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.

Bring back blackboards and textbooks.
The GCP Pearson Edexcel/AQA ones, in particular, are really excellent.

Get rid of all the constant screentime and "gamification" of teaching resources.

Remove the horror and disturbing content from lessons.

Fix the English Literature text choices so they are not all hair-raising/misery.

More good fun books like Pride and Prejudice and The Important of Being Earnest.

More parental involvement in teaching.

Allow flexi-schooling for parents who want to take over some of the load, especially with SEND kids.

@fuckityfuckityfuckfuck what was it in the 90s that was so good? You will have seen it from the inside but we don't know what it is that you have in mind.

@KeepWalking123

What do you mean by horror and disturbing content?

Agreed. Many of the government funding issues could be mitigated by the parental input though. It is very circular. We have a big problem with society ATM.

Funding mainly. We even had school nurses!
Freedom to have fun in school. Art and crafts just for fun rather than analysing techniques used by x artist. Primary children need to enjoy learning, especially the arts. Not everything had to be purposeful, or at least the purpose was to build enjoyment of learning. Curriculum wise, that's the biggest thing that's missing now. Everything has to have objectives and success criteria, there's no room for actually enjoying learning.

Maybe it's rose-tinted glasses, but teachers, parents and children were definitely all happier when we had freedom to make learning fun.

I'm reluctant to go into details here, but I had to remove my son from school because there was a lot of this and he was having crippling panic attacks because of it. If you haven't seen it them maybe you don't have it in your school.

And a reduction in teacher workload. The only realistic way of doing this is by giving teachers less contact time. The expectations of the amount of work that needs to be done in addition to actual teaching time has gone up and uo since I was first a teacher nearly 30 years ago, and yet the number of hours we are paid to work has not changed.

I'm pretty sure most teachers would take a workload cut over a payrise at this point, but schools (mine has just done this) make sympathetic noises and creating superficial policies about reducing workload and improving staff well-being, knowing full well that they can't really do much about the underlying issues.

I'm sure most people think that it's pure laziness and selfishness that makes teachers moan about workload, but most of us would just really like the time to be able to do our jobs really really well and do the best we can for our students. It would also help not to put off trainees and recently-qualified teachers, many of whom currently quit in defeat after a couple of years.

It won't happen though. Less contact time means more teachers. That would be very expensive indeed, and at the moment there already aren't nearly enough applicants.

If flexi-schooling was offered, would it help the staffing problem in the short term?

I feel as though the current cohort of kids need urgent help and the Labour government aren't going to be able to make huge changes quickly.

I wondered if flexi-schooling would help in the short term? It would enable those parents who have the time, to take over more of the teaching load. I think this especially might help where there are SEND kids who are struggling more broadly in the skills of independence, and need more time to practise that stuff.

One parent in my son's class complained their child got given a book on earthquakes age 6.

It was totally age appropriate and my son loved it. Frankly I thought the parents were bonkers and it was a parenting issue not a content issue.

@KeepWalking123 flexi schooling doesn’t usually mean parents follow National Curriculum/school timetable in their time with DC, so DC may struggle to follow what is happening in school and add to teacher workload

@RedToothBrush it's definitely not that kind of thing that I'm talking about.

Sorry I can't go into details.

@crumblingschools I really meant just being sent home with the school powerpoint slides and sitting tests at home. I think it would really help those kids who are out with EBSA.

I think the EBSA is a short term post-covid problem but these kids really need help and quite soon.

Just started a thread over on Aibu about why private schools manage to churn out well rounded confident kids. I was wondering was it down to the parents or the school. The answers were interesting.

My kids are in state school & get to go nowhere compared to the private schools who are constantly on language trips, sports trips, history or geography trips both at home & abroad. Fabulous residentials. There is a huge imbalance.

I watched School Swap on YouTube last night. Very interesting show. 3 students from Warminster swapped places with 3 students from Bremrose in Derby. The differences in expectations was startling.

Well it's balls, isn't it? Lots of 'Labour will enable all children to achieve academically'. 'Labour will recruit loads of new teachers'. 'Labour will reduce teacher workload'.

Not very specific, is it?

But as we know, Labour isn't going to have any money when they get into power to actually fund public services properly, and what is really needed is MORE MONEY.

What I would like to see:

Threshold for free school meals to be increased in line with inflation (currently FSM threshold is the same as it was in 2017 despite the cost of living crisis). More funding for feeding kids that a lot of schools are currently feeding out of their own budgets. And the extra FSM funding would help schools in deprived areas deal more effectively with the impacts of child poverty.

Way more special school places. Look at all these LA applications that were rejected (down the page) and reconsider https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-free-schools-local-authority-applications/local-authority-applications-to-open-a-special-free-school-2022

Above inflation pay rises for teachers to try to begin to repair the damage done to recruitment.

Funding for increased pay for support staff - there's a massive recruitment crisis there too, as they can earn more in Aldi.

No major curriculum changes unless the specific intention is to reduce the curriculum (particularly in primary). Any other changes will increase teacher workload which is unacceptable right now.

No more dumping of societal problems onto schools to solve (e.g. getting teachers to supervise teeth brushing, free breakfasts, as this just raises the question of what happens during weekends and holidays).

Fund CAMHS properly. No pretending that a bit of training for a 'mental health lead' in a school is an adequate replacement for professional intervention.

End the rationing of EHCPs. They should be allocated by need, not restricted by a need to keep down funding.

Begin to repair the damage done to the school estate of 14 years of neglect by properly funding repairs and rebuilds.

I could go on all day tbh.

If they concentrated resources for SEN kids with medium level needs, would you need more money? Or would the resources be more effective pound for pound in improving things both for SEN kids and mainstream education?

@Kenthighst and would all parents in your DC’s school be able to afford those trips? Nothing comes for free in a private school, they just get added to the bill

As a parent I would also say - stop giving us long forms and endless referrals that you know will lead to nothing. It just uses up time that parents don't have. Then the teachers have to read the forms, which is a waste of their time too.

We need to be much more honest with people about the realities of the situation.

If no help is available, then I think it would be good to say that up front.

I think it would also help if report cards distinguished between these two things:

• Child A has conspicuous special needs, and is a lot of work in the classroom, but tries really hard.
• Child B has no special needs, is easy to teach, and tries hard in the classroom.

Currently both of these children would get an A for attitude in the report card. Parents of mildly SEN children who can mask effectively, some of the time, have no idea which version the teachers are seeing in class.

Yep it’s a shit show - so vote with your feet in the general election - not from a bunch of twats who ‘know what a woman is’

Funding is obviously a massive issue. As well as the SEN provision, schools need to be able to afford to retain experienced senior teachers. If they paid better salaries, they could attract better staff, and dare I say it, more male teachers. Nothing wrong with female teachers but boys do respond differently to make teachers.

I fear this goes beyond fixing schools though. It starts in the home with kids not valuing education, never reading books, they never watch films anymore let alone plays. It's a massive societal problem.

Research the books, lectures etc by john gatto taylor,

My kids are in state school & get to go nowhere compared to the private schools who are constantly on language trips, sports trips, history or geography trips both at home & abroad. Fabulous residentials. There is a huge imbalance.

It really depends on the state school & location perhaps. My dc do extracurriculars such as chess, debating, strings etc & have annual residential & frequent trips. The Yr 6 residential is £400 this yr which isn't cheap. I went to state schools as a dc & went skiing etc.

I think you're right. The internet and screens in general are a huge problem.

I do think we need to bring back boredom at home. It's an essential tool in child development. It's only when they're bored that they get ideas of their own.

I know that sound silly but I'm not joking. Kids need to learn to do stuff like rollerskating and whittling, and lighting fires with magnifying glasses, and they can't do that if they are glued to the latest video game.

Could we at least remove the screens from schools and use textbooks again?

I don't know. I'm a secondary maths teacher (as you know!) and we set by ability so children with SEN are in generally in smaller groups anyway and sometimes that class gets a TA (less likely these days though).

I don't know how other subjects cope when they teach mixed ability so have the same kids in large groups with no TA.

I'm also not sure what you would consider a medium level need.