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

Totally agree with this.
Yes funding and having enough teachers is basic, but the problems run much deeper.

The current education system is still based on the Industrial Revolution style of education. It’s completely unfit for our modern society. It’s irrelevant for today’s kids. It was barely relevant to me when I went to school and I’m in my 40s.

Kids are switched off to it. And the lockdowns have just cemented this apathy.

Plus it’s so easy to blame poor parenting but parents are living in a toxic society themselves. Overworked, underpaid, stressed, bombarded with negative news constantly, poor diets, toxins galore… I could go on.

I’m retired now, but when I was teaching in secondary our business manager was the most effective member of SLT, was calm and sensible and exercised a restraining presence when various others got carried away by impractical ideas and the various fads and fancies that swept across the sector on a regular basis.

@Hercisback what I mean is that as if each school has a business mgr as opposed to one for a group of schools, it takes a chunk of budget. Our primary has one who is very highly paid.

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.

Sadly, this was the case over 15 years ago. It's appalling that nothing had changed (if anything, provision for child and adult mental health seems to be worse). It's also astonishing that services still haven't realised that treating issues as and when they present (AKA nipping them in the bud) is so much more efficient and economical than leaving issues to develop and having to firefight with intense/longer treatment when a crisis almost inevitably arises. Same goes for physical health.

I feel ofsted is taking the blame at the minute for all the woes in teaching. Since the death of Ruth Perry all the focus is on whether ofsted will change. Whilst I agree ofsted is a large part of it, it's not the reason we can't attract teachers and not the biggest issue in teaching.

I've just marked my year 10 mocks. The top-end students are behind where I'd expect them to be even though they are good, conscientious students who do all their work and homework. This is simply because I spend so much of my time fire fighting behaviour issues so I am massively behind where I should be. The most disruptive student just laughs if I give her a behaviour point, and says her mum says she doesn't care because I give them out 'for breathing ' despite giving multiple chances.

What we need is many, many more schools so that children can be taught in much smaller class sizes - 15 rather than 30. That does take money - pots of it.

State schools have been getting bigger and more anonymous for years and an awful lot of kids cannot cope with crowds, as many adults can't, and don't have to unless you actually choose to go to a busy place or mass event. There is no such choice for kids. Even my school in the 1980s and 1990s was 1500 and I hated the crowds and anonymity. That was unusual then but has become the norm, and even primary schools can be 600+. It's ridiculous. It's education not commercial farming. Birth rate is not massive, surely we could do better as a country. Look at private schools - much smaller classes, great facilities, treating kids as individuals not badly behaved cattle.

@Another76543

But the £2500 funding shown in 1998-99 is equivalent to the £5500 today( rough figures from the chart!) so there has been NO increase in funding per pupil when inflation is taken into account. Yet schools are having to deal with more and more every year. No wonder they are stretched!

One issue I've noticed is that primaries are generally interactive, DC move about a lot. They are creative places & kids are known by a small number of adults. Kids can get Uk & move about. Reception is generally free flow and then they sit still more in later years. Everything provided.
Then high school - suddenly you can't leave chair, can't take blazer off, get detention for forgetting a pen, can't talk in lessons etc
Maybe the difference is also bigger.
(In my strict primary moons ago we had to sit in rows and be quiet all through juniors).
Agree constant stream of you tube/insta/snap/TikTok all playing havoc too.

The thing with schools is most fundung is per pupil. When a school is good and in an area with a shortage of places you can fill the class and be viable and dont need to market.
Where birth rates are falling and there is give in the system, schools do end up competing for bums on seats as it makes the difference between a viable or non viable school. It genuinley has an impact on pupils. One of my schools has empty places in each clsss and this equates to one TAs worth of funding.
I dont know any mats that have actual marketing departments but i do see some business managers having marketing tagged onto the job role.

When schools were in LAs much of the admin function was done by the LA. They would negotiate contracts for maintence, gardening, stationery, they did payroll, they did fire safety inspections and checked the fire extinguishers, they produced pro forma policies, they gave advice and guidance on school improvement, behaviour support etc, they did legionellas training etc. MATs now do this themselves. Often for a smaller fee than buying back the equivilent service from the LA. Its just on the budget line an LA school would have 'buy backs' and a MAT would have 'staffing expenditure"

Primaries are now almost all 3 form in my area and some up to 1000 kids.
High schools have very short lunch breaks and very little physical activity / lunch sports / other active clubs - to burn off steam too.

It was so frustrating that when Laura asked Mary Bousted whether teachers didn't care about kids when deciding to strike (horrible, manipulative comment/question) that in her reply Mary didn't mention that the latest offer is unfunded. My HT said he is glad the NEU rejected the pay offer as it was unfunded and had it been accepted the school may have needed to make redundancies.

In EY we used to be able to provide early intervention and help close the gap before starting school. Now every day it feels like we are fire fighting. Just getting through the day and hoping nobody gets injured. Out of one class, 5 with complex needs. We only have 4 adults. Taking into account nappies, toileting and settling new children, the ones without SEN have to just get on with it. It breaks my heart when I know what every child needs. I know their next steps, I know what they need be doing doing before reception (ex reception teacher). But I just cannot get around to all the children. We constantly have to lower our standards as we can't help everyone. The children with such high needs take the adults to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. Outside agencies come in rarely, and the advice they give depends on us having a 1-1 to deliver it. No chance! It is deeply unfair on the children with SEN and every other child. Parents have no idea. At least the children are happy, but I feel so de skilled that I cannot teach the way I know I am capable of. My poor team, on barely above NMW, I don't know how they keep going with all they have to endure in a single day. Without extra funding, things are only going to get worse.

Those figures are inflation adjusted. They are shown at 21-22 prices (as the chart says). It’s showing real terms funding, not nominal.

@Spendonsend which defo works for big MATs but there are still a lot of one school MATs

@tadpolecity Government don’t want single school Trusts and financially they won’t be viable for much longer so they will soon be merging into larger MATS.

I don’t think the lack of SEN provision is where all the problems stem from. Yes it is a major issue and definitely requires more funding, but in some of my worst classes, the SEND students are the best behaved. Especially in year 7 (there’s a handful that are difficult and need more support but the majority are quiet and rule followers). I find the worst behaviour is the middle ground - average intelligence, NT students who just do not know how to behave in a class. They cannot sit still, focus on a task, and talk over each other constantly. An example was yesterday, one student (year 7 class) was reading the passage out loud to the class and others would just shout out “miss, I need to fill my bottle up”. It’s just rude. They are just rude and disrespectful to each other. They have no idea how to sit and listen and wait for an appropriate moment to speak. And I do think that is down to parenting. If you a talking to someone else - adult or grown up - and your child suddenly interrupts, do you give them the attention or tell them to wait? If they are sitting in a restaurant waiting for food and you are having a conversation with your dp - do you make your kids sit and listen, or just shove a screen in their face to keep them quiet? They are not being taught social skills at all.

I feel ofsted is taking the blame at the minute for all the woes in teaching. Since the death of Ruth Perry all the focus is on whether ofsted will change. Whilst I agree ofsted is a large part of it, it's not the reason we can't attract teachers and not the biggest issue in teaching.

Oh yes, Nefarious, that was what I meant, I really wasn't clear.

Spielman says that Ofsted is acting as a lightning rod for the bad feeling in the sector, which I broadly agree with - the outpouring of feeling from headteachers and teachers on social media has been quite breathtaking. But while the dam bursting has been caused by Ofsted, and the tragic case of Ruth Perry (I am disappointed that Laura didn't pursue with Spielman the callous reference to her death in the report), the bad feeling is not simply Ofsted-related.

The utterly overwhelming rejection of the teacher pay offer by all four teaching unions is another sign of the huge discontent in the sector - and that's nothing to do with Ofsted.

Spielman didn't seem to have anything to offer on the subject of that bad feeling, beyond that it exists. She didn't seem to have any insight into the state of education. Perhaps because it might raise the question of, if why schools are struggling so much, Ofsted continues to rate them highly.

I will add that SLT are increasingly out of touch with classroom teachers. This has always been the case but it’s definitely got worse since Covid. Our SLT are still under the illusion that our place is a great place to work and will be in high demand - yeah, it was 10 years ago but it isn’t now! We’ve just advertised for a job in our department and got one, completely unqualified, applicant. For the money and the stress, as well as the location, it’s just not worth it and they had their head in the bloody clouds if they thought we were going to be flooded with applications. Oh yeah - and there’s only three of us teaching the subject, one of us is leaving and I’m actively pursuing jobs outside teaching. If I find a job before May 31st they are fairly well screwed for September. Once upon a time the guilt would have made me stay but not any more. HoDs and SLT think they can just pile shit on you and you’ll take it because it’s a ”good job”. But it isn't a good job. Why would I bend over backwards for a job that’s so undesirable NOBODY wants to apply for it? Compare to the jobs I am applying for with 200+ applicants each time.

I would recommend reading “Stolen Focus: Why We Can’t Pay Attention” by Johann Hari. He makes a plausible case for a several factors influencing attention including technology designed to be addictive, diet, insufficient sleep etc.

I assume OFSTED need to be politically neutral

There is no money for basics. Computer systems are not fit for purpose, there's no paper, pencils and certainly no pritt sticks or white board pens.

The government recommend highly complex (phonics) schemes which while brilliant, require the funding and staffing we don't have.

Staffing is awful. Children with severe SEND cannot have their needs met and everyone loses out. No one wants to be an LSA as the pay is awful and the conditions worse.

Parents and the government expect more and more but the government give less and less.

Maybe class sizes are just no longer appropriate at around the 30 mark? When I was at primary school, we had just one pupil in our class who had ADHD and needed more one on one targeted attention. In my niece’s class of 31, there are now 10 in her class with ADHD diagnosis’s or pending diagnosis’s. The school just doesn’t have the teaching capacity to make sure every child’s needs in that class are catered for. Both the children with SN and the ones who are bright and not receiving the teaching to get them to their full potential.

This is an interesting thread. I think quality of childcare is also something to think about. My DS went to two settings. Setting one had high expectations and worked really hard to develop independence. Setting two didn't. Setting one flagged that my DS was behind in his development. Setting two said he was fine. He was diagnosed with autism aged 4.

Setting 2 didn't notice a thing, because they weren't challenging the children and had low expectations for what they should be able to do. Some children are in that setting 5 days a week, 8 til 6.

A nursery setting limits stimulation for kids because they are in the same 4 walls with the same toys etc all the time, so the the staff need to work hard to introduce different activities and resources. Some do this really well but others don't and that's going to have a life long impact.

I have a yr 10 and yr 12 dc. In the space of 2 yrs the amount of options subjects at GCSE at their school was halved. Only 1 mfl instead of 3 for example. Kids are then forced to choose subjects they have no interest in and disrupt the children who do want to study them. Many of the subjects are still being taught by supply.

Bloody hell! Durham not approved either! Shocking.