Aibu to hate Michael Gove?

“Gove created the overdiagnosis crisis”

Do you really think that saying ‘overdiagnosis’ is different to saying ‘children are being diagnosed with autism and adhd who don’t have it’?

He didn't get to interfere in the Scottish system. It gives an insight of what might have been if he and his disciples hadn't messed with things. In short; calmer, pupil centred and staff not looking burnt out.

One reason my children often cannot go to school (aside from learning little when they are there and getting so overwhelmed by the noise and boredom that they often have to come home) is because absolutely nothing is done about violence and disgusting behaviour like children throwing furniture across the classroom or hitting people. Why should they have to tolerate that when if someone did that to me at work they’d be fired and arrested?

I wholeheartedly agree.

We report it to SLT and nothing is done. Nothing is put in place. There are limited consequences.

As class teachers, our capacity to deal with it is limited. I can dock 5-10 mins of breaktime (depending on severity of behaviour) and call parents. That's all.

But when we refer it to SLT, we are just told to 'monitor the situation' and told to build better relationships so that the children want to behave for us.

We are monitoring it. We are reporting it. We are even often aware of exactly why it is happening but there is nothing we can do to make the changes that might stop it from happening again because those decisions are not ours to make or are related to factors beyond our control (eg home environment).

There is often not even a TA to support so we can diffuse/de-escalate a sitiation and if we are 'proactive' (ie call SLT when we can tell a child is 'bubbling'), the response is inconsistent or we are told everything is 'fine' until it isn't 5 mins later.

Your post starts

"AIBU to hate Michael Gove for single-handedly creating the “overdiagnosis” crisis he’s now nowhere near enough to answer for?"

And yet now you claim you're saying nothing about whether these diagnoses are real or not - despite saying that they were created by Michael Gove?

"You can’t just blame it all on iPads."

You haven't blamed any of it on iPads. You've blamed all of it (single-handedly) on Gove.

If you didn't mean to write that, perhaps you shouldn't have got AI to write for you.

Your premise is that the children are the same as they always have been, but the curriculum changes have created a change in their behaviour.

This is false. Children are not the same as they always have been. And far be it from me to 'blame' iPads, but we know for a fact that attention spans are shrinking due to use of social media. Adults who previously read voraciously now admit they can't concentrate long enough on a book to finish it. We know that the figures for reading for pleasure have fallen through the floor. And we also know that reading for pleasure is a key predictor of GCSE success. Of course kids having much shorter attention spans than previously has a massive impact on schools.

We've also been through a pandemic. We also know that this has had a big impact on behaviour in children.

I am first in line to say that a lot of Gove's reforms were detrimental to education (not all of them, mind you. There was a lot of progressive bollocks about kinaesthetic learning, brain gym and so on prior to his 'reign' that was rightly consigned the bin), but your OP is simplistic, yet crowd-pleasing bollocks.

Most of those points would apply to any document/paper written to explain complex scientific/technical designs and findings to a less expert audience. I’ve put old papers written for clients and internal use into the checkers - large numbers are identified as AI generated when they were written before common business usage of AI tools or free widely available tools. Pretty much any post with bullet points is accused of being AI drafted these days on MN - to which my question would be first and eye roll followed by "so what?”.

I use such tools daily to draft documents, pull back sources for research and do a mountain of admin type tasks. I would assume you do as well. That doesn’t make the content any less mine or me any less accountable for the content.

All that aside I agree entirely with the last part of your post. Correlation is not causation and its nonsense to take one component of change and blame it for all of society’s ills, especially when it ignores the impact of 24*7 mass media bombardment which is huge even compared to the experience of my young end millennial children. It also ignores the comparison made by a pp with the Scottish totally child centred system with similar levels of diagnosis and even worse educational outcomes (especially when compared to 25 years ago).

Oh God - “smashed”. I hope he’s smashing his degree too, and his career. Next up: “How to smash your life”.

We don’t have an over diagnosis crisis for send we have an increased referrals due to more awareness. Backed up by academic researchers at Loughborough university.
I think Gov policy was to raise the standards of the UK academic performance which does demonstrate the UK’s increased performance In the PISA league tables where the movement has been an upward trajectory in the past 10 years. Singapore and the like are well ahead of the UK in attainment by 1 to 2 years. We can sit back and put the breaks on but there will be a direct impact on the UK’s capacity to drive forward innovation without a highly skilled and educated work force. Not sure what the answer is but there are choices to be made.

As someone who went through school in the 1980s and 1990s with undiagnosed autism and ADHD and another autistic sibling also undiagnosed I can verify that these conditions did indeed exist at that time. They were just ignored and we were punished for them. Bullying was rife. It was utter hell.

The curriculum was boring and far too easy then, as well. And the same problem of shoving all kids into a one-size-fits all school regardless of ability.

I think the thing that has shocked me is that ignorance is no longer an excuse. Many school staff have outdated “opinions” about these conditions still and woefully little knowledge, receiving what little “training” they have on it from equally clueless LA staff (!) who give them information which is years out of date and long-debunked by academic research. I had hoped that by now schools might be better for autistic children but they are not, they are utterly hellish still.

Being academically bright and autistic means there are literally no state schools at all that provide for your needs, hence this group being - per the research I posted above - by far the largest group of children who end up receiving little to no education and developing severe mental health difficulties as a direct result of school.

SEN schools aren’t appropriate for children like mine (this is what the SEN schools and LA have confirmed) because they can’t meet their academic needs and they’d have no peer group AND those schools are now largely populated by children with behavioural problems who are the ones that make school impossible for them with loud, unpredictable, disruptive or violent behaviour. Mainstream state schools state that they cannot meet their academic needs AND can’t provide an environment in which they can learn because they need smaller classes and a calm environment, so they are doubly discriminated against.

Where are kids like this meant to go to get an adequate education? I have paid a large amount of tax for many years and think it’s reasonable to expect my children to be able to go to school. They are highly intelligent and not disruptive at all, love learning and were so enthusiastic when they started school, and yet the state provides NO educational establishment in which they can learn and has caused two previously happy children to develop severe mental health difficulties during their first years of primary school and now hate and dread school. I am furious about it and see no proposal from any political party to do anything about this despite copious evidence like the study I posted above which shows that they are far from alone in this regard.

Makes me wonder who’s going to be working and paying taxes to fund the state pensions of the future. Best to start a private pension at a young age.

This is the problem in a nutshell.

It is exactly how we are teaching children to.write - like little writing machines. Creativity in writing is very limited certainly in primary school.

The problem is, children aren't learning to be effective writers or writers.

They're being taught to use 'features' - grammar, punctuation and devices but writing the is very mechanical. It feels forced.

And, just because they're being taught it doesn't mean they're learning it. There's so much to cover and it's so intensive that there is little opportunity to develop as writers in any capacity.

Even opportunities for 'immersion' are structured and restricted on time when they should be opportunities to explore.

We did a similar project. The children
loved it. When we first introduced it we had no idea it would be so successful. Even now, we have children come back and say it was one of the most enjoyable parts they remember at primary school. It was shelved, because there is no time to go off curriculum and the school bought into the local authority literacy planning.

Having a child on the assessment pathway for ADHD, I was about to flame you when I saw the title...I'm diagnosed myself and it's a condition not for the faint hearted. But having read your post in full you are absolutely correct.

He is in a primary where you don't need a diagnosis to access movement breaks, sensory breaks, adjusted methods of working to allow for individual ways to succeed ( my 10 year old DS can play two instruments, and has a reading age of 14....but still can't form his letters correctly for example. He is allowed to type his work instead with no drama, and no frustration, ) they have OPAL in the playground, and most importantly he is treated with the respect that the teachers expect themselves. And boy do they get it from him. They have turned his ADHD Traits into a source of power, and he pushes through the things he finds hard because he knows that if he really really can't, he will be heard.

He arrived there in year three from a small old fashioned Catholic school, with school trauma and separation anxiety. His experience there was horrific, and he was shouted at multiple times daily, and punished for things he could not control.

If the high school is as inclusive and forward thinking as his primary ( huge amount of feedback to say it is ) then my son won't need a diagnosis. That said, he is still going down the assessment route, simply because of the fear he will go through his first three years again 😔

We need more schools to adopt the approach of his, move away from Neurodivergence being a " disability" and closer to understanding that we are all simply unique, and will only thrive if treated as such. 🤷🏼‍♀️

While my aversion to Michael Gove is well-documented on MN, I am extremely concerned that there's a thread rushing to agree with the OP that schools are now shit with the implicit agreement that this had led to an 'over-diagnosis' in autism and ADHD.

1. Correlation does not equal causation

2. Increase in diagnosis does not mean over-diagnosis.

A trite, AI-generated post conflating both these things should not be universally welcomed as a useful contribution to an extremely fraught and complicated discussion.

But everyone hates Gove, so YAY I TOTALLY AGREE OP.

I agree completely. The maybe 30-40% of children for whom the current mainstream state school model would be appropriate (concentrating on basic literacy and maths) cannot even do that because so many are there who shouldn’t be: children who should be in a far more academic school, children who should be in a school with a focus on art or sports or practical skills with core subjects alongside (so each child can develop their own talents and have a good grounding in basics), children who need much smaller classes and a calm environment e.g. autistic children, children with learning disabilities who need SEN schools and as they could never access the curriculum in a mainstream school, children with behavioural issues who are disruptive and violent who should be removed to a specialist school catering for that.

One reason my children often cannot go to school (aside from learning little when they are there and getting so overwhelmed by the noise and boredom that they often have to come home) is because absolutely nothing is done about violence and disgusting behaviour like children throwing furniture across the classroom or hitting people. Why should they have to tolerate that when if someone did that to me at work they’d be fired and arrested?

This has F all to do with Gove and everything to do with mobile phones everywhere. They destroy human happiness and create anxiety in everyone. We are never ever bored, and therefore we are always anxious.

Mental health is being destroyed by so called convenience.

Yes there is a huge amount of data supporting this.

I'm a leftwing republican primary school teacher.
I don't hate Gove.
There are a lot of good points made here about changes to the curriculum- I'd agree most with the joy being taken out of learning, and the amount of coverage. However I do agree with the focus on higher standards in education.

Also as someone affected by the cladding crisis, Gove was a very effective Housing Secretary. He prevented leaseholders shouldering the bills for poor building work and shoddy governement regulations post Grenfell.

I think the verdict is nuanced. 'Hate' is personal and oversimplistic.

What a load of nonsense OP!

The Scottish education system is completely separate from England. The curriculum of Excellence centres on child-centered learning, health and wellbeing and focusing on those with additional support needs. It was designed to close the attainment gap.

And guess what? There’s no difference is diagnosis rates for Scotland and England!!!

As if one man is responsible in England, for what is being seen in many Western countries and certainly all over the UK where there are completely different education systems.

I’m not a teacher but am very interested in these comments… my primary-aged children have found school terrible but this is mainly down to the environment. There are too many children in each class for them to cope (both autistic and one with ADHD - certainly not “overdiagnosis”: there is a long family history of these genetic conditions), too much noise and no enforcement of behaviour policies. As a result both now have very poor attendance (and one was off for 4 months entirely) and hate school.

They say the work is really boring and it seems to crush the creativity and curiosity out of them. What I don’t recognise from some of the comments is people saying the work is too hard: the work they are set seems ridiculously easy and is one of the reasons they are bored out of their minds. Their spellings, reading comprehension homework, maths and science homework etc are so easy it is a joke. Yet some posters seem to be saying that the curriculum difficulty is too high which I find baffling. Does anybody have any links to studies on this? I just cannot imagine how easy it would have been previously if children in their third year of school (YR2) being sent home with “spellings” to learn of three or four letter words that they can verbally spell back to you instantly is considered hard?

Absolutely agree about the lack of creativity though. Learning should not be boring and there seems to be very little differentiation by ability. All effort seems to go into getting the least able children to a minimum baseline in core subjects.

Phillipson is appalling in my opinion. What is missing is appropriate funding for better teaching materials, much smaller classes and proper SEN support. It’s not the law that’s the problem, it’s the non-compliance with the law. And different schools for different children. Shoving all children into one-size-fits all schools like clones obviously doesn’t work. Children with severe learning disabilities need SEN schools. Autistic children need quieter schools with small classes. Academically bright children need more academic school. It’s not “inclusive” to pretend they are all the same. She seems determined to double down on all of the mistakes and make everything even worse. Trying to remove EHCPs from children at secondary transfer is insanity. Removing children’s legal rights won’t make their disabilities go away and as for having SENCOs and teachers assess a child’s support needs when many seem to know little to nothing about their medical conditions (unsurprisingly given they aren’t doctors and are given pretty much zero training on this) is absurd in the extreme. I hope she is stopped otherwise children like mine will end up out of school entirely.

This is an interesting study showing the deliberate, systemic denial of education to autistic children. Phillipson does not seem to care whatsoever.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

Strange memory given he never said that
He wanted all schools to be rated good. It was pointed out that the definition of good required a school's performance to be above the national average

With respect, I'm unsure whether you know what MG did with his 'knowledge based' curriculum. I'm a teacher - Head of Department. This concept of 'knowledge based' has translated into an incredibly bloated curriculum. I have to teach at a whip pace just to get through it and meet the terms of the exam board's specification - plus, OFSTED won't let you start GCSE before Y10 (although we all know most of us sneak some into Y9).

The thing is, knowledge is only valuable if you're able to use it / know how to deploy it. And there's the rub. I can get kids to learn facts by rote but that won't help them develop critical thinking skills, e.g. how to formulate an explanation. Correction, it won't help the kids who are working at 3, 4 or 5. What happens is that these kids really struggle to improve because just as they've got a handle on one thing, the next thing comes along and it's a whole other skillset they need to master to get a good grade at GCSE - we call these skillsets 'disciplinary knowledge' and they require the kids to understand 'second order concepts'. In my subject they have to master 13 completely different skillsets alongside 4 hefty textbooks of facts ...

Sounds reasonable in 2 years, which is 76 taught weeks, except that 8 of those weeks are mocks, so we're down to 68 weeks, and it's not even 2 years as the second year they're 'finished' by Easter (because they have to sit the actual exams), therefore, that's 14 less weeks of teaching, so we're down to 54 weeks (i.e. basically 1 calendar year) ...

Gove thought it was reasonable to get kids between the ages of 14 - 16 to memorise (in my subject) 4 massive textbooks of facts and be able to sit a series of exams where they have to write somewhere in the region of 1,500 words an hour to pass well.

^^ This doesn't feel like a recipe for teenagers wellbeing.

Could he possibly have meant "I want every child to be above what the current average is"??

Otherwise yes, what a half-wit!

What a mess though. I have not experienced it thankfully, as I live in France and my children were educated here.

YANBU at all to hate MG