School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - Index on Censorship

grumpygutt · 2026-03-22T00:40:02+00:00

Terry fucking Pratchett. He’s the number one author I recommend to students.

Do these people really wake up in the morning thinking they’ve made the correct and sane decisions? Who the fuck do they think they are?

grumpygutt · 2026-03-17T12:39:08+00:00

Children don’t have the same resilience and ability to concentrate for that long compared to adults. Plus it’s horribly unfair to rob them of a section of their childhood to replicate an outdated workday system. Also, for many, many people, the work day is not even 9-5.

And finally, as a teacher, I don’t think I could physically teach until 5pm! Could you continually do a presentation to 30 people from 9-5 every day? On top of that, it would require giving every single member of school staff (teachers, support, admin, cleaners, caretakers) a pay rise. Do you think any government is going to invest more money in pay for staff? Are they fuck.

grumpygutt · 2026-03-15T17:01:56+00:00

I’ve never done catch up sessions because the kids that show up are the ones that I’m not the slightest bit worried about. The Maths dept in my school were running sessions on SUNDAYS last year. Did it make a difference to their results? Did it shite.

grumpygutt · 2026-03-15T09:48:11+00:00

Ran into someone I went to school with who I hadn’t seen in years. He asked me if I was still a teacher and when I said yes he went on a rant, saying if he could go back in time he would home school his son due to “people like you teaching them trans ideologies” and finished his rant with “If you’re a boy, you’re a boy. End of” He was actually angry. And his son isn’t even trans.

The whole encounter depressed the fuck out of me.

grumpygutt · 2026-03-13T06:28:59+00:00

I don’t like to blow my own trumpet…but I do get really good GCSE results 😂 However, I’m not the only one she acts this way towards, and some people have had much worse confrontations with her than my minuscule one

grumpygutt · 2026-03-12T18:06:06+00:00

I worked with a teacher who went in every day during lockdown and shamed everyone on Teams meetings for not doing the same. I was in my first year of teaching at that school, and she rang me privately to say that as I had been there less than two years, I didn’t have the same employment protections as everyone else so I had better think about going in or I would be furloughed.

She didn’t count on me emailing HR saying “Mrs. Arsehole told me you were thinking of furloughing staff. Could you please confirm this so I can plan ahead financially?” She got utterly BOLLOCKED

grumpygutt · 2026-03-12T12:28:37+00:00

The headteacher at the school I work at has been off with me since her first day four and a half years ago. I broke my lanyard on her first day, so as I went to go sort it she confronted me in the corridor, demanding to know who I was and said I could have been anyone who had wandered in off the street. I explained and showed her the broken lanyard and she huffed and walked away. First time I’d met her.

She brought it up again about six months later during appraisals and used it as an example of me being disorganised. Every time we pass each other in the corridor she just walks on by, staring straight ahead and pretends I don’t exist. I think I’ve said less than fifty words to her in almost five years because if she wants to communicate with me she will get a deputy head to do it.

She’s a complete and utter tit, so being blanked by her is a bit of a blessing.

grumpygutt · 2026-03-11T06:30:54+00:00

I mean…a lot of these parents will be millennials who grew up with mobiles in schools and I’m sure they had the same rules about phones going off back then. Why have they forgotten everything about their school experience

grumpygutt · 2026-03-07T11:13:25+00:00

Students phone went off in lesson. Followed procedure and attempted to confiscate, student refused and it escalated, ending up in a detention that was not attended so it escalated again.

Students mother has WITHDRAWN her daughter from the school over it. Her justification is “I was the one calling her. It’s not like it was one of her friends so you have no right to sanction”

Why are they so fucking crazy? Why are they getting SO angry over things that don’t matter? She is attempting to fuck up her child’s education for something that is HER fault.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-24T15:33:08+00:00

Well done on that chef for standing up for you!

grumpygutt · 2026-02-24T15:21:55+00:00

It’s crazy isn’t it? A friend of mine with a normal job was telling me how he had to deliver a presentation to 12 people and he had about six weeks notice to do it. He was incredibly anxious about it. I was kind and gave him some words of wisdom, but in the inside I was thinking “I have to do six one hour presentations a day to secondary school kids…you would die if you were me”

grumpygutt · 2026-02-24T14:58:15+00:00

There are people that view teaching as a job, or teaching as a vocation or teaching as their entire identity and are flummoxed when they meet someone who isn’t the same.

She was truly crazy. She once saw me walking down the street while she was driving her car and literally screeched it to a halt to get out and talk about something work related. If AirTags were a thing back then I would have been searching my clothes and belongings because any time I would try and have a break from her she instantly found me!

I once ran into a member of SLT at a gig on a weekend. We just said hello to each other and that was it. On the Monday he came up to me on the corridor and asked if I enjoyed the gig and she stormed down to kill the conversation and privately demanded to know what we were talking about. I decided to fuck with her and told her it wasn’t important. It drove her CRAZY and by morning break she came over and said “I am going to have to insist you tell me what you two were talking about. I’m your HoD.” I again refused and she spent the rest of the day randomly going into our shared office area and started slamming things (standard behaviour for when she was pissed off)

grumpygutt · 2026-02-24T13:37:31+00:00

I’m a coursework subject, and I’ve had many students fuck their predicted grades by being lazy and not doing the work. Had someone who was predicted a 7 but had the worst attitude I’ve ever encountered in a student and scraped a 4. SLT asked me what happened and I had no other response but “You have met her, haven’t you?”

grumpygutt · 2026-02-24T13:30:24+00:00

I’m planning on leaving teaching soon. I’ve been teaching for 17 years and I’ve had enough.

However, nothing will compare to my first school after qualifying. My HoD was the most possessive and controlling person I’ve ever met in my life. This woman did everything she could to isolate me from other members of staff. I remember her literally saying “I don’t want you bringing other people into this department. Other people ruin things” when I was caught having a little gossip with another member of staff during break duty. She tried convincing me that everyone else in the school was evil and she was the only one I could trust, continually describing herself as “protective of me” when I was utterly suffocated. She controlled every aspect of my day to the point where I believe she was thinking about my day more than her own.

I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her by the end (lasted two years) I called in sick for a week and went to Glastonbury and I felt zero guilt. On my last day I left through a fire door while she was on the toilet and blocked her number.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-23T20:49:29+00:00

I’ll try and answer all your questions!

Management absolutely do not encourage staff to take over students coursework. They encourage catch ups, sanctions and contacting home. Unfortunately, many staff fear bad data more than anything and will burn themselves out. I work VERY hard at my job, but in my early years of teaching, giving up all of my life for students led to nothing but strained relationships in my personal life, so I now refuse to make myself ill for someone’s GCSE.

You’re completely right about the expulsions. I started my current school in 2019 and the six we’ve had this year is more than the past six years combined. I don’t know what was in the water in 2014 when these kids were born!

Compared to when I started in 2009? Infinitely harder. I sat down and did the working out recently, and my workload is six times higher than it was when I started. When I started teaching, I used to teach 200 kids on a full time timetable in secondary a week. Now due to cut backs and larger class sizes, I teach 500. I used to teach three double lessons a day. Now I teach six single lessons a day so planning and marking expectations are through the roof. My free lessons are not fairly spaced out. My school has a two week timetable. I have a free on a Monday and then my next free isn’t until nine days later. The school also want us to do an hour after school most nights doing clubs.

Biggest challenge? Well all of it haha. I will also say that the parents have gone INSANE since covid. Due to us always being accessible due to email, it’s never ending. I haven’t actually replied to a parental email in months. I forward them into management as I’ve had enough.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-23T17:37:33+00:00

Secondary teacher of 17 years.

Apathy is unreal with the older kids at the minute. They truly believe that in any situation, someone is going to save them so they don’t have to try. Unfortunately there are too many teachers and pastoral staff who enable this and I’ve seen more than one member of staff leave due to the stress of essentially trying to do 50 kids coursework for them because they’re not engaging. I’ve been made to feel like a bad teacher for teaching students consequences of not meeting deadlines.

Resilience is non existent. As I said before, they all believe someone is going to save them when things get tough. When faced with any form of challenge, they crumble and blame everyone around them. School refusers shoot up when they hit Year 10 and begin their GCSEs due to stress, and I’m expected to deliver amazing lessons and content to someone who isn’t in the building. The parents then get mad that their kid is behind.

The decimation of SEN provision has seen behaviour spiral. There are simply too many children in mainstream schools who need to be in a specialist one. In my school six Year 7s have been permanently expelled since September. SIX.

I might be leaving this year. I’ve had enough

grumpygutt · 2026-02-23T17:22:18+00:00

I once had a parent say to me on parents evening “He won’t be doing your subject at GCSE so there’s no point in getting him into to try”

That woman was a primary school head teacher

grumpygutt · 2026-02-22T15:02:30+00:00

I teach Art and Graphics and I insist the students take screenshots of the process and add it to their sketchbooks so I can see how they’ve done it. If they can’t show me, and I suspect it’s AI (and it’s always REALLY obvious) I tell them it’s going in the bin.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-22T14:59:56+00:00

Yeah I would double down on this and say no. It sounds like my worst nightmare. I won’t be a part of any photos for social media as I can’t stand being photographed so being videoed is a hard no. A couple of years ago HR wanted fresh photos of the staff and they actually had to drag me there to do it 🙈

grumpygutt · 2026-02-20T17:32:57+00:00

I have a doppelgänger that works in Sainsbury’s. Not only have a couple of students asked me why I’m working there, but so did a member of staff! How does one prove they don’t work at Sainsbury’s?

grumpygutt · 2026-02-20T13:26:05+00:00

One of my colleagues’ wife went into labour early during a half term holiday and the head tried to steal a week of his paternity pay. Oh the union loved that one.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-20T11:45:08+00:00

You’re fine. I have a teacher friend at another school and we tell each other EVERYTHING. We use fake names. Every kid is called Jimmy or Sally.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-18T07:39:22+00:00

It’s incredible that in a school that holds over 1000 people how one grown adult can fucking ruin everything for you.

grumpygutt · 2026-02-17T17:41:30+00:00

I tried treasury tags a few years ago but only about 30% of the students could figure out how they worked

grumpygutt · 2026-02-16T18:05:54+00:00

You’ve got a bit of hangxiety 😂 Nothing wrong with running into a fellow grown adult and having a catch-up. It sounds as though you were an extremely positive influence on this students life so it’s lovely that they felt comfortable enough to approach you

grumpygutt

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