To think change is desperately needed in schools?

@Thepeopleversuswork and @Theright1
Agreed (both posts). It sounds to me as though there are a huge number of different factors all meeting together here, and the first thing we need to do is to stop blaming and start working together on fixing.

I agree. Clearly there is a serious problem with parenting as documented on this thread and others but blaming working parents (and let’s be honest this means working mothers as no one ever challenges working fathers) is poor form and misguided and I call bullshit.

I’m not a teacher, a TA or a social worker so not at the the front line of this but I and the vast majority of my female friends have careers and none of our kids is violent, delinquent or disrespectful to the levels described here. They are not perfect kids by any stretch but nothing like this.

I’m pretty sure it’s not the hard working families who have high aspirations for their kids and where both parents work where discipline is breaking down, it’s more likely to be families where there is endemic worklessness. Or families with low aspirations or other problems.

The sorts of behaviour issues described here don’t generally correlate with families where two parents work and it’s irritating and misleading that this sweeping judgement of working mums is being roped into this debate.

There is a lot of parent bashing here. The rhetoric that these parents are lazy is in fact lazy and self-congratulatory.

My son has a speech delay. Otherwise no development issues and well behaved- nursery often comment on his good behaviour. My husband and I both work full-time but have organised our jobs so he only goes half days to nursery so we can have more 1-1 time with him. Very little screen time. Read, sing and talk to him. Good joint attention, concentration and attention.

Did lots of reading into how to support him and implemented what I learnt. Advice from HV was read/sing/talk/play with him, narrate your day, which wasnot helpful as already doing those things.

Speech only improved when we paid for speech and language therapist to see him privately. She said what she commonly sees is parents of children with speech delays doing too much trying to help their children with language which is counter productive.

So yes, their are many parents who are trying so hard to help their children getting dismissed as bad/lazy parents being told to "talk/read/sing/play with child" and that "nursery/school are the best to monitor child development" when they seek help. Not dismissing schools or nurseries at all but parents are the best for monitoring development because 1.they care about their child more and 2. They have more 1:1 time with them.

Our son improved because we could go private but what do people think happens when they are on a long waiting list. I think a lot of these children think they are saying words properly and get frustrated when people can't understand them which understandably leads to behavioural issues.

So for all those who are solely blaming lazy parents, stop. You have no idea the work/effort/time researching/worrying these parents do and they don't need your judgement.

I think this is a big contributor. All people have sensory needs and limits (both ways, lots and none), not just those on the SEN spectrum. A lot of children are having high levels of visual and auditory stimulus with little input from parents. Babies and toddlers are routinely given screens in buggies and on journeys, rather than taking any of their surroundings in. Even in nappy change, they’re distracted by a screen rather than feeling the sensation of the change and interacting with a parent.

There are lots of other contributors too. Families are often stretched to the limit, there are high levels of poverty, parents and children are struggling to access health care, early intervention services are gone or overrun, both parents are often in full time work and trying to cover childcare and the cost of living is really high.

SEN provision is a nightmare with the process set up to be really complex. Agencies ignore that many of the parents are ND as well, so need clear pathways. There’s a struggle to get help for children who are non-verbal and have severe learning difficulties and physical disabilities, let alone children who are high functioning. As the parent, you can put in place everything and still feel blamed. We’ve been parenting with therapeutic parenting and PACE for years, our ds masks at school, the school believe us but there’s such a nightmare trying to portray this (common) situation via the process. In our situation no one even seemed to be able to clearly tell us next steps until the school got hold of the psychiatrist who will eventually assess - and we’re lucky as we have a supportive school. Parents have to go on a parenting course and a workshop for ADHD - which if done together are two full mornings a week. Obviously, you do them, even if you’re aware of what they’re teaching already, but the reality is it’s hugely stressful to balance that, full time work and parenting an ND child plus all the paperwork you need to write. The forms are crap (fit early development into a 5cmX8cm box for ASD), so you end up writing a huge document to attach. IDPs are like gold dust and there are strict remits that don’t suit children that appear to function but are highly affected at home.

Equally, the ADHD workshops are too light on the risks of screen time (lots of correlation between addiction risks with screens and ADHD) and huge numbers of children are isolated with their screens without the support they need to educate them or help them manage their symptoms. There’s a huge focusing on adjusting parenting techniques, but no advice when you’ve done that prior to all of this and that’s why you sought support and diagnosis in the first place. I appreciate course leaders say parents in that position are in a minority, but there must be plenty of others who have done this and, for them and for us, there’s just a very punishing process in which the child’s voice is often lost and the parents are blamed for trying to advocate for a child that needs support.

I will PM you. I can't give details online in case it out myself.

DS has developed an aversion to screen-based teaching because of all the nastiness he has seen on screens in school. He can't bear powerpoint teaching or youtube learning because he never knows what he will be exposed to next and was having paralysing panic attacks

What?
Who has shown him in appropriate video content? The school? Why? Everything is usually filtered to the nth degree.

Then they come into the workplace and have no idea how to behave. We recently took on a large number on new graduates, they act like children, we’re in an office and they’re having conversations loudly across the room while people are on the phone to clients, they can’t turn up on time, they dress inappropriately, they scroll on their phones all day long when they should be working, and they’re downright rude to managers.

I just mean discussing on a thread like we're doing now.

I know of a neighbours child in my dcs class who has an EHCP... At 9 he has already sexually abused a classmate

That's shocking. I'm surprised you and other parents haven't removed your children from the school.

And who is going to to have time to do that? People who don't work or are retired, hardly a good cross section of society.

I know of a neighbours child in my dcs class who has an EHCP which says he can never be punished for anything.Worse, the horrid brat knows this and goads the s hool staff with it all the time!
Madness! What sort of adult will he become. At 9 he has already sexually abused a classmate
DN is a primary teacher and in her school, the kids with sen are not allowed to be punished.Fair enough of course f or things which are out of their control, but most isnt

I’ve reflected a lot on all of this. I’m an ex teacher and now unschool my DC and I honestly think what a lot of all of these issues boil down to on these school threads is the huge incongruence between school and how it hasn’t at all moved with the times (in fact Gove positively moved it backwards in 2014!) and the massive changes we’ve seen in society over the last couple of decades with the advent of technology and the fact that we’re in the very late stages of capitalism.

@benefitstaxcredithelp yes absolutely. Ever increasing technological ’fixes’ and the burning desire for higher profit margins and easy money on the one hand and underinvestment by the state on the other leaves parents and children in a bad place.

It's apparent that, in order to fit everything in, a lot of the children are spoon-fed the curriculum in the lower years so they lack independent learning skills they need by the time they get to UKS2 and beyond.

Then they get to university and are confronted with the concept of self study and the wheels come off. They want to know what is the right answer. Tell me how to get a first. Learning is pressured and transactional. Students are increasingly stressed.

Alas, the institutional response is to start replicating what’s happening in schools and expect spoon feeding. More recently, everything taught at university has to have some sort of employability-related outcome due to pressure from the govt.

The pressures ramped up and subjects like music, art, PE, DT (even history and geography to a large extent) got squeezed out in favour of very heavy focus on maths and English. Even science went from being a core subject to a non-core

Yep.

Only then they put a focus on the 'broad and balanced curriculum' which meant that all those things became important again without the time to teach them or any changes to the expectations around the core subjects.

Absolutely this.

I agree with a lot of this.

Unfortunately, most of this is because we are living in an ‘end stage capitalist’ era/society.

Systems like schools haven’t changed for decades but society has changed massively.

But also screen and phone addictions with their dopamine hits purposely designed into both phone and every game and every app to sell and keep people glued to their screens so more of their data can be sold irt. Social media harming children and parents alike thanks to algorithms actively designed to do so for monetary gain. Programmes, games and streaming encouraging extreme behaviour to get attention, keep users online, and for more likes. Children watch and model. It’s how they learn.

Parents have lost confidence in their parenting for many reasons. Children are actively conditioned to want more material goods. Parents who are depressed, disillusioned, exhausted or can’t be asked to do the hard work in parenting against an onslaught of advertising and social comparisons. It’s bloody tiring to say no a thousand times a day.

Children being put into formal education at a too young age to enable two working parents, necessary for continuous economic expansion. Austerity reducing staff, resources, and the sale of hundreds and hundreds of school playing fields. Reductions in art, music, sports, drama as the non-core subjects are increasingly seen as unaffordable extras. An ever expanding curriculum with more added and nothing ever dropped each year.

The structure and system is designed and works for fewer and fewer children against a backdrop of an economic system monetising absolutely everything. Including childhood. Where do you even start?

@malificent7 the students (children, pupils) having all the power goes right up to HE and is a deliberate strategy on the part of the govt and in turn amplified by SMTs. Perhaps there’s some good intentions of an over correction from unchecked bullying and abusive teaching (which has/does exist) to a child-centred approach.

However there is a significant element of both govts/SMTs leveraging children and targets to control a teachers’ actions by making them responsible for student’s behaviour and academic attainment. Resulting in an insidious and subtle outcome of students learning to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own actions and learning and to blame the teacher.

Gove’s ‘meddling’ did so much damage to schools in my opinion (ex teacher here).
Since his changes in 2014 everything started to turn for the worse.

Suddenly there was no longer any room for creativity and the curriculum became overstuffed with outdated, boring, irrelevant stuff that today’s kids do not need to learn. It was horrendous for me to have to teach all of that stuff when I could see the vast majority of my pupils were glazing over at best and sadly many just couldn’t keep up. The pressures ramped up and subjects like music, art, PE, DT (even history and geography to a large extent) got squeezed out in favour of very heavy focus on maths and English. Even science went from being a core subject to a non-core.

The Tory government under Gove were motivated by two things. One by an attempt to ‘keep up’ with the eastern Tiger economies in the league tables with no thought as to the fact that we in the UK are a different type of society with a different set of values and skills. And two he had this misguided belief that if he could only replicate his own Eton Victorian-style education, standards would rise. So he added things like very heavy grammar (primary school), fronted adverbials for 8 year olds, the subjunctive tense for ten year olds, moved a lot of objectives down at least two year groups so things that had previously been taught in Year 4 for example are now taught in Year 2.

The result has been a massive decrease in enjoyment and engagement for many kids. The fast- paced, high pressured, SAT focused dry curriculum just does not suit the vast majority of students. In fact it’s making many disengage.

Couple this with all the constant assessments and all the similar issues at Secondary school (draconian rules, high pressured curriculum, bullying, underfunding, lack of send support, raac, teacher burnout etc etc) and it’s no wonder parents are pulling their children out by the hundreds because they’re anxious and stressed.

I home educate my DC now too.

Sadly even children without disability appear to start school in increasing numbers unable to use the toilet, feeling they can behave as they want to, no boundaries. Messy eating due to child led weaning
Parents letting children make their own decisions.

Is it gentle parenting, lack of clear boundaries and routine? Spending very long days in nurseries that are stretched. Parents abdicating teaching their own children to others. Lack of role models.

Or is it something else?

It’s not easy, it’s a pain repeating yourself to teach them basic skills, but as a parent you have to do it, not rely on others to teach your child basic skills before they start school.

I agree with your whole post.

I know (because they've told me) that some parents don't understand that children need this repetition so they just give up at home because it's too hard. Many of them really do think that teachers have a special secret skill that they're not privy to which enables us to do it better than them.

So they 'leave it to the experts'.

Some of them will justify it by saying they have 2 other children to look after so it's hard. Yeah? Well, when you leave it to me, I have 29 other children to look after and also educate on top of the parenting you've delegated to me.

This is spot on.
In some ways by not expecting children with ASD/ADHD to control their behaviour, we are doing them a great disservice for later life.

I had children in the late 70’s and early 80’s and these mythical stay at home mums just simply didn’t exist. Everyone I knew had to work due to the cost of living, there were no parents who had the luxury of being a stay at home mum.
Whether it was part time once the main wage earner came home (usually men), or full time and rushing like mad to get back for kids coming out of school, it was a struggle then, just as it is now.
Not everyone then, had parents on call to pick up the slack of child care etc, it was a battle then, the same as it is now.
Kids were expected to behave and were punished (not by hitting them), but by denying them things they wanted to do, seeing their friends, going out etc etc
People have to actually start being parents, being the bad guy who stops their children from being abusive towards other children and adults.
Consequences must be given for bad behaviour and followed through, the amount of times you hear parents saying “if you do that again” etc etc, but not actually removing them. You must give a warning for bad behaviour and follow through with whatever consequence you have said for the bad behaviour.
It is a pain and is horrible for the parents sometimes, but if you’ve warned them you’ll be leaving the park/ wherever, then DO IT!!!
Having a family is exhausting, expensive and hard work, unless you have the means to outsource all the housework, childcare to other people, you have to adjust to being knackered from juggling everything and everyone!!!
Stop expecting everyone else to be your child’s parent, get off screens, take kids out for 10 minutes to the park or wherever, instead of buying the latest gadgets invest in spending time with your kids doing things with them, teaching them how to brush their hair/teeth, how to count, how to behave.
It’s not easy, it’s a pain repeating yourself to teach them basic skills, but as a parent you have to do it, not rely on others to teach your child basic skills before they start school.

This basically.

I worked in an infant school for 13 years and recently left because I was sick and tired (quite literally) of the appalling behaviour. Parents complaining about everything and next to no support from SLT.

I'm so glad that my children have already been through school because unless you work/have worked in one, you would be horrified at some of the behaviour and I'd be worried sick about them.

I'm sorry you were hurt @GibberingPeck
I was kicked so hard a few years back that I had the bruises for weeks! Another colleague was seriously injured and SLT didn't even send her a bunch of flowers, let alone consequences for the child.

It's awful.

Also interesting about the pre school curriculum. I noticed a massive decline in anything structured between the years when my 1st went to nursery and my 2nd between (between yrs 2017 and 2022). I just assumed the nursery had become a lot worse as it was under new management. My son it seems was left to roam around outside for most of the day. Where as my dd did ‘circle time’ and many more group based activities. Some more formal learning (numbers/letters). My expectation was that they should do some more school type activities. No wonder kids can’t cope when they get in a classroom. The forest school outdoor play stuff is great but I think a balance is needed. Personally I think kids should be getting plenty of outdoor/park play at home and nursery for getting school ready, but obviously this isn’t the case. Again parenting and screens come into play.