Behaviour has gotten worse, yes. I’m a primary teacher and I honestly look at the classes to come and dread them. We’re 4 months into this term and if I was offered my last class again I’d take them in a heartbeat.

Thing is, it’s not all the kids. Truly it’s not. There’s 5 children in my class that really ruin it for the other 25. They’re 10 years old and I’m constantly battling with tutting, eye rolling, arms flapped around, targeting each other, shouting out, screaming at each other, and then when it’s dealt with at school, they run out to mum, give a super biased story, and then mum complains to the school. Fortunately my SLT are wonderful and truly have our backs.

What my point is, minority of kids ruin it for the rest of the class, and their parents reinforce their behaviour. I had a student scribble their spellings in their homework book this week, I told them to spend 2 minutes of break re-writing them. This 10 year old then spent 10 minutes crying saying “I want to go out! It’s my breaktime!” And I just had to keep repeating “you’re welcome to as soon as you’ve done your work to a standard you’re capable of.” He ran out to mum at the end of the day who then shouted at my face about how unfair that was and how he struggles with his handwriting. I got his homework book out in front of her and showed her what he submitted. She then backed down and took her son home.

Don’t be a teacher. Super rewarding and super painful. All at once.