Hi Ish Unfortunately this is not a rare occurance! I work at a school in Sussex. This school is in the middle of a deprived area where the children do not get the love, support and stable family life they deserve. There is no or little respect for anyone or anything and its a rare treat when you can sit down and have a one to one talk with a child. Individually the majority are lovely but there seems to have developed a pack culture and I think we can only blame ourselves for allwoing it to happen. It seems that PC has gone to the extreme and the children all know thier rights and will 'get you done for that'. I dont think corpral punishment is the answer as a lot of kids get that home in the extreme., but i do think we need to much stricter. Detentions dont work and a lot of the time they dont turn up anyway! I believe they should be excluded much quicker than we do, and phone parents and get them in more often. If we inconvenience them they will get punished at home. I think being tough for the next two years, clamping right down on unacceptable behaviour while doing more to build up their very low self esteem would work wonders. When i go back in sept i will be starting our first CU. (never done this before please pray)Thier are so many children out there who dont know Jesus and who need him more than they can understand. when they know his love they may start to know their own self worth. Trudi x