Our education system is an utter shit show

[Noonelikesasloppytrifle]

I don't think people outside of education realise what an utter mess our education system is in and how bad it actually is.

I have 4 DC with one still in primary and the rest at secondary or 6th form. I have worked in various educational settings and have been a Governor. I am currently working in a large secondary ( 1500 students) in a pastoral role having moved from another area of the public sector which is also in a mess. My DC all attended state primaries. Two of them are now privately educated with the other 2 attending state grammars and one moving to a sixth form college.

I have been really shocked by how bad it is in the school I work at. It has clearly been managed badly for a number of years (former head went on long-term sick, followed by maternity, followed by sick leave) so they were rudderless for a while. They have just joined a MAT who all want the same behaviour policies with a blanket discipline regime and no regard to the individual needs of the kids. There are a mix of behavioural problems but they are all lumped together so those kids who have SEMH issues are punished for not attending lessons when the classroom environment is so toxic for them that they can't cope. There is no resource for it to be dealt with in any other way.

The curriculum and assessment schedule has completely disenfranchised a whole raft of kids. At the start of year seven they're already aware that scraping a 4 in most subjects would be their best outcome but they're forced to sit in classes where the only attainment measure is an exam at the end and we wonder why we see so many challenging behaviours in lessons. There are barely any TA's so often 30 students with one teacher and some very difficult kids to deal with.

This week at my school they had so many staff off sick that for three days we had 5 classes put together in the main hall. It was either that or close the school.

The staff all appear to dislike each other. Teachers don't like SLT or pastoral but also exhibit a sense of entitlement. It's certainly not an "we're all in it together" type of attitude.

School are expected to solve all the ills of society. On a daily basis we're dealing with the impact of poor parenting, lack of boundaries, the poor diet and social media etc etc. There is so little resource to deal with this properly

I know that not all schools are like this. My 16 yr old DC (at Grammar) does not report the same issues at their school that I do at mine. However, I do know that our other nearest secondary is experiencing the same thing as us and they have a similar demographic (rural county).

I feel so sad for the kids coming out of this system, particularly those without the network around them to provide support and direction.

Where can I find %sen on schools website please...is there somewhere where it is usually mentioned?, I've looked at Ofsted and send section and can't find it on my dcs school. I found PP %. My dcs school I expect to have a high proportion of Sen and was curious as to what it is.

Go to https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

Find your school then go to Absence and Pupil Population

That will tell you the SEN and FSM percentages.

Also not at all what I am experiencing.

My two are at local state primary and it's absolutely fantastic. Theres been little to no staff leaving in the last 5 years. The facilities are excellent, the enrichment activities, sports, extracurricular is all top notch.

Local parent friends went off to see the local private schools with a view to putting their DC in ahead of 11+ but are staying with our school as none of the private ones were as good.

My DC go to school very happily every day and are hugely enthused by learning.

We live in a socially mixed area, and at least two of my DD friends have sen, the school feels very inclusive.

Thank you! I was a teacher, I left because it is one size fails many with huge emphasis on tests that tell you nothing other than, those that pass can regurgitate facts. The curriculum doesn't prepare them for life in general and certainly what they learn they struggle to apply to real life situations because that is not the way the curriculum is designed. The government assign people to manage education who have no clue about either the real world or child development. It is in dire need of overhaul. Sadly teachers know this and are powerless to change it...when they try to implement change they are jumped on from a great height. It is awful

I agree with everything you've said but I have to add that in many areas, many parents don't care. In the most challenging schools in the local authority I work for there are very high percentages of parents who do not care- from nursery to Year 13.

We have children arriving in Reception not toilet -trained, who can not eat using cutlery, have really poor speech and understanding of language. We had a little boy this week sent to Reception in pyjamas under his clothes and wearing last night's nappy, he had had no breakfast and he was filthy.

Attendance difficulties start immediately as do punctuality. Parents are rude, will not work with the schools. We have more primary school children being excluded for behaviour issues than ever before. The levels of SEN are rising significantly and from earlier ages. By secondary school we know exactly where the problems ate going to be but there is no way off the path with them- because of poor parenting and lack of specialist provision.

Then add in the difficulties in teacher recruitment and the impact of that on classrooms and on other staff and it is a spiral.

Totally disagree with your first statement, I had a truly excellent state education, finishing barely 15 years ago. I wonder what changed in the years since then… oh… oh wait…

(Edited to add that I was also very much what you could call ‘an outlier’ - state education got me an unconditional offer to medical school….)

Ribenaberry12 I've seen this too. In a recent discussion I've had with a DSL around Early Help, it's basically a quota system where the schools are told the same criteria, and they're expected to do all the paperwork for it and just see if they'll make it before there are too many requests, and if not, they get told it doesn't meet the threshold.

It's filtering down to the kids as well. I've met teenager boys who were young carers and have their own additional needs in education, and when discussing extra help they could get, the immediate response is other people need it more, that they don't want anything applied for them because they're already aware and very mindful of the scarcity.

You’ve missed out the poor or complete lack of parenting by parents.

Mainstream education in this country has always been a shit show, that’s why a lot of people dislike teachers as they’ve been indoctrinated into thinking one size fits all (for children).

Surely not that many people are dim enough to think that it's teachers who choose to make it a 'one size fits all' system? Why would we? We aren't indoctrinated. If anyone sees the flaws in the system, it's teachers who work in it every day. We are just doing our best to teach and help children in the system we find ourselves in. We have no power to recreate the system as we'd like it to be.

Pupils with SEN support in some of the well mentioned schools on MN:

Whitgift 18%
Latymer Upper 24%
Wellington College 17.7%
Harrow school 20.4%
Eton 15.9%
Thomas's Battersea 17.6%

And these are all schools that can pick the cream of the crop!

@noblegiraffe thanks, I was right it has higher than average for Sen and those with Sen support and those with English not as first language and average pupil premium.

This is not true. You can’t just learn maths A-level with the click of a button.

Reason #962846283 why I'm home educating.

Oh well im sure it will soon be done.
So pleased my child left school.

@noblegiraffe @LuluBlakey1 sadly the school/parent relationship has broken down since covid. It's true to say that there a many lazy and ignorant parents out there who don't care, but there are many more who just have no idea how awful it has become, you just don't unless you work in it five days a week. Parents have to trust that schools are doing right by their children, what choice is there unless you can afford to go private? I have no faith in MPs or parliament. Schools are on their own sorting their own issues unfortunately.

I am probably unusual, but as a maths teacher I see generally excellent behaviour. I think that the national curriculum in maths is excellent and I love my job. I am really enjoying pushing your DC to be the best mathematicians that they can be. Most of my pupils thank me after each lesson which is really charming.

@Pythag what sort of school do you teach in?

The school my DC are at are not the best at keeping interested parents in the loop. I'm not saying they don't try, but there seems little consistency between departments and one of the (also academy run) schools in the area with a much better progress 8 score (possibly partly due to differences in levels of Sen) has resources on their website that actually help parents to understand (with examples) what each subject should be covering and when their child will be studying it. I have tried to use off the shelf revision guides with my DC only to find that they sometimes do not match the facts given by the school, so is hard to know what DC should know and to what depth in order to support them and their notes taken in class are really poor so would hate to rely on them.

One of the Bucks grammars.

Unfortunately schools are having to parent kids as well as educate them this is crippling them

How can that be the case, that 24% of children come from a family earning less than £7,400 per year?

Everything you've just described is the absolute opposite of what teachers want.

No teacher has been 'indoctrinated into thinking one size fits all'. Every teacher would love the time, classroom support and resources to provide the best for every student.

The reality is that schools are on their knees. The current government in particular has squeezed education so hard that departments that were thriving a decade ago have ceased to exist. There is no additional support for kids with additional needs and even those with EHCPs that entitle them to funded support end up sharing those resources with other kids who are desperate for help.

Schools cannot run at a loss. Teachers cannot split themselves 30 ways.

Yes, it's a mess, but that is not the fault of teachers.

Maybe I worded it wrong, I should have said schools or the education system. I know teachers are only following orders from the government. Some teachers still resent children with special educational needs though and don’t really know what to do with them. Parents and children a-like pick up on this.

My dc go to very good schools and even those despite trying to offer a rounded education end up funnelling the children through a sausage factory to get good exam grades. I benefited enormously from education and until my kids went to secondary believed very strongly in the transformative powers of education. Not any more. The system is soul destroying for kids and probably teachers as well. There is also a mental health crisis.

Also maybe I’m a bit older than some of the teachers getting irate to my comment. I attended high school in the late 80s/90s were an awful lot of teachers got away with awful treatment of pupils. Fast forward to my daughter’s school career and although teachers are very careful of their behaviour towards pupils (thanks to ofsted) things like turning a blind eye to bullies or isolating the bullied child are still prevalent today. My child missed a huge chunk of her education and teachers aren’t interested, they just pass the problem on to pastoral care ( who were useless ) She’s since been diagnosed with neurodivergence’s yet not one teacher picked up on that. They just treated her as a problem. Whenever anybody dares to speak about their experiences on here, a whole cohort of teachers come out in defence usually blaming parents. I think there’s a bit of blame on all sides to be honest.