The Caretakers' Forum

Behaviour in schools is getting worse

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68674568

Saw it earlier, looked familiar

We all see it day to day.
The advent of SEND children forced into mainstream schools has only made the situation worse.

Vera wrote: ↑28th Mar 2024 at 8:25am We all see it day to day.
The advent of SEND children forced into mainstream schools has only made the situation worse.

Sure thing and makes me wonder if these children don’t skew the statistics.

You know by the amount of vandalism happening around school these days.

I have worked in both secondary and primary schools (currently primary) and the behaviour is definitely worse now than it has ever been especially with KS1. Our staff get little to no support from the HT everything is dusted of and polished up to maintain the schools pristine image, personally I think the entire approach to ''bad behaviour'' a bit of a joke the systems we have in place I have seen from a far the past 3 years and nothings changed same children each day same behaviour same approach the only thing that has happened is staff have left.

I love the way they always equate it to money.£1 million sounds quite a lot- but break that down to how many schools we have, how many pupils we have, it probably works out at 20p a pupil!! They need to report this type of detail for it to mean anything. Headline news are always billions/millions etc, but the harsh reality is spread over the population it is pennies per head, or 420 pupils times 20p equals £84 for my school or about 2 hours of help- look at it this way gets the message over that it is a mere drop in the ocean. Numbers are for illustration only and not necessarily accurate.

Definitely worse. I calculate the standard of behaviour in the school by counting the number of times in a week I have to unblock toilets or repair plumbing/dispenser items.
I have spent a lot of time this last two terms in the toilets.....

Although being retired I’m now out of the loop as regards to quantifying current school vandalism. But my first week as an assistant caretaker in a large comprehensive school in the mid 1970's was a real culture shock. The school had a resident carpenter with his own workshop to cope with the day-to-day damage and vandalism. Pulling doors off their hinges and breaking into locked classrooms was a common occurrence.

I remember once when the then 6 form students destroyed their common room, pulling down light fittings smashing windows and destroying everything in the toilets. I’m not completely sure what triggered the destruction but being of a similar age to the students back then I enquired and was told, “we did it for a laugh”…

I started to notice the behaviour changing and the respect that teachers had disappearing as far back as 1982. I blame the culture of me me me that Thatcher started from 1979 onwards and the changes to funding, and rules on behaviour etc that her Govt implemented over those and the many following years. It became very noticeable that Parents stopped supporting staff and believed everything that their little darlings told them. We had a thriving PTA that used to help the school but it disbanded in 1984 due to lack of Parental involvement, the parents then just became moaners and complainers and year by year this worsened to the point that one year the police were called for Parental bad behaviour and the parents were live streaming it on Facebook, just because the school tried to clamp down on the bad attitude and behaviour of the students.