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

@PurpleBugz I have two friends in a less extreme circumstance but equally stuck. School can't deal with their yr7 ASD children. DC can't cope. One is on reduced timetable (mornings). Other is occasional school ., m

@MrsHamlet If Bobs parents have money, they will get him an ADHD diagnosis for £900 from Harley Street. Done and dusted on Zoom in 30mins. Then you will be told you're not giving the right scaffolding or creating the right classroom environment for his needs. No need to raise kids. Harley Street, some Medikinet, an angry complaint to the lazy, useless teacher and Bob's your uncle 😉

Why do you have school inspectors? I think it is a total insult to the teachers suggesting that they need to be kept in line somehow. Disgusting. We have never had them and I don’t believe the USA does, either. It’s like we can’t trust our teachers to do a good job and Big Brother ( who is probably totally unqualified and out of touch with real classrooms) will come and smack you on the bum if you’re naughty. Get rid of them. There are better ways.

I think that's unfair. I'm a teacher, but I'm also a parent waiting for my child to be assessed (ASD rather than ADHD). She is very little trouble to staff in school as she hides everything but is very difficult at home and is increasingly socially isolated at school and struggling with anxiety about going. The NHS waiting list is 2 years or more. I have considered getting a private assessment of over £2000 which I really cannot afford as I want the assessment done before she goes to secondary school as I know she's going to find the transition so difficult and I would like the school to be aware of her needs. We only have one local school that is easily accessible. My other DC is there and it is extremely strict which I know will cause her huge anxiety. Unfortunately, my experience is that without a diagnosis, the school offers very limited support. They probably won't offer much with a diagnosis but at least they may be obliged to listen to me a bit more.

I would rather my DC had no issues and I didn't need to consider spending a large amount of money on assessments.

Our private assessments (At £2550) have been far far more thorough than the assessments my other child received on the NHS.

In all honesty, is there any education system in the world that could cope with the ND/SEND that posters are claiming the UK has.

Primary school classes with a third of the pupils ADHD and the rest of them have mental health issues?

Every other poster on MN claims to have ADHD these days.

Please remember that some teachers are also ND. The issues here are not that SEN don't exist. It's that the entire health, social care and education system have been slowly defunded and destroyed since the coalition government

Year 7s are the children that were born the year after the tories got In so have had the brunt of the cuts from birth. I think its a combination of issues and covid has then added. So sure starts were closing when these children were very young, meaning much reduced parenting support for people who were struggling, less early intervention for children who may have been showing signs of Sen at a young age. Then once kids get to school if they do have Sen support is really hard to access, tribunal times for ehcps are now at a year on top of the usual time line if stuck to so it can take two or three years to get sn ehcp in place even if the child’s needs are high snd its blatantly obvious they need one, la’s have had their budgets cut so much so are trying to save money by delaying providing support and ehcps. We are now seeing the knock on effects as children that would have needed minimal support ar primary needs have escalated by the time they reach year 7 due to lack of support snd funding.

We have a couple dozen kids in year 7&8 who regularly take themselves out of class & play a game of hide from the teachers. Everyday, kids roaming the campus. There’s a few that just never go to class, we exclude, reintegration meetings happen and they are out roaming again, it’s nuts.

We had kids causing anti social behaviour in the holidays. Not in uniform. Not in school time.
The police want us to deal with it.

For me Yr11 are a clear symbol for all that is wrong in education. Lazy, apathetic, entitled and unwilling to help themselves or others. I have to coax and sweet talk them to even run some books back for me (due to budget cuts I've lost my classroom).
I put in various interventions every week,no one attends- when I call parents to ask for their support, they argue that it's not fair their child has to revise for their GCSE- why am I not doing for them.
If they don't care then why should I? I'm totally disengaged now. No work in the evenings, weekends or holidays.

@Forever42 @Dodgeitornot
There is another way Uk look at this.
My ADHD DD would not have coped with high school without meds. Cost us best part of £2k to get her diagnosis & meds and defo not on zoom. She went from being a challenge in class & underperforming to the opposite. If high schools weren't forced to run like highly inspected boot camps & had more TAs, support for teachers, AP etc maybe she'd have coped without.?

Schools are being expected to do everything.

I recently listened to a radio 4 programme about the cost of living crisis. A Mum was happily telling the interviewer about how if she xmbeeds her child's uniform washing she takes it to school and gets them to do it. And some schools are also running food banks.

Of course no-one wants people to go hungry or not have clean clothes but why is it up to schools to sort these things out? There has to be a limit surely? Who are these members of staff who are doing laundry and running the food bank during school time? And who is carrying out the tasks that they were actually employed to do?

'xmbeeds' should read 'needs'

Astounds me whenever this happens. Local FB etc saying in half term that these kids belong to x school - as if it's the schools fault...

@tadpolecity Did I say meds don't help? Of course they do. Why do you think what I said was relevant to you if you didn't get a 30min zoom diagnosis?
@Forever42 Sorry but i really don't think I'm being unfair. This is from personal experience. My DD also takes meds. I have no qualms with parents or private diagnosis or ADHD. However as @Summerof76a said, every other parent is claiming their kid has ADHD. We found it really shocking how poor the diagnosis assessment was at quite a few of the Harley Street clinics. Genuinely it was £900 for 30min zoom and we were told that as from our description it definitely sounds like ADHD, they'll be able to offer a trial of meds after the appointment. They hadn't set eyes on her yet.
There is also a huge issue of parents not taking accountability for lack of parenting and discipline. No one wants to put up their hands and say oh actually maybe I didn't do this well, maybe all that time on the console does effect attention span and maybe, just maybe, Bob is just being an asshole and needs to be disciplined because actually, this is quite normal at their age and this is why parents exist and need to do their job.
The first conclusion parents jump to now when told their kid is misbehaving, is either the teacher is crap or maybe it's ADHD. There doesn't seem to be much self reflection.

I’m fed up with my kids’ education being put last after all the SEN and shit behaviour is sorted. They are intelligent and well behaved, and have to muddle along as best they can.

Private diagnoses are handed out like sweeties - I have seen a comprehensive NHS assessment rule out a condition only for a private assessment of dubious quality to arrive a month later saying “yes, ADHD, autism without a doubt”.

@manontroppo I agree with this completely. My DD has SEN but she is very well behaved and stuck in lower sets with kids who are horrendous. We're moving her to a private dyslexia school, if the LEA agree, but very few even have that hope. I feel there are far too many allowances made for SEN kids in mainstream, so many schools have extremely low expectations because they just cannot cope. With the best will in the world, these kids aren't able to cope in mainstream. It's cruel for everyone involved, especially the kids who are having to endure sitting in a class not understanding, and those who wish they could just learn.
This is of course talking about those with genuine SEN, not consequences for lack of parenting.
People have no idea how prevalent dodgy ADHD diagnosis are now. Those parents are the first to complain to school that we're not understanding of Bobs imaginary condition.

ah the old inclusion of the minority, excludes the majority... when will people realise it doesn't work. It IS shit for the minority but how does bringing down the experience for everyone else help? You cannot please all the people all the time so mainstream schools should be targeted at MAINstream children.

There's a thread on AIBU right now all about a 21 year old moving overseas for work. His Mum is flying out with him and as it's his 21st birthday she expects a free birthday cake to be provided by the airline. She will not accept that she's being unreasonable. Or that she needs to let her adult son get on with his life.

Pretty much sums up parental attitudes these days and reminded me of this thread.

In the area where I taught in the early 1990s, a market town whose schools served a number of outlying villages, there were three special schools, one for physical disabilities, one for moderate learning difficulties and one for severe learning difficulties. There was also a PRU.
Over the intervening years the three schools have become one (which is very difficult to get in to) and the PRU operates at about a third of its original capacity and for limited timescales. At the same time, the workload of teachers in mainstream schools has increased pretty much exponentially.
While I have taught a number of able and motivated young people who have been served well by inclusion policies that have enabled them to access a mainstream education, I have taught many more who have been dismally failed by these policies and even more who have been adversely impacted by the teacher exhaustion and frustration that such policies entail if not properly staffed and funded.

If an assessment doesn't follow NICE guidelines then it isn't valid.

Many private assessments are more thorough and substantial than what our NHS provide. Certainly not handed out like sweets.

There are some very naive posts on here.

Teachers and parents have been complaining about these issues for a long time now - the cartoon someone posted on the first page is one I saw circa 2006. Have a look at this thread - it reads very similarly to this, except it’s from fourteen years ago. I’m pretty sure fourteen years into the future we’ll all still be complaining about same old same old.

Just to add, my above post isn’t meant to be dismissive or goady. I know that a lot of people are finding it all really hard just now.

On a personal level though, I find it fascinating how quickly things move on and how quickly people start to claim it was better when …

I was at primary school from the mid 80s to the early 90s; I’m sure there were brilliant, inspiring teachers but I’m also sure I wasn’t taught by any of them Pink Floyd’s ‘dark sarcasm in the classroom’ held true, with side helpings of spite and sex offences. Child protection was not a thing, and bullying was rife. Secondary (early to end of 90s) was probably worse, with coursework cheating and bullying even darker. People talk about absences but kids vanished all the time then and no one cared … Oh, and teenage pregnancies, often fathered by a man well into their twenties.

During the course of my university years, Victoria Climbie’s death inspired every child matters and then we also had Soham, which led to more of a focus on safeguarding. Still, by the time I returned to the classroom as a teacher in the early 2000s, things weren’t pretty. Admittedly I did start my teaching career in an exceptionally shite school and I sometimes wonder if this is why my recollections vary. Being told to fuck off was a daily occurrence, and so many fights, kids walking out of lessons, destroying property, assaulting one another, shoving us, ripping down wall displays if asked if they had a pen.

I do often think that those early years I spent in that school have really shaped my perception of teaching, because I just honestly don’t see what others do. I know times are tough but I’ve never experienced behaviour on that level in the last few years.

Oh and coursework, the absolute hell of getting the kids to do it, virtually doing it for them, what a farce. And marking it over and over again. I used to near enough have a nervous breakdown every May.

Yes that's a very different experience than the one I had teaching in the early 00s Treaclehair

My primary education was early to mid 80's mostly pre national curriculum and was excellent. Everything went to shit at secondary.