Hello!

11 Comments

Teacher’s tell the ABC about the biggest classroom disruptions they have experienced.

One teacher tells ABC she had three Year 9 boys skip her class and smear their poo all over the school gymnasium walls, while others had been cursed with the full spectrum of offensive profanities.

Other teacher’s shared they have had a student pointing a replica gun at them, an entire class deciding to ignore the teacher in silent protest, chairs thrown, threats and overturned desks.

Two global reports have revealed Australian classrooms are among the most disorderly

Dr Sue Thompson from the Australian Council for Education and Research (ACER) said the environment is challenging for teachers.

“Level of noise and disorder reported in the classroom is one of the highest in the OECD [countries] and it’s a problem at grade 4 and grade 8 level as well as at year 9 and 10 level,” she said.

The Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said teachers and principals need more support, as well as parents playing their part in addressing the issue.

“Parents must be part of the solution this cannot be something that rests on the shoulders of teachers and principals alone because attitudes, respect are of course formed as much in the home environment and the rest of life as they are in the school community itself,” he said.

A Facebook poll conducted by 7 News Australia asking if parents are responsible for poorly behaved children?

So far out of 5160 votes, 71% replied YES!

Read more – Aussie kids falling behind at school due to poor parenting says expert

This is the first year for me as a high school parent and to say I am shocked at some of the behaviour I hear about is an understatement.

Chairs thrown in class. Swearing at teachers. Destroying equipment in the playground. And all this from a young girl.

Respect is something we need to continue to drum into our kids from toddler to teen and beyond. Gosh I remember we were always too scared to talk back to our teachers.  That is certainly not the case today!

Share your comments below.

Image – Getty Images

We may get commissions for purchases made using links in this post. Learn more.
  • parents are to blame for not controlling their kids or at least bringing them up to be decent people. this is disruptive behaviour for sure

    Reply

  • This is terrible!! I do believe that Australian children have some of the least respect for authority that I’ve ever seen.

    Reply

  • Lets see what Julia Gillard does about this!

    Reply

  • This area of ‘healing’ and ‘therapy’ does indeed need to comprehensively investigated.

    Reply

  • I would be devastated if my kids behaved that way, my step children behaved very poorly when they were younger and I was so embarrassed I refused to take them anywhere, now they are older they have improved a bit

    Reply

  • I found the last two sentences interesting ….and wonder why in this day and age we seem to be becoming worse instead of better in many cases. If we and society are raising these hell raisers what is the next generation going to be like? Just what are we doing differently? Well quite a lot actually.
    Are we supplying to much power to the child? One could say yes.
    We have stamped out corporal punishment but these children need to learn respect and learn there will be other repercussions for bad and unaccepted behaviour.

    Reply

  • What are the solutions to this problem in school communities? It would be good to have the other side of this debate and have some reports that plan to tackle the problem and achieve outcomes which empower the school communities. Everyone needs steps to tackle any problems such as how do you teach respect and how do you get children to act with respect? Just telling children to be respectful does not work, it has to be modelled and praised when it is displayed and discouraged when it is not. The approaches need to be consistent in all school communities.

    Reply

  • Unless the education system in SA (I don’t know if they are/were teaching the same information in schools interstate)has changed Mr. Birmingham needs to start in his “own backyard” In the late 1980s. Pupils who had just started school were told that they had rights. It wasn’t only a talk about physical abuse. They were told that if their parents yelled at them even if it wasn’t bad language it was verbal abuse. If they don’t want to do as the parents ask them to they don’t have to. Kids aren’t silly. I know of one who decided parents are adults – teachers are adults. They don’t have to do what the teachers ask them to do either. Parents can tell children they are not allowed to go out but they can’t physically touch them to prevent them. In other words kids have rights. What rights do the parents have???? If kids do something wrong the first thing asked is “where are the parents”? Admittedly some don’t care but others are “tearing their hair out” becuase they feel they are being prevented from raising the kids as they think they should. There was some very upset parents who requested a meeting with one particular School Principal. I can speak about all schools but I personallyadults who as children who were taught that in the frist month when they commences school at the age of 5.

    Reply

  • More needs to be done by parents to help teachers.

    Reply

  • Children need to respect the teachers and behave in the classroom.

    Reply

Post a comment

To post a review/comment please join us or login so we can allocate your points.

↥ Back to top

Thanks For Your Star Rating!

Would you like to add a written rating or just a star rating?

Write A Rating Just A Star Rating
Join