To think something has gone wrong in schools? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0m2x30p4eo

i'm a parent, i'm also a teaching assistant, and i've been a nursery nurse in my time.

I think there needs to be balance between teaching children how things SHOULD be, and allowing them to explore possibilities of their imagination.

One incident i remember vividly from my time as a nursery nurse was sitting with a bunch of 3yo doing art, we were drawing and colouring and i was allowing them to use whatever colours they liked.. one had a purple sun, orange grass and a blue tree and was so proud of his drawing!

One of the Nursery Supervisors came over, looked at the childs drawing, picked it up and looked at the child before handing him another piece of paper and said "Do it again, but properly, remember the sun is yellow, grass and trees are green." then threw the childs drawing away.

He cried, funnily enough, and i saw a little creativity and imagination die that day.

We all KNOW the sun is yellow, but so fucking what if they want to colour it purple.

I'd rather live in a world where we encourage childrens creativity, and a world of purple suns and blue trees than one that is cookie cutter and dull and normal.

I think SEN has increased, whether officially recognised or not.

And yes OP of course special school places have increased. So has the population! It hasn't kept up with the explosion of SEN though, has it?

Can't believe you used an example of wheelchair users to compare. Disgraceful imo.

I forgot something.

When I was at school, if you got into a fight or somebody hit you and you hit them back, nobody got excluded or suspended. You'd probably lose a playtime at most, many were seen as 'Well, you hit her first - what did you expect would happen?' and only the big fights/ones involving black eyes, bloody noses, other visible injuries or a huge mismatch in size would be reported to parents.

These days, both get suspended and everybody goes ballistic. That's going to affect suspension figures hugely.

Agree with @Porcelainpig about the specialist provision is increasing in mainstream schools. Often they will have a "resource provision" which is a whole SEN class or two providing mixed year provision. In the city where I work 3 primary schools went to this model this year as their KS1 rolls are falling, they have empty classrooms and the special schools are beyond full with lengthy waiting lists. A lot of the kids in the resource provision really need to be in a specialist SEMH provision but there is none.

30 years ago my daughter would have been considered a bit quirky and occasionally disruptive in class. She's bright but struggles with social cues and is very literal. She would have been called a day dreamer. She's actually autistic and those kids where always there but it was rarely diagnosed especially in girls. The ADHD kids were always there too and the ones with learning disabilities but many weren't picked up on. The ones who were diagnosed were often dumped into the bottom sets and would get the worst teachers who absolutely shouldn't have been in a classroom.

A child was given a suspension from my kids' primary school after he threatened my daughter with a knife at dinner time. This was in Year 1. He was trying to stab her with it and saying I'll cut you I'll stab you and make you bleed. This was a little boy who was adopted having been removed from abusive parents. He had learning disabilities and dealt with rejection very very badly. The school were great with him and my daughter but it was absolutely not sustainable for him to be at that school. He needed a much more therapeutic environment where he could be supported not have to think about adverbs at age 6.

I'm not sure why you keep talking about computers in schools now as if somehow it's because headteachers are using computers. That's just the way the world has developed. 30 years ago my job was largely without computers and now it's very computerised. That's just the world we live in. We also realised the importance of professional development for school staff and sharing good practice, hence conferences etc. Using interactive whiteboards instead of a chalk and blackboards is great, teachers have more resources available and no longer have to hope that an enthusiastic board monitor won't erase the key phrases they want to the class to recall while also being able to share examples from the class of good sentences or whatever. How great it is my children's teachers can look up a question if they don't know the answer about why Cy Twombly was called Cy when his name is Edwin or why the pope looks like he is wearing a kippah.

I think parenting is a large contributing factor. The fact that so many children are simply not school ready demonstrates that parents are failing. We actually booked leave to potty train our first before nursery because it’s our job. I think people expect more and more from the state.

I remember that Labour MP talking about a child who needed massive dental work and blaming the tories for it. If the parents had just brushed the kids teeth they wouldn’t have been in that situation, yet it was apparently someone elses fault.

restorative justice is also bollocks and we need to stop doing it in schools.

If we agree behaviour is relational, the lack of funding leads to less adults, leads to more exclusions. That's certainly our experience in my school.

I bet it's not like that in private schools. And very few of the problems you cited depend on budgets. So it's not all about buying 'privilege', but parents desperate for an escape route from failed ideologies.

there are exponentially more pupils requiring a place in a different educational environment. Whether that is the result of more diagnoses, more children with SEND, more self diagnoses or whatever else, there are still too few places for the children requiring them.

This.

How is she in Y6 if she's only 9?

We’ve just been to my Y6 parents evening. Her reading age is currently at 11. We were told she is meeting expectations. Thing is she’s 9 and 4 months. I struggle to comprehend how she can’t be exceeding expectations if her level of reading is graded at more than 18 months beyond her age. School are taking her out of science and music this half term for extra English lessons as SATs prep, last term she missed science and PE for extra maths. The focus on targets and meeting rigid expectations is very different to what myself and my husband experienced as kids 30 odd years ago.

The SEN was always there. They were just called disruptive.

Well I've found some interesting statistics from 2005... https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmeduski/478/47808.htm

Which claim that the number of special school had declined sharply since 1979, and then fell again by 7% between 1997 and 2005. I can't imagine they've increased since that... In fact I know of 2 in our tiny district council area that closed in the first round of Tory austerity (leaving a terrible lack of provision locally).

@RebelBabybel I think perhaps you just didn't come across the SEN children 30 years ago. There were 1.45 million of them in 2005 and 1.7 million in January 2024 so it's not like the increase has been that dramatic especially when compared with overall population growth! So it would stand to reason that more of them went to the special schools that don't exist anymore.

Where have you shown more special school places over 30 years? Not 8n this post. Have you adjusted it for population numbers?

There were far, far less children with SEN 30 years ago. I know people will come along and say they've always been there but were hidden etc, but many more children have SEN and behavioural challenges now. Previously children from deprived backgrounds were left to sink or swim, they either did exceptionally well at school or fell behind. I don't think people value education anymore, and don't respect teachers. Teachers are unable to lead with discipline as parents don't support it. For many it is a thankless task & I'm not surprised people want to leave. The children by and large are not the issue, it's the parents.

There may be a few more places in special schools, but there are exponentially more pupils requiring a place in a different educational environment. Whether that is the result of more diagnoses, more children with SEND, more self diagnoses or whatever else, there are still too few places for the children requiring them.

It was always a mistake to expect that children who have struggled to access the curriculum would suddenly be able to make the same level of progress as their peers who don’t have a particular need, but that was the situation we found ourselves in.

Thirty years ago, of course things were different. I don’t recognise the scenario that the OP describes.

Thirty years ago it was rare to find a child in Early Years who was unable to use the toilet more or less independently, or a child who had not been toilet trained. Thats more frequent now.

I think few people would disagree that behaviour has deteriorated in schools. The reasons for that are complex and include more neuro diversity, more diagnosis of a range of SEND, but also very different parenting and sometimes, very little parenting at all.

The reason I left my role of Reception Class TA after 20 years.
So many activities put out for the children with no guidance as to how to use them.
We had a dozen story sacks with all the components to act out the story. Two children went to empty them all out in a big pile on the floor. The teacher encouraged such "creative play".you can guess whose job it was to sort that mess out and find the missing pieces!
Art- I would take a small group, we would talk about what effect we hoped to achieve, the technique used, discuss colours, textures etc. but now the
art supplies are left on the table. Top set girls (not being stereotypical but purely my experience) would use them sensibly but most would rush past, put a couple of spoldges of paint on the paper and leave it at that. Such a waste of resources and the opportunity to teach new skills.
I sadly left as I felt that my only contribution to the class was clearing up mess rather than help children to learn.

Indeed. Op has only quoted an increase from last year.

How many special schools were there 30 years ago?

Screen time is a huge problem. And I say this as a mum who is currently on mumsnet, not interacting with my DS who is happily playing in the bath.

These are specialist classes that are joined to mainstream. They work well for some children who fit in between a mainstream and specialist education. I have recently got a place for my son in specialist and there is a huge waiting list. You have to go to a tribunal as a matter of procedure now, not because the LA necessarily disagrees the child should be in a specialist school. Just not enough places. I know as i have lived through that problem. The number of places are increasing, yes, but demand is soaring past that.

I agree about inclusivity, but we have to be careful what this means. My son's mainstream was amazing, but he was far to delayed to fit in. He can't mask because he functions well below where he should be and although he wasn't aggressive, he would not sit still, shout and would not have been able to learn. He has severe LD probably and us non verbal. Not every child can fit into a mainstream and it annoys me that inclusivity in mainstreams is the only solution being proposed. Some children will thrive much better away from a mainstream environment.

I think our current model of education needs to adapt fast. We have more SEN and a rapidly changing world/growth in AI. Simply training kids to pass tests is not going to cut it. We have a shortage of so many skills in this country and we should be teaching with a view to making sure we can fill this shortage as that will lead to better youth employment one the use of AI becomes more common.

I have been teaching for over 20 years.

Some differences between now and then:

• Class sizes: Stick 32 people (it used to be 25) into a small room and emotions will run VERY high for some. I was in a middle leaders meeting today where we were in a cramped room; I had people sitting very closely to me, both to the side and back, and I felt VERY uncomfortable the whole meeting. Now imagine you're a teen with needs, who hasn't managed to regulate their emotions yet. These environments provoke fight or flight responses.
• SEND and behavioural needs. Contrary to the OP, who only took into account one single year, I have seen the decline of SEND provision in my area, coupled with a huge population increase. Some counties have no specialist behaviour units, very little specialist SEND provision. Everyone gets dumped into mainstream and is expected to cope.
• Children's trauma, and expectations. This links in with my previous point. Children with huge trauma are expected to concentrate on work, when they barely get into school each day, let alone cope with lessons. Which leads to...
• Parenting is a huge issue. Permissive parenting is on the rise, as is raising kids mainly with screens. 1 in 4 children starts school not nappy trained, we see a few on here who decide it's too hard and expect school to do it. in My child's school, there is a reading challenge we can track - fewer than 1 in 4 children actually read at home. I come across more and more parents who implement no consequences, scared of their children's upset.
• Lack of relevance: The curriculum has become purely academic even for bottom sets, who would benefit from functional skills and much more education on the job, though hands-on training. Give got rid of most of that.
• Lack of time: There is still a hangover from the time OFSTED randomly decided that GCSEs cannot start in Y9, leaving far too little time to complete, let alone embed, some courses, leading to more frustration on all sides.
• Lack of teacher time. I used to be able to seek kids out to have conversations outside the classroom. Nowadays I can't even pee during the day, let alone spare 5mins to talk to a kid unless it's in an official meeting, which everyone loathes. So resentment builds up.
• Restorative schools. They lead to extreme behaviours. So, incidentally, do schools which are unreasonable about irrelevant stuff like uniform, especially if they only pick on Y7 or the less argumentative kids.
• Exclusions get you OFSTEDed, and leaders fear them rather than see them as an opportunity for growth. This leads to worse behaviours, which eventually snowball and you end up with even more exclusions.

The number of SEN children has grown astronomically

But schools haven’t been able to grow their capacity accordingly

Of course perhaps there was always the same % of children with SEN but in the past they went undiagnosed and just put up and got on with it as best they could, and maybe took less academic avenues?

I don't recognise the kind of school you're describing. The idea of not modelling to children is ridiculous. And your SENCO sounds very rude and unsupportive.

I work in a mainstream primary with extremely high levels of SEND in EYFS. They are children who struggle to engage with adults, who struggle to interact with peers, or even notice peers, they are children who are on such extremely high alert that they injure themselves and others. They are shown how to play. They are making such minute but definite steps of progress every single day. They cannot be told to behave because they've no idea how to do that. There simply were no children like this in our school 10 years ago. Now they make up 8% of our reception cohort. Why? I've no idea. But it's not because we're teaching badly.

I agree. I have 3 children ranging from age 6 - 27 so I have seen a lot of differences in education. My one in the middle is now late teens. I thank my lucky stars that my youngest is at a small, relatively 'old school' primary. The part in your op that said about children being pigeon holed if they are failing would certainly be happening to him if he was at a different school. As it is they see him as an individual and work with him, and us, to help him achieve. Not write him off as ADHD etc .