To be glad schools are finally hitting back

@Confuuzed

No school will refuse students permission to remove their jumpers in very hot weather.

@HerNeighbourTotoro

And yet almost every one of the best state schools in the country have smart uniforms which are strictly enforced.

I'm not convinced allowing DC to turn up in tracksuits would be helpful when behaviour is already out of control in so many schools.

Have you fed that back to him and his SLT in writing?

There are all sorts of strategies which can be used to help children with ADHD improve their focus. Ensuring comfortable clothing and giving them movement breaks, for example. Visual aids, breaking down tasks, positive reinforcement (children with ADHD not only receive more negative feedback than NT children but they also have heightened sensitivity to it). Plenty of playtime outside, even at secondary level. Sufficient sensory stimulus, but also balanced against the potential for sensory overload.

Part of the problem is the classroom environment in many secondary schools. It lacks the kind of sensory input that helps children with ADHD to regulate. Schools are increasingly built like office blocks or conference centres - too clinical, insufficiently ventilated, strip lighting etc. They don't offer the kind of sensory input that children with ADHD often need to regulate. When I was at school, the main school building was a dark, drafty, old-fashioned building, lots of the class-rooms were wood-panelled, the windows were always open. Half the classes were held in drafty, freezing cold portacabins, so we almost always had a brisk 5 minute walk outside in the cold between lessons. Grass everywhere and kids would eat lunch outside in the summer months under the trees. It sounds dreadful, but it offered so much more sensory input than many secondary schools nowadays.

I think that secondary school design plays an underacknowledged part in the difficulties faced by ND children, alongside zero-tolerance policies. They are spending their days in environments which just don't contain what they need to thrive.

Sorry. I'm aware that doesn't follow on from previous posts. It took a while to type!

I'm sorry for what you've been through. You and the child are both a victim of the broken SEN system in this country. I doubt he wanted to be going to school and attacking teachers. If it's got to the point where police are involved and still this child wasnt given support, it's gone very badly wrong. We need a system shake up to force school leaders and local authorities to take these kind of issues seriously and provide kids the support they need so they don't end up so dysregulated they're trying to attack people.

It is basically impossible to get a child adequate SEN support in the UK.

The national curriculum - and league tables - do not allow for schools to meet the needs of so many students. Teachers are doing their best in a system which was designed to 'lift standards' but which disheartens and fails so many kids. It makes me really sad that we have a skills/content driven curriculum and so little space allowed to meet student needs.

There are - and always have been - kids with practical competences and skills, brilliant senses of humour, passions for various interests outside of school which could be the foundation for achievements and even careers, or who are battling neurodivergence or social/personal issues in a pressurized environment which has so little space for individuals.

I don't know the answer. When labour refused to reject this Tory driven curriculum in the 90s I think we did a huge disservice to an awful lot of young people, and set teachers up to fail in a system too rigid to adapt to changing social needs.

Adhd parent here.
I wont tolerate bad language or violence from any of my adhd kids. We had couple of incidents at school. I made my child apologise to the teacher, when teacher didn't want to see them I made them write a note aplogising and why their behaviour was wrong (I made them sit at the table at home until they came up with somethong acceptable by themselves) we dropped it off with flowers they brought from their own money. The school did a debrief with myself and my child which was excellent. We talked over where it went wrong, the triggers, where dc could have pulled it back and coped differently.
I also did lots of talking at home around male violence esp against women - screaming at them etc.

My dc are going to have to cope in the real world. Understanding their adhd and how to manage and coping mechanisms it is key!

I also drop off a big pack of stationary that I buy with form tutors for each of my dc at start of the year as inevitably they forget or lose something. It means they have access to equipment and stops a panic spiral

I agree with you on this.

If a doctor or lawyer was attacked by a patient, they would either be banned from the practice or the victim could refuse to deal with that patient again. As a teacher, you can be attacked and have to continue to work with the perpetrator day after day. It's not right at all.

Draconian rules around uniform will achieve f all in terms of behaviour. Disadvantaged and sen kidsain't magically start making progress because their shirt is tucked in. As always businessmen CEO s of academies focus on wrong things, surprise surprise.

Yes things need to change. 26 years in the job for me. 2 and a half years ago I was attacked and pupil tried to stab me. This was following months of them assaulting me in the classroom, destroying the room and attacking other children. They continued to attend. There was nothing that could be done due to their age (primary) and the fact that I couldn’t refuse legally not to teach them. Come the next academic year the assaults continued despite me not being their teacher. The police were involved and asked what I expected to happen. I’m in Scotland. I expect to be able to come to work and be safe. I expect my pupils to be able to come to school and be safe. I expect there to be adequate and suitable ASN provision in place. 2 1/2 years on I have what is probably come kind of ptsd that I’m not ready to tackle. Things need to change.
As an aside, our school doesn’t have any kind of strict uniform policy, we don’t do detentions and I don’t care if your child has juice in their bottle as long as the lid is tight and it’s not going to make a mess. I am the one who is likely to suggest that your child tries different uniform if I can see they’re uncomfortable in their clothes and I will contact you if I see something in the shops that I think may help and I don’t know if you know about it. Parents and schools used to work together. They need to again. But kids and staff need to be safe in our schools.

I think it is worth mentioning that most teachers have no say over what rules they are asked to enforce and are just expected to do so as part of their job. Does every parent condemning teachers love and agree with everything they are asked to do in their job? Or are they allowed to pick and choose the parts they want to do?

I hate school uniform- don’t see the point in it. But this is a totally different issue to equipment. Wearing pink socks and having green hair does not affect your learning. Coming to class without basic equipment does. Of course I’m going to lend equipment out if need be but as I said before it is a massive, avoidable PITA.

I would just like to add that girls have told me they hate rolling their skirt up so short but it is peer pressure. On non uniform day they are nearly all in joggers or leggings.

If you can't tackle and improve your own ADHD as an adult, how are you expecting schools to do it for children when we see them less than 50%of the time?

Schools have a legal responsibility to make adjustments and provide support to disabled children op. Even if it's inconvenient or you'd rather not.

That does seem to be news to some schools.

In the same way that a dyslexic adult might still struggle with more complex written tasks but when they are children schools support them to take steps towards improving their reading and writing and don't put them in detention for poor spelling.

Schools do not already do this.

FFS, it's one pencil. They can borrow one. Or you can keep a couple of spares in the classroom and insist they are given back. If a student breaks, throws or refuses to return your pencil, then that is deliberate bad behaviour and should be dealt with.

There was a teacher at my school who actively hated me. That's not paranoia - I bumped into another teacher who worked in the same department last week and he admitted to me that he'd regularly had to go to bat for me with SLT because she was trying to sabotage me, things like saying I'd cheated on my coursework when he could prove I hadn't.

Anyway, I forgot my lab coat one day. We were doing a practical exercise which counted towards my AS grade. There were multiple lab coats on the pegs in the lab. She said I wasn't allowed to use a spare labcoat. I had to sit out of the lesson and got a zero for that practical.

Another time, we'd done clean up and I accidentally left a test tube out. She docked 50% of my marks for it.

These two combined incidents brought my grade down from a B to a C.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of posters along to tell me that someone who forgets to bring a lab coat to school one day or leaves a test tube out doesn't deserve a B in AS Biology and how earth shattering the consequences would be if a Biologist forgot to put away a test tube in the real world, but neither of these things were done to teach me accountability. She wanted me to fail. She even told my mum as much at parents evening.

What if the rule is "your child isn't allowed a drop of squash in her water" or "you're not allowed to take your jumper off unless a teacher says so, even if it's 30 degrees"?

Parents need to support the chosen school’s rules or consider sending their children elsewhere 🙂

This! Strong discipline in schools is essential for everyone involved - all too often the disruptive minority ruin things for the majority of decent kids who just want to learn in peace.

Not punishing them for it might be a start.