The Headmaster from Hell

Iam64

Some schools have greater discipline problems than others. It’s no surprise that the areas of high deprivation tend to have more disruptive children, more children with emotional and psychological problems than those in areas where parents are more likely to be in paid employment and to have been educated to A level or degree level.

I’ve never taught in primary nor high schools and I’ve had extensive contact with those schools. I was disgusted by your description of some schools as zoos David49. The children are not animals. The disruptive children almost all have either add/adhd/neurodiverse or/and from the kind of sad, difficult family backgrounds we can all describe.

We need to invest in our children. We need to invest in our teachers. We need to support parents who are struggling. Support services and CAMHs cut to the bone.

We also need to remember that inclusivity in schools, like care in the community, costs big money where we’ve simply had cost cutting

It's strange because Caldicot and surrounding villages in the catchment area are not an area of high deprivation. There may be troublemakers although more children than ever seem to have emotional and psychological problems and more and more families seem to be blended now.

Cumbrianmale56

The thing is, you have a really rebellious and disruptive pupil and no matter how many times the school puts them in detention, that they probably never attend, or contacts their parents, who might not be bothered, the school eventually uses the ultimate sanction and expels them. This might make life easier for the teachers and other pupils, but the pupil is probably wandering around the streets looking for trouble or is drifting into drugs.
To me, the best thing to do with these pupils, is to put them into some kind of special needs unit where teachers are trained to deal with these sorts of pupils and hopefully sort them out. Locally, way back, there was an approved school for very badly behaved pupils that was like a psrt time boarding school where the pupils had to stay from Monday to Friday and the discipline, while not brutal, was strict. One friend I know who was sent there for hitting teachers and refusing to attend school did well there and ended up in a decent job in constuction with a BMW. Probably without this school which closed in the mid eighties, he would have been written off and ended up on the dole or in jail.

To me, the best thing to do with these pupils, is to put them into some kind of special needs unit where teachers are trained to deal with these sorts of pupils and hopefully sort them out.

Closed down in this area just a few years ago, Cumbrianmale. Three of my friends worked at the local one and years ago DH would take some of the school leavers from there on the YTS scheme, long abandoned.

There are some pupils who, even if they come from settled and well off backgrounds, can still behave like utter monsters and delight in bullying other pupils and annoying teachers. A school in a well off area can have problems as much as in a poor area.
I can remember a family friend whose husband had his own business in Whitley Bay and the daughter attended a secondary school that was in a mostly middle class area. The school had issues with discipline, the country was just coming out of the punk era and there was quite a lot of bad behaviour, and the daughter and her friends decided one day to ambush the headmaster with eggs, yoghurt and milk. She was expelled and didn't give a damn eithe, as she thought it was a good laugh.

How is 'Saturday detention' a thing now?

A friend’s daughter was put in isolation last week and missed four lessons because her jumper was a crew neck not a vee neck. Surely contacting the adult in charge of buying the uniform would have been more appropriate. ( Not the school in the thread.)

Astitchintime

How is 'Saturday detention' a thing now?

I'm surprised the teachers unions haven't demanded double time for it. There used to be Saturday detentions at a local school until the seventies, but then the practice stopped( probably teachers wanting more money).
I used to always laugh when we were in detention, I got the school detention a couple of times, and we had to write essays about behaving in class and the importance of listening to teachers. We all knew they would go in the bin when we left the detention, so wrote any old rubbish down that had nothing to do with the subject, and it was never followed up.

I'm intrigued, Cumbrianmale: what did the parents of this girl do following her expulsion? Did they laugh, too, or were sanctions imposed?

Chocolatelovinggran

I'm intrigued, Cumbrianmale: what did the parents of this girl do following her expulsion? Did they laugh, too, or were sanctions imposed?

Hello, the parents were being divorced, but the father understandably was livid as it was the girl's GCE year. I think she ended up retaking her exams at a local college and I can't remember what happened to her afterwards.