling as well - support services like CAMHS, health visiting, social services, sure start, have all been stripped down to the point they are barely functional while being made responsible for larger and larger areas.
I wouldn't be surprised if parents are also subject to all these stresses as well and that is not helping, but in general, I don't think there is a crisis in parenting, I think that is an easy media finger to point. If anything I think parenting improves over time as a general trend (ie, most people on average parent better than their own parents did). There will always be parents who can't or won't do well but I think that we are more aware of it today whereas in the past it was less visible if you weren't in or working with that group yourself.
Y'know, you don't have to reply if you are bored of a thread. I'm not trying to win anything here, I just think there are a lot of genuine misconceptions. I could be wrong - happy to chat about it if anyone has the interest and time spare.
TL;DR summary is the same as the previous post. All this stuff has always happened but in the past it was less visible.
Most teachers teach because they enjoy it. You have to go to university and then do training and you end up being paid relatively little. That sort of person is not striking for the fun of it.
Too many parents dump all their responsibility for their kids on schools and it doesn't work. Support these people.
Teachers are there to teach, not raise your kids yes they can be amazing beneficial assists to helping kids grow up..but make no mistake they don't have to put up with your crappy parenting when your kid acts up. We didn't take the piss at school not because we were scared of getting a hiding but because it was instilled in all of us..take the piss pay the price..now parents will come into school to moan about their kid getting " picked on" because he or she was taking the piss.
When I worked in a school I worked a 65-hour week in term time, so it evens out over the year.
Anyone who has lived with a teacher knows that the last week of each holiday (ie all of a half term) is taken up with planning, marking, etc, and that the first week of each holiday is typically taken up with illness as their bodies finally succumb to all the germs the vectors share.
I missed out on a lot of family time around exam seasons as my Dad would be in school for several days of the half term.
He and his colleagues would be trying to squeeze *some* coursework out of kids who clearly didn’t give a shit. Nor did their parents, from some stories he told me.
When I taught in England, I would usually mark at school.
However I would often stay at work until 7pm most days finishing off my marking and planning.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here.
I’m so bored of debunking this bullshit. Stop parroting the crap you read in the daily mail comments and actually try some critical thinking or some rudimentary research. Or you know actually listening to people who do the actual job.
Yes, because lesson planning is something they pull out of their arse. Marking kids work and making improvement plans for the kids don't exist. Creating reports for parents, planning school events, admin, before and after school clubs, it never happens. Professional development isn't a thing. Teachers just walk into a room and wing it. Just because the education system is something you clearly know nothing about, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
When I was a teacher, I was working more hours than I do now over the course of the year, including all of the "holidays". I now work 35 hours a week and have 30 days' annual leave, plus bank holidays. Even with less "holidays" on paper I work less hours than I ever did when I was working in schools.
Hellish job, wouldn't recommend.
Except they do far longer days than average, often work on weekends, spend several days to a week sick at the beginning of school breaks and still often go into work at some point during that time. Also are then forced to pay a premium to go on holiday and they can’t book leave any other time of year.
That's incredibly reductive.
They're striking because the childrens' behaviour means their job is now unsustainable to them. Either they aren't getting the proper support so the bad behaviour of 5% is disrupting classes for the other 95% or they aren't being paid enough to be expected to teach and deal with special educational needs.
They're not saying "Billy called me a bitch so I'm going on strike!"
Most of the comments are about how bad kids are and how they need to be shipped off to borstal. None of the top level comments higher than this one mention the idea that teachers could be asking for more support in the classroom to manage pupils increasing levels of need.
I back the teachers on this completely my neice is a high school teacher had an issue with a student inappropriately touching her , during the investigation her boss asked her if she was sure she wanted to continue due to the impact that it would have on the young lad , this wasn't the first time he had done this to a teacher either
I was at a school when the shift happened; it used to be the teachers telling the parents to do better at home and now it’s the parents shouting at the teachers because they’re kid is a scumbag. I think I was in my last year of 6th form when it all started to really shift. And now look at the state of everything.
Going from 90s London. the level of abuse that our teachers took was on the level that would get a husband prison time.
I remember the kids singing that Jamaican song about hanging gay people every time they walked past this gay teacher.
We had a transwoman teacher at our school in the 00s for about a year, and the level of abuse was unbelievable. I actually can't believe it looking back but I remember. She didn't teach any of my classes but the stories that went around the playground and never a single word from management or any other teacher condemning it or trying to combat ignorance with education. Absolutely horrific.
What was the old saying? "Spare the rod and spoil the child"?
I am not necessarily condoning violence towards children but what are the consequences of poor behaviour in schools? What is an effective discipline method that can be used by teachers to control unruly children and what measures should be brought against parents for their children being badly behaved? When I was at school the threat of a damn good hiding from my parents or getting the cane or the slipper at school was very much a deciding factor in how much stupid shit I did as was the threat of being sent to borstal.
As much as cowing a child into submission can seem to solve the problem at the time, research shows that children who are physically disciplined are more likely to engage in violence later on in life (as well as lots of other potential consequences) so society would not be likely to get a net-win out of it, would probably just give them a load more reasons to lash out when they're big enough to do so without fear of the slipper
"Spare the rod" doesn't refer to corporal punishment. It refers to discipline in general
There's a lad down the road from me. Captain of high school football team he's in. I also know he's a vicious horrible little shit to everyone but the PE teacher who treats him like he's the next fucking Pele.
Imagine how sharply his behaviour would improve if he got told that because he was a little shit in chemistry he's not captain at today's match. He's not even starting. Nor is he sub or reserve. He can watch the match from the audience...because such conduct is not appropriate from someone who wants to represent their school in sport. He can't have both worlds of calling the biology teacher a manky fat slag for setting homework but then celebrating in the emblem, motto and stripes of that very same school when he scores the winning penalty...
It's one or both
Most schools though refuse to employ carrot and stick "the rod". They find the carrot "oh this lad loves footy and is actually a really pleasant student in PE" and then just endlessly feed him carrot in hopes of an overall shift in behaviour, what they should be doing is using the rod..."that lesson/activity you really enjoy? We take it away unless you start behaving like you do for the PE teacher in every lesson." - no grade demands or anything. Pure behaviour based. If he's nice in chemistry and treats the chemistry teacher nicely but he's still shooting for a U at GCSE that's fine.
You don't know the full story though. A lot of kids with behavioural issues have underlying problems like ADHD or foetal alcohol exposure, learning difficulties causing classwork to be stressful or just utterly shitty home lives, or any combination of the above, and traditional discipline (if you do this, something will happen that you don't like) tends not to help because it doesn't solve any of the underlying problems and they don't have the skills to replace that behaviour with better behaviour. Kids like that are extremely hard to work with and if they do have an area where they do well, if you take that away then they have nothing and will most likely turn out to be a thug, criminal, addict, extremist - whatever they find that they feel successful in.
It might be they are working on smaller shifts like no physical violence and once these better habits are established they will move onto verbal abuse of teachers etc. You can't change someone's entire learned behaviour overnight. It's shitty for the teachers to have to deal with in the meantime and I do think it would be better not for this kind of work to be happening in mainstream schools. Staff dealing with this kind of thing need higher pay, less workload in general e.g. smaller class sizes and good support from management including mental health support and training like you get in other high stress professions such as police. It's a different job to what most people think of as teaching and IMO it would help to separate those out (but not dump behaviourally challenging kids into the old ESN schools where they didn't bother to teach them anything at all).
Teachers striking is a good thing but it's not children and parents they are striking for. It's management and the entire education system, it's not working, it needs a dramatic overhaul.
>the threat of a damn good hiding from my parents
This right here. I didnt act up at school not because I was bothered about teachers shouting at me or getting detentions. It was because my very loving and nurturing parents could make my life a very miserable existence for a couple of weeks. No phone, tv or xbox to a 14 year old me was equal to torture.
It's not even corporal punishment and the like. You can raise a child well without ever having to raise a hand. No this issue, right here, is due to a complete lack of parenting at all.
Not just lack of parenting but encouragement of poor behaviour.
When parents themselves are immature, they find serious things funny.
One of my siblings teaches her kids all sorts of swear words when they’re little because she finds it funny so they obviously use these at school later on and don’t see the problem.
One of my nephews cut the teachers hair (he was 6 at the time I believe) and she started laughing when the school told her so he obviously learned nothing from it.
Its parents telling their kids that the teachers have no business telling them what to do and actively encouraging their kids to go against the rules because they’re not sheep that are causing larger issues.
I've long suspected part of the problem is generational. People who were utter shitheads and didn't respect teachers when they were at school end up living vicariously through their children and raising another generation of shitheads. Question is how do you break this cycle.
Yep, we had a decent successful period of schools not having corporal punishment for several decades before we started to have these serious behaviour issues. It very much seems to be a recent trend from what I hear.
Parents need to finally take some responsibility for raising their kids, not just creating them.
Parents just sit kids in front of an iPad and go about their business, so it’s no wonder we have a generation of feral kids.
Increase in stabbings, thefts, mental health crisis ( yes people blame social media, but it’s the parents that are plonking their kids in front of a tablet and or not limiting their time online and encouraging them to go outdoors ).
My Partner & sister are both Primary school teachers. They've told me stories of kids physically attacking teachers countless times and the odd tale of a knife being brought in. The problem is for them, they're understaffed in most schools and unable to keep control of any problem children due to the constant attention they need but cant be given because of the other 30+ kids in the room and when a child does become violent the procedure is to escort the rest of the class out and leave the child in there alone with a teacher, which could be seen as a success for any child acting out (as well as a dangerous situation for a teacher), so it happens again and again.
As for what can be done about pupil's behavior - proper parenting, the amount of times I've heard them come back and tell me after a child has acted out the parents have said "So what are you going to do about it?" like its not their responsibility to deal with the actions of their child. Parents need to learn that kids aren't your friends so stop trying to be one, nor are they something that can be given an iPad while you scroll TikTok - the kids act out 9/10 for attention and if the only time their parents give them any is when they are doing wrong, guess what they're going to keep doing.
Well the first iPad came out 15 years ago, and the unruly secondary kids round my ways would have been in their formative secondary year's during lockdown. Poor fuckers didn't stand a chance
My mum works at a primary school (TA) and honestly I’m not sure what a strike would do. The biggest problem seems to be that there’s so many kids who need specialised care, but there aren’t places in schools that can take them so they end up in mainstream schools that aren’t equipped to deal with them. These kids then misbehave because they’re not in the right environment. It’s not fair on the teachers, it’s not fair on the child acting out, and it’s not fair on all the other kids in the class.
(That being said, sometimes the parents make situations 100 times worse. I hear stories about kids being straight up bullying others, and if the bully gets in trouble their parents show up and have a go at the teacher for trying to discipline their “ADHD baby”)
The state of UK youth is absolutely abhorrent nowadays. I'm all for the teachers both in Primary and Secondary education.
Bring back [dunce shaming](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dunce_hat.jpg) for these little cretins.
Its amazing to talk to my mum who went to school in the 60's and hear what it was like - kids all sat in silence, ramrod straight, copying Latin verbs despite how boring it was. Because if they talked? Belted. Moved about? Belted. Slouched? Belted. And then when they got home their dads belted them again for getting belted.
I'm not saying we need to go back to that but we have to accept that it worked.
Then you suspend them and fine the parents. And if the parents don't want to pay, then it should be a full exclusion without a managed move.
The truth is that a number of kids run wild because quite simply, they now know they're untouchable. Young people learn a lot and fall into line when some truly scares them.
Getting suspended from school doesn't scare them - lads in my school used to arrange fights to get a suspension then the same two that had been fighting were out in town together the next day.
I know. I'm talking about in an idea world. As for the fine, we make people pay fines regardless of if they can pay them or not. No SEND needs? No excuses, pay or the childs education is terminated until it is paid. I imagine they'd find the money.
Good luck to teachers. Parents should be forced into responsibility, by fining - taking direct from source from benefits deductions - if necessary.
It is not up to teachers to try to socialise kids. That is the parents' job.
Something seems to have happened over the 2010's. When I was in school in the 2000s what few problem children my high school had were taken out of lessons as necessary, had the police intervene if violent, and ultimately expelled. And even in the 2000s most students and teachers seemed to agree that the schools were being given less and less options to deal with and did a bad job at it.
I'm so lucky that my current area seems ok, no primary school horror stories from my daughter or parents with multiple older children who've already gone through.
But we have noticed the teachers can't even give a crying tripped 4 year old a hug anymore, and only the explicitly trained ones are allowed so much to check a finger plaster.
Something in the bureaucracy went wrong, and it seems to have been a long time after physical punishment ended so restoring that doesnt seem like a genuine quick fix.
Thats not to mention how budgets have been savaged by government and education boards, and private profiteering introduced into the mix with the 'acadamisation' scheme and how every year exam boards seem to fundamentally not function in an expensive time consuming way. All of that would remain still cause most of the problems even if caning came back tomorrow
Ofcourse they’re right to be striking, I know a few people who work in education and the kids have all the power and they know it, and it’s ingrained in them from their earliest experiences of school these days. Theres nothing those in power can do about hands off parenting but they can at least give teachers more power to take control in the classroom without fear of being reprimanded or losing their job. The fear of children and their families crying mistreatment is what has led to this issue.
It is possible for leaders to get a grip on poor behaviour, even in the mistaken disadvantaged areas. I've worked in schools rated Good where the behaviour was appalling, and in Requires Improvement schools where they had a good system in place. The key is respecting your staff and supporting them. It looks as though these staff feel utterly abandoned. A well-publicised strike should shake things up pretty quickly. In the long run, striking is better for students otherwise things don't change.
An issue I saw in reaching was a lot of "teach first" types being parachuted into disadvantaged schools who were not listening or respecting behaviour systems already in place and for the most part working.
They usually got promoted to leadership as had a sense of entitlement about it and needing bums on seats. These schools let that go on. Experienced staff left in their droves and were replaced by early career teachers, who usually need more support and a robust behaviour system to cope. Guess what had been changed beyond recognition by new leadership?
Hence, worsening incidents, escalation of incidents, and ar a time where it's very hard to exclude students now.
I did Teach First and would have loved to have some kind of discipline system in place. There was nothing. If I put a kid on detention I was the one who had to be there, there was no grouping system for me to be with another teacher. Was I going to put a gigantic 16 year old on detention for hitting me and then spend an hour alone with him? Obviously not. So he got no punishment and learned that actions don't have consequences.
I was given all remedial classes with SEN students mixed with the ones with behavioural issues who'd been expelled from other schools. Oh, and one top class. Meanwhile the established teachers had all the mid range classes and loved to claim they had a great rapport with their students which was why they got such good behaviour. They couldn't control my classes, but they loved to sneer.
As a Teach First teacher I was doing a full time teaching job with just 6 weeks of training - which, let me tell you, was pathetic - and a masters at the same time, and I was paid £19,000 a year, so I was earning less than the teaching assistants. This is why crappy schools hire from teach first. We were so cheap! Yet the other teachers seemed jealous, like we had some kind of privilege they didn't.
The teachers who have gone through proper training have no idea what a miserable time you’re having as a Teach First teacher, apparently don't know you're just a trainee, and in my experience offered zero moral or practical support or sense of teamwork.
God I'm glad I quit doing that to myself. I'm not surprised if the ones who survive it think they're the bees knees.
That's not right and I'm sorry experienced staff did not help, one thing I always told trainees was to give detention to at least 2 students just from a safeguarding view, or to refer single student to departmental detention.
I didn't do that to my teacher first trainees nor any other trainee.
However, my non teach first experience was similar in being given tougher classes either by level and extent of needs or behaviour issues. Suppose that's a thing about starting new. Had experienced staff drop unhelpful comments and interfere when they were in privileged spots e.g. teaching sixth form only.
Tough initiaition is Partly to help you meet teacher standards because as you say training isn't enough (applies to pgce as well) on training years and partly test of mettle and commitment to a challenging role.
On that note, noticing some of the language you used to describe children and TAs, whom I value immensely regardless of wage, their support and knowledge of students was a huge boost to my lessons, I'm glad you quit too. Hope you are happier in what you do now
Well children are feral these days and no one is allowed to punish or discipline them. No smack on the bum, not raised voices. Just kneel down and ask them real nice if they could start behaving please. Then send them off to the teachers to deal with where there are even less consequences.
Shops won't touch shoplifters, cops won't come out for petty thefts and antisocial behaviour, parents can't/won't disciplines children without the threat of being labeled an abuser. No suprise that a lack of consequences has led to a degrading of social standards, in schools specifically.
I wouldn't just be striking, I'd quit.
And yeah, Reddit will absolutely hate that I seem to be in favour of a smacked bum for little shits. But you can't deny it's getting worse and worse. This handling every child with silk gloves and wishful thinking is NOT working.
Sometimes I wonder if we need to consider some perspectives and suggestions more seriously than others. There has never been a positive correlation between corporal punishment and genuine good behaviour - I say "genuine" because it's akin to acting out of fear instead of a real desire to be decent.
I don’t know about others on here, but I left school in the mid-late noughties and going off the examples below, there was little to nothing of that. What on Earth has happened to the standard of parenting that has allowed essentially feral beings into our classrooms and playgrounds? I wonder how long this will last when these same children leave school and try to enter the workforce or even just higher education.
My son was strangled yesterday by a boy in his form. Same child has bitten my son before and attacked others in the class, as well as the teachers.
Nothing will happen because the child has needs. There won't be any consequences and my child will continue to have to avoid being anywhere near him as much as possible.
So I 100% support teachers in this. Even though it will likely inconvenience my family. Kids like the child who has attacked my son are not in the right settings and getting the right support. Something needs to change. It's not just the staff who are affected. My child is a good egg. He wants to learn and get on in class, but his learning experience is being hampered by poor behaviour of others and it's not fair.
I’m all for it. Teachers cant do anything to students that assault them. My mum was a teacher, ended up taking early retirement because she had her ribs broken by a violent student. Parents don’t give a shit about what their kids do, so long as it doesn’t come back to the parents, but teachers regularly get assaulted
I taught in the UK for four years. Now I teach in Shanghai. It was the best decision I ever made. Nobody mentions the 12 hour days, constant sickness, daily verbal and physical abuse, or breakdowns in the classroom storage rooms.
Apart from prison guards, are there any other jobs where you spend every day with people who *hate* you?
At least prison guards have metal bars to protect them.
Train them to deal with it and pay them appropriately. That’s the solution.
I think it’s disgusting what we expect teachers to deal with these days for absolutely fuck all pay
"what can be done about pupils behaviour"
Punish the parents. Too often teachers will say they don't have the backing of the parents when attempting to discipline unruly pupils. There needs to be a legal recourse here that is meaningful and gets parents to take more responsibility for their offspring.
There’s an awful lot of parents who need to do an awful lot more in this country.
Teachers have been picking up the slack for far too long, and it’s finally getting close to boiling point. This is just the beginning.
Of course, the internet and social media don’t help, and they need to be seriously reconsidered.
Ex-teacher here.
I would wake at 6am dreading my day with certain classes. I've never felt stress like it - physical symptoms manifesting in my body, my back, my legs, anxiety and lack of appetite. You can lose 20 minutes at the beginning of a lesson due to crowd control, and 10 minutes at the end to tidy and pack away bags. What's the point of a half hour lesson for those kids that want to be there? What's the point of me planning for a 45 minute lesson when the same small percentage of the class can't access simple instructions they do every fucking hour of every day... Come in, sit in a chair, get your stuff together, say yes to a name on a register.
The school itself often doesn't have the structures in place to deal with these kids either. Sure, there's isolation rooms where you kick a kid out, and they get taken away but... Why do you have to go through all the hoops of a kid escalating? The root cause is that kid just doesn't want to be there, and their behaviours are pretty well baked in. It's worst in boys; there's this weird behaviour where we bully smart kids or kids who are genuinely trying. Like, somehow it's cool to be thick and rebel against education. I met so many naughty kids who's dad's were tradeys (nothing wrong with being a tradesman!) who said "*I regret not getting more from my education, and I want more for my boy*" but the whole system literally lets kids do what they want, and then there's the league table system... Honestly, government have shafted schools, and schools don't help themselves...
Then there's the parents... Jeez, you can start with the fact the ones you want to see are never present in that child's education, and the ones you don't need to see are always there. That tends to speak volumes - if the parents are engaged, the kids usually engaged. And I don't judge; some of these disengaged people might be working nights, or 2 or 3 jobs, or have their own issues they're struggling to deal with and scraping by with being a parent. Some parents get so many calls from the school, they think the schools out to get their kid. Some just side with their precious baby and forget teachers are professionals that tend to see more natural interactions between their kids and their peers than parents ever will...
I don't know what the answer is. It's complicated. But if you'd want an education system, surely you'd side with the teachers, 100%...
Those kids make teachers lives hell. The ruin the education system for the other kids.
3 strike rule. 3 big incidents and they are gone. So swearing at teachers, or 1 act of violence.
Let’s be clear children excluded 3 times aren’t getting an education anyway, so stop wasting resources.
Unfortunately, kids and young adults are bringing their online personas into the classroom and failing to recognise the difference between their anonymous online identities (without any consequences) and reality.
Teachers are facing explicit sexual harassment in class from students. Physical threats (leaving some teachers worried about even walking to their car) and cars being vandalised. 'Casual' racism and sexism. We've had an increase in cases being referred to the police due to student behaviour. To be clear - teachers are not dealing with normal classroom management issues.
On the flipside, trying to manage student behaviour is also facing a lot of backlash from both students and parents - particularly with claims of discrimination for students receiving poor punctuality notices or for not completing class work. I could go on.
We wouldn't allow it in a workplace and school is the working environment for the teachers. If you were at your workplace facing constant humiliation and threatening behaviour, you wouldn't be long quitting or taking leave.
Jesus...
Should a child be punished for bad behaviour, of course, absolutely they should, but going back to the 70's like it was golden era is beyond stupid.
You don't destroy a child's life because they have shitty parents.
If a child is acting out it is because they have shitty parents, not because they are a shitty child.
You can both punish a child and teach them what they are doing is wrong and not acceptable whilst also supporting them because their parents are a waste of oxygen.
I disagree. At some point, as a child you become responsible for your behavour (definitely when you are in secondary school). And even if your home environment is not the best, that doesn't mean need to spit, bite, start fights, threaten rape, punch and kick teachers and other kids, start fires etc. None of that has anything to do with a challenging upbringing: there's plenty kids living in difficult situations who manage to not be a total terror for everyone else.
The kind of child you are describing is so rare I doubt they even register as a single percentage of the Pupil population.
You will always get extreme cases, hell when I was at school 20+ years ago a lad brought in his air rifle and started taking pot shots at teachers cars.
The problem, which has been the bane of Politics for years now, is people using extreme edge cases like they are the norm.
No one is saying that there hasn't been a markedly increase in poor pupil behaviour, but we stop talking like each and every pupil is doing the the kind of extreme things you are describing.
Of course the extreme cases are quite rare, but they affect so many other kids and a teacher's enjoyment and feeling of safety to do the job, that even if it's only 1:250 kids that's absolutely heinous, they need to be addressed. And forgetting about the extreme cases, there will be a non-negligible minority of kids who are disrespectful, disruptive, and who bully. Again, their behaviour will affect so many others and really impact everyone's learning, so these too need to be addressed.
I never said all kids behave terribly. One of the two schools I sat in on some classes was great, all the girls (girls school) behaved impeccably besides one or two who were disruptive and were immediately corrected.
I fully agree with them. I do IT Support in schools and I feel so sorry for the teachers. The students these days are nothing but thugs. The amount of verbal abuse and in many cases, physical, from students is mad. They're vandals too, constantly defacing school property and damaging equipment. They don't listen to teachers anymore.
we had to suspend a student yesterday because she and a friend bunked lessons , ran round school spraying teachers with these little twatty water pistols and told one to fuck off when challenged. her mother has emailed in saying its not her fault, she has ADHD and won't be punished at home, she also included a lovely sign off with "she'll enjoy the extra two days she is going to get at home".
No accountability, no support from home. parents turning up at reception threatening staff because their darling child had the phone they were using to record tiktoks in science taken off them, parents starting social media groups to hound teachers. bad kids are part of the problem but bad parenting is at the heart of it. I'm actually at a good school, but if we are struggling with this nonsense by a minority then you can imagine how hard, if not impossble, it is at schools with more of these types of students and parents.
the govt won't help, they put arbitary limits on exclusions. if a student is suspended for 15 days in a term then they tell us they need to be excluded, however too many exclusions in a school year and your in the shit with ofsted and local authority. So what are schools forced to do? keep kids in circulation that ruin school for everyone else. the man hour cost it eats everyday is in the tens of thoudands of pounds a year. wasted time, effort and resources that could improve school life for all, wasted. striking is all teachers have left.
Mollycoddled little shits handled with cotton wool are ripe candidates for going straight into prison when they leave school and wasting even more taxpayers' money. Misbehaviour needs to have proper consequences.
I have a son at primary school and a strike would be a big challenge for me to cope with.
But I support it 100%. Teachers put up with so much shit from feral pupils. I believe that teachers should have the right to strike over this. I also believe that the parents of shitty pupils should be held to account for the behaviour of their children when they make life hell for teachers and other pupils.
I support this, parents need to discipline their kids and not use school as daycare for their bad decisions.
They've lost their power and being told off just doesn't work when kids know they're are no consequences.
Our country was and always will be built on teachers and we treat them like utter shit, terrible wages and workloads...
I don't see how going on strike will change anything. This is just how people behave these days and there's not really much that can be done unfortunately
Absolutely.
Kids deserve a comfortable and safe learning environment.
All staff deserve a comfortable and safe work environment.
Some kids' behaviours is totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated. I think kids should be permanently expelled from school much more quickly with the duty then on the parents to figure out where/how the child will learn. I do not believe 29 kids and teaching staff should have to live with physical abuse or with constant verbal abuse and threats just to keep one mentally disturbed/unadjusted child in mainstream education. Much better to accept that this one child isn't going to amount to much anyways and let the parents figure it out so that the 29 well-behaved kids can actually learn and advance in their education and in life and so teachers will enjoy their work more and more people are attracted to the teaching profession. Of course child/social services should be involved so although the child is no longer going to a regular school, the child will get therapy, medication, whatever is needed for the child to have a chance of controlling the behaviour.
I was interested in getting into secondary school teaching because I liked my previous teaching/tutoring experience with young adults, I am outgoing, I love my subject (I have a STEM PhD). However, whilst researching education in the UK (I am not from here), I came across a post of a pregnant woman who was in teacher training and who had been physically assaulted by pupils (secondary school) and the school didn't think it was a big deal and her uni where she did the qualification said she should continue to still work there. My suggestion to file a police report and start collecting evidence of communications was considered ridiculous by the admin on the forum. I was flabbergasted by the attitude of teaching staff. It seems a lot of teaching staff have learned to live with violent threats, actual violence, disrespectful and disruptive behaviour, and it's all just tolerated. I'm not interested in working in that kind of environment.
In my home country, we separate kids into one of three streams when they are aged 12. This is all based on merit and has nothing to do with class, household income, education attainment by the parents, or where in the country you live. Average kids go to the medium stream, bright kids go to the highest stream, and kids who perform below average go to the lowest stream (which is also where you will see more social/behaviour issues). The requirements to teach as well as the salaries differ depending on which stream you want to teach/which age group (12-16 or 16-18). IMO this works well for most kids and it also allows teachers to choose to teach the type of kids they are interested in: some teachers want to teach vocational/practical, others want to teach academics. Some teachers have a real affinity for behaviour issues, others would prefer to avoid that as much as possible. I wish the UK had something like this as I probably would end up teaching. But I don't want to teach kids who do not want to learn, I do not want to teach academic subjects to kids who will just never "get it" (not their fault, which is why in my home country kids can start doing vocational training in secondary school already), and I do not want to be around disrespectful, menacing, and threatening behaviour.
My missus is in full support.
She once teached in a secondary school she now teaches in a prison with dangerous foreign criminals. sadly they behave a 1000 times better than any child she ever taught.
I won't stop them doing it but I really wonder what it is they intend to achieve, realistically. It's the parents who are responsible for fixing the problem, and the parents who have the kids whose behaviour needs fixing will be the least receptive to the message.
I have nothing but admiration for teachers, in any other work place what they have to put up with would not be tolerated.
A national strike by teachers would force the government to take the situation seriously.
Fuck shitty kids and their parents. Teachers who are paid awful money shouldn't be dealing with utter bullshit. They need more power to deal with bad behaviour
I remember and regret how much of cunt me and my classmates sometimes were and even though I considering going into teaching I also knew I wouldn't want to put up with that shit.
I agree on principal because something needs to be done, but in practice I don't see what they're hoping to achieve by this. If they could present some constructive demands (e.g. steps that could be taken to resolve the issue) then I'd fully support large scale (even national) teacher strikes until those demands were met.
Good for them. Maybe parents will consider socializing their children. Shoot — hold then back a year and they’ll understand what happens when you fuck around
I don’t blame the teachers. Actual parenting seems to have gone out the window. My cousin is a teacher (in Canada) and she’s still suffering physically, as well as fighting her insurance provider over injuries sustained after a very large autistic child jumped on her in class. Apparently, she made the “mistake” of saying no to the kid.
Beyond national service this isn't an issue thats going to be fixed by striking, lest we start striking the kids again. At least we have cattleprods these days.
Shitty parents enable this behaviour and gang up on the teacher when really, we need to be strict on young people because they don’t know right from wrong yet
Kids get away with far too much these days. They need to remove their phone access until the end of the school day, and if the parents need to contact them they can phone the school
If you give people an inch, they’ll take a mile
It's a tough position. The teachers are definitely right that at some point line must be drawn. They cannot be expected to teach kids that are abusive and threatening to staff or each other. It can be debated exactly where the line us, but from the stories I've heard we're well past it in any case.
The problem, and the reason it's a tough position, is their employer has no direct control over student behaviour. Most of the time, the striking work forces issues can be met by the employer simply throwing some more money at the problem or changing policies. The fight is to convince the employer to do this.
Fixing student behaviour is fundamentally out of their employers control, you can't just throw money in to the pot and magically make the kids behave, nor will policy changes magically fix the issue. It can get the worst of the kids out of the classroom, but.... now what do you do with them? You can't really expel them from the whole education system forever, so sooner or later someone will have to teach them. Even ignoring this, given the apparent decline in behaviour expelling the worst is only a temporary fix, sooner or later you'll be expelling most of the school and that just won't work.
The control of this lies with parents. They need to instill more respect and better behaviour in their kids. Unfortunately the strike is between teachers and their employers, so their employers have to fix it to get them back to work.... even though we've just said it's in the control of parents, not employers... its a sticky spot.
A friend used to be a secondary school teacher she had chairs and desks thrown at her. My parents sister is a primary school teacher and some students tried to burn the school down
Parents need to learn how to parent. If your little shit is interrupting a class they should be sent home and you made to come get them.
Don't want to be called daily to collect your kid? Be a parent and stop them being a little shit.
The Guardianistas have taken the power away from teaching and parenting for years. You are now in the situation that the first lot of idiots that weren't disciplined by their parents or teachers are now having their own idiots and those kids are even worse as it's been drummed into them that no one can discipline them, and that's something they play on. You see the same lack of respect shown to the police and other emergency services by the same idiots. I'm not an advocate of beating kids, even if that would be the ideal punishment, but bringing back respect will be a long, uphill battle.
You say that you're not an advocate of beating kids but your timeline for kids growing up without discipline and having their own kids lines up with the timing of smacking bans, so I'm curious as to whether this is what you're referring to? Otherwise what kind of discipline would you want to see to bring back respect?
Fair point, and luckily I don't need to have the answer as my kids have left school. Respect starts in the home and I like to think that I taught my kids have to enough for life in general, and that was without ever laying a finger on them. There is always a deterrent for something without requiring physical harm and probably nowadays removing internet access is the most effective means.
I can quite agree with that sentiment, but it leaves me a bit confused as to what you were referring to with your first point. Can I just ask what you meant when you said "Guardianistas have taken the power away from teaching and parenting"?
If you're not talking about physical, corporal punishment, what's been taken away?
Whether they're right depends on the behaviour in question.
Disruptive students? It sucks, but it's ultimately part of the job.
Outright violence? Perfectly acceptable.
One disruptive kid in a lesson ruins the lesson for 25+ kids. There is only one teacher and when they have to stop the class to deal with a problem child that is showing huge amounts of disrespect, they lose time teaching everyone else, they also are being publicly disrespected in front of the other kids, over and over again. How can they get their job done? How is that fair to anyone? The kid themselves probably has problems but needs the attention of someone who can dedicate time and attention to it.
Used to teach and I support this. You cannot do your job properly if 80% of your time is spent on behaviour management and it should be acceptable for parents to abdicate all responsibility to teachers regarding their kids' behaviour. It is bad enough with one or two persistent offenders (you pray every day those kids are ill so you have an easier day) but if you have whole groups mucking around then it becomes impossible to teach.
The downside is that whilst the strike is on, the awful children will be loose on our streets for longer.
For real though, I support the teachers. It's not a job I could ever do. Fair play to them for wanting better working conditions.
If students can’t behave to the extent they can’t teach then they’ve every right to strike. Sometimes teachers are put in danger from unruly or violent kids gone unchecked. Parents should also be making sure their children behave properly - teachers can only do so much
I think it's fair - I wish there was more of it in my day
It's a job with clients. Abusing pupils disrupt the service that can be delivered to pupils (clients) that want to learn and teachers should be able to do their job, not deal with antisocial behaviour
My immediate tongue in cheek observation: has there ever been a strike proposed that this sub didn't support?
With that out of the way, I do support this strike, but think the focus should be more on the institional side. Fundamentally I don't believe that the current generation in school are *as a whole* any worse than the generations before them, but the structures to tackle bad behaviour have been whittled away over time. Exclusions are much more difficult. Classes are larger. SEN provision has (rightly or wrongly) ballooned well beyond the ability to manage effectively. And amid all that, teachers are becoming an increasingly easy scapegoat for certain parents and particularly senior school leadership. It's not at all uncommon for a teacher to be challenged overruled by a senior staff member *in front of the students*, which should absolutely never happen.
Teachers, senior leadership and parents should be seen to be working together in lockstep, even if they might disagree behind the scenes. We need to stop atomising schools into a blend of hyper-specific behavioural plans and start grouping students better. If they need support then make sure it is dedicated support. If they're disruptive, make sure they can be swiftly removed from the environment without fuss, and without immediate challenge. Put in place a standardised appeal process so that if parents do want to challenge a decision, they can do so in writing only. That will empower teachers to make swift decisions without fearing they have a target on their back.
Basically, we need what some would call Joined Up Thinking.
Teachers absolutely need to be given better tools to manage children's behaviour. It's a corporate part of the job.
It's s good job a largr chunk of their time is non children contact
I know some teachers and have heard some absolute horror stories. The main problem is they just can’t teach the rest of the class when even just one pupil is being uncontrollably disruptive. Everybody loses.
What else can they do? When "parents" don't value education, go mad when their little darlings are reprimanded and have failed to install any notion of respect in their children the result is dangerous chaos. In the meanwhile, children who do want to learn have every lesson disrupted
My sister is a teacher in one of the roughest primary schools in Sheffield. Call me weak, but I don't think that being bitten should be near a daily occurrence tbh.
Teachers should be allowed one drop kick a week.
Just kidding, I don't actually have a solution. Seems there's no way we could possibly consider scumbag parents responsible for their kids' behaviour so down the spiral we continue.
I feel like, as with most strikes, it's somewhat counterintuitive. Much like in school when 5 kids can't shut up and the whole class is held behind, this penalises students by not providing them their education when they've not done anything wrong.
That being said, I do think that schools need more powers to deal with kids that are violent and disruptive and such.
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