The plague of bad behaviour in primary schools is getting worse |
In 2023, I wrote an article about the epidemic of bad behaviour plaguing British schools, blaming screen-obsessed kids and tuned-out parents for the rise in persistent low-level disruption since the pandemic. At the time, almost half of pupils said that they felt unsafe each week because of poor behaviour: a worrying but unsurprising statistic given the rise in permissive parenting styles means that behavioural boundaries are never properly established. Too many children never learn to properly respect teachers because their will always overrides the authority of the adults (or, dare I say it, adult) at home.
Three years on, and little seems to have changed; in fact, things have worsened. In 2024, a survey revealed that 84 per cent of teachers had been victims of physical or verbal abuse in the last 12 months, whilst one in five had been hit or punched by a pupil. In the academic year 2024-25, teachers handed out nearly a million suspensions – again, around a third of these were for physical or verbal assault – whilst more than 10,000 pupils were permanently excluded. Shockingly, nearly 2,000 children were suspended 10 times or more, which is a rise of 448 per cent since 2016-17.
It is particularly terrifying how young some of these suspended pupils are
It is particularly terrifying how........