What is really going on in our schools? Well, Laura....

[noblegiraffe]

Laura Kuenssberg appears to have just discovered that schools exist. New to the concept she has written an essay discussing what might be going on in them, from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. Basic errors include "standards haven't crashed because GCSE and A-level results in 2022 were up on 2019".

She mentions the lack of funding, but doesn't mention the lack of teachers. She mentions increased pupil absence but doesn't mention the implosion of support services for children like CAMHS, or the huge waiting lists for SEN diagnosis and the cutting of TAs in schools due to lack of money. She suggests covid might have had an impact, but not that the government have done basically nothing to address this and that their covid catch-up adviser resigned in disgust.

She says a minister says that 'teachers have had a bashing since covid'. Since covid! She doesn't mention this is led by the government and has been going on for years.

So, what's really going on in our schools? Anyone want to help Laura out?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65360168

I can start:

Some of my Y13s haven't had a teacher for some of their courses for months and have had to teach themselves a large part of the syllabus.

Some of my Y11s say they haven't had a proper English teacher this year.

My Y7s cannot sit still or stay quiet. I would normally expect this to some extent in a bottom set, manageable with a small class and perhaps TA support. This is not a bottom set and there are 30 of them, I've never seen anything like it.

We need AP for a significant number of our students who are not safe or adequately educated in mainstream. We cannot get it.

We are down ten learning support staff on this time last year. We cannot afford to replace them even if there were any to apply.

We have GCSE classes in maths and science who have not had specialist teachers for large chunks of the GCSE course. That's not for want of trying.

Last week, in a meeting, we discussed a child who'd made a suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. This is a "good thing" because they've now got access to CAMHS - which we've been trying to access for over a year for them.

The system is broken.

What is going on in schools is that there is an extreme range of need being pushed into mainstream.

Cause of the range of need could be the following things: covid, rise in children living in poverty, cost of living crisis, a quite dull curriculum, a decade of Tory government stripping support services to the bone, screens used to placate children at home, shoddy parenting, removal of Sure Start, the fact that we understand differing needs more than we did x number of years ago.

Whatever the cause however, these children are presenting in school with a lot of special needs. The curriculum is too full in primary and in many secondary subjects, but these children are supposed to be keeping up. Lessons are hard to plan for children with differing academic needs, let alone if you have to include behavioural, emotional, social needs and the 'input' from parents too as part of your every day classroom offer. Children don't get their needs addressed by outside agencies, so more support is pushed onto the school. Teachers and TAs are not specialists in everything, so the workload to do 'something' for each child in an attempt to meet their needs, is high.

Salaries have reduced in real terms over the last 10 years, funding to schools has reduced over the last 10 years, making the provision of this support even harder to pay for, let alone provide for effectively. No training budgets, not enough support staff, more work for teachers in order to plan 'something'. Teachers don't want to be teachers anymore because salaries aren't as good as comparable graduate level jobs, so non-specialists are teaching subjects they don't know well - more workload. Primary schools are drowning in kids with undiagnosed needs, lots in nappies or non verbal, no space to locate all these needs without making other children feel unsafe (and adults feel unsafe). So existing teachers start considering their options. 10% PPA isn't enough to plan for all these needs, so they constantly feel they aren't doing their job well enough, and end up working mad hours. Teachers go slowly mad, via angry, and end up leaving the profession. Fewer teachers = more stress for those left behind.

Meanwhile, buildings are literally crumbling and exposing asbestos.

I haven't even mentioned Ofsted, but we'll leave it there.

Y7 unable regulate themselves socially or if challenged about something behaviour wise. Everything escalates off the charts every single time.

Doing lots of proving we’re doing stuff we’re already doing in a pretence it isn’t for OFSTED when it clearly is.

Staff leaving in droves. Leaving teaching more than moving schools/promotion. We can’t recruit in Maths and Science. No-one wants to teach. No idea what the fuck we’re going to do next year - currently at least two teachers down in Maths and more in Science.

There are no places in our AP placements for children who have been permanently excluded from school ( which takes some doing) for violence towards other students or staff. So they are now being returned to mainstream school even if PX has been agreed as the only possible option.

I suspect the interview with Spielman is just going to lend another platform for her to spew robotic, toxic bile like a sentinel in the Matrix. Laura doesn't have enough knowledge to be able to counter her.

What is AP? Sorry not from here and DS is still little.

Clearly not, if she repeated that a minister said that anxiety about Ofsted is probably because those schools haven't been inspected for a decade.

Laura, most schools have been inspected multiple times since the Tories came in, perhaps talk to ones who have been graded as inadequate about the impact of that?

Because the government certainly isn't talking to them. Or visiting them. https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/revealed-schools-least-visited-dfe-ministers-ofsted

Yes. We get told that AP can't meet need because too extreme, not specific enough etc, so the child continues/is put back in mainstream. Which DEFINITELY can't meet need, but doesn't have the option of saying no in favour of a more deserving case.

Alternative provision. Places like the PRU or programme more suited to students' needs than a large mainstream secondary.

12 out of my 28 children (KS1) are on the Send register with varying needs and different personal plans. That's not counting the 3 thay have just had referrals accepted as well. I have no other adult in class with me.

I don't teach anymore. I crowd control at best.

Thank @MrsHamlet I knew PRU but not AP

Kids sent back from AP because AP can't cope but we apparently can.

LA has no more placements available in AP until January and no funding for Ed psych time.

Science classes taught by non specialists.

New BTEC/A level courses needing to be self taught due to teacher recruitment issues.

More students than ever needing support of one type or another.

Being at the front line of MH, early help, all classroom based interventions, dealing with social media fallouts, plugging holes in social service provision. All services that we used to be able to access externally are now gone.

What's really going on in schools - what about Y11? Why are they not turning up? In particular disadvantaged pupils?

I've got several Y11s who are regularly absent. I'd usually have maybe one. They're all struggling with their mental health.

I've seen on twitter lots of discussion about how this cohort of Y11s are incredibly disengaged compared to previous years.

@PlainJanePerfect PRU is a form of AP. We might not need the PRU if we had access to other AP... but it's just not there

The lack of alternate provision is a disaster in schools right now.

Children who are drowning in mainstream might school refuse, they might "cope" but explode at home or they might violently disrupt every single class they are in, causing evacuation of the other 31-33 children for their own safety up to ten times a week. They can't get places in AP because they are TOO needy, not that they are not needy enough.

That's without touching on everything else that's gone to shit, as above.

Anyone with children still going through the state system needs to get really angry.

In her article she asks for comments and questions so you can email her with your experiences and give her an insight into what teachers are having to put up with and why the system is broken.
I’m glad she’s tackling the subject even if she’s ‘new’ to education (wasn’t she the political correspondent previously?).

@noblegiraffe is that disengagement / mental health because of something in school or is it a problem that stems from elsewhere that schools are expected to deal with (in your opinion)

In infants we are getting lots of speech and language issues and lots of complex needs that would previously have been in special schools but are waiting until year 3 for a place. But apparently quality first teaching is all a year 2 pupil, who is non verbal and developmentally 18 months, needs.

@Spendonsend that's because quality first teaching is effectively free

My borough has 2000 children on the 'books' for S&L support, and 2 SALTs. So, speech and language is now the responsibility of schools too. A SALT said to me 'we're at capacity' - erm, yeah we are too. Each teacher has been given a 30 page booklet to help us plan and manage that for the children in our class. Who knew that a degree or a masters degree could be replaced by a 30 page booklet.

Turn it around, why is there such an explosion of sen, why are year 7's not able to sit through lessons, why do so many children in infants have speech issues, why are there more behavioural issues?

Increasing funding especially for ap spaces are sticking plasters, the root cause is what I want specialist teachers, academics and investigative journalists to research.

My kids were at university when covid hit, they certainly weren't unscathed but obviously they didn't get affected in the same way as school kids, but I'm not convinced covid is the reason for the problems in schools as all these issues were being discussed prior to covid (covid just was the catalyst for a perfect storm).

We have 2 children each, all adults, they all have sen to a lesser or greater extent, this isn't normal - what are we doing (or did in my case) to our children?

Would love to hear our political overlords start talking!

I had a go at answering that in my first response. I also suspect perfect storm.

Increasing funding especially for ap spaces are sticking plasters, the root cause is what I want specialist teachers, academics and investigative journalists to research.

The root cause would be excellent to find out.

I suspect it would not be one root cause, instead many conflating factors including:

• screens
• lack of parental interaction
• the Internet and social media
• higher survival rates for pre term babies
• inadequate housing and overcrowding

Combined with cuts to sure start, social work, police, CAHMS, local authorities.

Parents don’t support teachers any more, this IMHO, has been brewing for a few generations plus the various governments of various colours not listening to teachers and putting the fix in

A perfect storm, which will get interesting once they enter the workforce.

Don't get me started on QFT being some sort of magic bloody wand.