Let’s talk about how we can make changes in schools to improve them for everyone involved.

[SchoolsMustChange]

Having binge-read the WFH/attendance thread, I feel it important to have a positive discussion about changes schools can make that will improve things for everyone.

As a mother of autistic children, a couple of whom have school refused to the point of us being threatened with court and fines, and feeling totally unsupported by school, and ending up home educating because there felt like no other options, which also meant claiming more benefits to be able to do that.

I feel there are alternative options that would help schools become less chaotic, ease the stress on SN families (much of which comes from gaslighting and lack of support from within school) and improve outcomes for most children involved.

Lack of special school spaces is obviously an issue that must be addressed at some point, but for this thread let’s focus on mainstream schools, which seem to be really struggling right now.

At my youngest child’s school there was a high % of ND children, mainly because the local choice of schools is a draconian academy which manages out children with support needs, and this school, which is now riddled with attendance and behavioural issues. When I deregistered my son he was the 11th child in his year group to be removed, in a small school with under 60 per year group. My son’s attendance was nearing 50%.

What would have worked for him? Streaming lessons. Using technology already set up in the school during Covid lockdown. Allowing my son and others like him to login and register his attendance, and attend school and in a way that he could cope with. If he felt he genuinely had a choice to access education in this way he would have thrived. In days where stress levels were lower he could attend school and register as normal. If the day got too much he could come home and log in for afternoon lessons without it affecting his attendance and worrying schools, OFSTED and government. With this arrangement I know that his attendance, and that of loads like him, would be 100%. He wants to learn, but he can’t always do it in school.
Edited to add: this would also work for children who are ill who should be at home instead of spreading their germs to everyone!

I also think this plan could go further in dealing with increasing behavioural issues in the classroom, by being clear to parents that any issues (a lot which will be caused by unsupported SN) and their child will do lessons in a quiet room, streamed to a device with headphones (isolation room was often full of children who couldn’t cope in a loud classroom and who calmed down once there), and if the behaviour persists they can go home to learn there - if school is then not accessed they can be chased for their attendance, because a workable option is available.

Schools can then have a clearer line of acceptable behaviour with a real solution that’s not up for debate. At the moment lines are blurred and behaviour remains a big problem.

So rather than talking about the problem, can we have a discussion about potential solutions?

It’s depressing reading the frequent threads fighting teachers and/or children and/or parents.
Teachers are understandably not coping and are often blaming pupils and parents, children are not coping - as seen with rising rates of mental illness and poor attendance, parents are not coping because, especially those of us with SN children, we can see that they are not supported and we take the brunt of that once home. The system isn’t working for anyone.

So what can be done, because unless someone addresses the issues, instead of constantly pointing fingers at any other problem, this is only going to get worse for teachers, parents and pupils alike.

Any thoughts?

Autism Outreach is a joke. They come in and observe a child for 15 mins at the most and then make all these recommendations and suggestions which either are completely wrong for the child, or need so much support that they are impossible to achieve. The last 5 years have seen about ten visits from Autism Outreach to my classroom and each one has been a complete waste of time. The latest one was written by a person who hadn't even met the child they were writing about.

Which LA are you OP?

I don't think it's fair to say schools used to ignore absence. The EWOs in the 80s and 90s would come round to your house, haul you out of bed and put you in the car. People would be appalled now! But it did work for some children, usually where parenting and boundaries were poor. Persistent absence has basically doubled in the last 10 years. I'm a secondary governor and we can't be ok with 20% being missed (we're running at about 22%). It's not fair on either the children or the teachers who then get a load of extra grief about catching up. School absence is not always EBSA, good old fashioned truancy still exists.

And we're running at 22% with a non-academy, reasonably lower stress comp without any serious behaviour issues, a great rewards policy and a decent SEN team. While the problem is partly 'with schools' it's really with policy and funding. It's not really the school's fault someone invented the EBACC (which isn't really a thing) and single word Ofsted judgements and not enough teachers or TAs. We need to look outside schools at poverty, mental health support, early intervention (no sure start for this cohort) etc. That's not to say that there are never poor teachers or schools of course, there are. But the other parts need to be in place.

AO may be a joke now, but a few years ago they were incredible.
Whilst I was working with them 10 years ago they had staff shortages and their workload was doubled, so I can imagine now that they are more stretched than ever.

And a hard no to online (as in streaming the regular classroom) as being a permanent option. Not only will it not give kids a decent education, LAs will opt out of making other provisions 'because they can always access online'. It will be a further downward spiral. DD has ASD and accessed zero learning during COVID as she couldn't engage at all.

I honestly get that, but in the meantime there are thousands of children who are getting next to no education, the only option being to get them into school, which in its current state is not happening for a growing number of children.

Something needs to happen.

I keep saying, Oak Academy is there and free. Parents can use their own inititative to access that. However providing streams from the classroom isn't the answer. Attendance is already seen as optional by some, and this will only make it worse. We shouldn't be normalising not going out.

I wouldn’t say they’re ’getting no education’. They have the offer of education, but are choosing not to take it. As I said before a personalised, bespoke education for every pupil just isn’t doable on any level. Every child is entitled to an education, but not the best education money can buy, or that is tailored to fit their every request.

Yes, I agree. The lack of desire from young people to engage with the world or any socialisation is hugely worrying, and continuing to supply screens and removing all obstacles to leave their front doors wouldn’t help things I should imagine.

My ASD DD finds school overwhelming for the same reasons that I find working in big open plan offices overwhelming. Too much background noise, too many people in the same room, lots of sensory overload.

If schools could be calmer, more flexible and less authoritarian I think it would help. Remove unnecessary noise and rules.

Forcing kids to sit still for 30 minutes in a noisy assembly isn't good for all kids and sets them up for sensory overload. They won't be learning anything from the assembly while they're trying so hard to keep it together, so it's pointless.

Playtime and breaktime are real trigger points for my primary aged DC, all the noise and unpredictable movement. Being outside is good for kids but maybe there should be the option of staying inside (for all kids), smaller breakaway outdoor activities etc

Smaller class sizes would obviously help but would be difficult to fund. So more TAs to sit with smaller groups.

If schools became more SEN friendly and had the same options available for all kids, not just the SEN kids, it would be a lot more inclusive. I think it needs a whole school approach and then no children would feel othered.

From the perspective of the children who are not able to access school this problem is not going to go away without huge change.

It’s not by choice. It’s a trauma response, similar to that of the number of teachers who cannot cope and leave.

Oak academy is indeed an option, but there are parents and children who want to stay enrolled at school, hold out the hope that their child will be able to attend more regularly. Small changes could help them - not necessarily a hugely expensive bespoke system, that’s completely unrealistic today.

It begins to feel like a race to the bottom because any discussion about SN children seems to completely misunderstand them and what might help.

I’ll duck out after this post because I’ve said plenty but as PP said, ‘just a few minor adjustments’ for 10 students in a class becomes 30 adjustments for the teacher to deal with.

The frustration comes from the fact ultimately a child who has a trauma response to sitting in a busy room, or being in a playground, is going to be inherently unable to deal with most facets of normal adult life. Work is in many cases far more demanding than school, and there’s no ‘pastoral care’ - you have to get on with it or lose your job.

Making endless adjustments, moving things online etc, is further embedding the notion that life should shape itself around their anxiety and agoraphobia rather than the other way round.

It’s also frustrating because the SEN system is so astronomically expensive that it’s disheartening as a parent with children at a struggling primary to hear calls for more to be spent on it, all for relatively uncertain results. DD’s school relies on parents to supply basic items because the cost of 1-2-1s has basically swallowed up all their money (the headteacher told me this). She also finds the adjustments made for other children to be very disruptive and to be honest I don’t blame her - kids coming and going constantly, running around the playground shouting, fidget toys being thrown around the room. Ultimately the classroom has to run for the good of the majority, and the non-SEN children are frankly very overlooked.

My DH works at a university. Over the past few years they have managed all sorts of online teaching options / in classroom options. It’s a big central London university with great tech support and classrooms specially set up with cameras etc.

Despite all this, trying to stream in-classroom lessons to some online pupils is still really really unsatisfactory. It was ok if everyone is online. You can design the lesson to work. It’s obv ok if everyone is in the classroom. But when a few are online and the rest in the classroom, it’s just much poorer experience for everyone. People online can’t connect, the streaming tech crashes or doesn’t project for some reason, the in class group work doesn’t translate to online, the materials which are all printed out in the class aren’t in the right place online and the rest of the lesson doesn’t make sense without them.

They absolutely trialled this kind of learning, with some at home and some in classroom, but have stopped as it doesn’t work well for anyone. All online is ok, all in class is good. But a mix is awful. In my role at work I’m always in online meetings and it’s one thing everyone joining online to a session, but if you’re trying to teach it, to children, it’s far far harder.

I can see why you say “it’d be better than nothing”. But it is really distracting for the teacher, they’re likely to try to include the online children and that takes time away from the classroom and kids will start acting up. The group work - of which there’s far more in a school classroom than a university - is v hard to do with online and the rest of the lesson makes no sense without it. Even if you were happy with that, you can guarantee plenty of other families wouldn’t be - they’d be wanting the online provision to be more inclusive, group work uploaded in advance and sorted into teams chats. Far more than the class teacher - in a typical school without decent tech support- is able to manage.

It really wouldn’t be better than nothing. Perhaps in 10 years time when tech progresses and simplifies? Maybe? But it’s just not there and poorly funded schools aren’t the place to be the trying this.

I 100% agree with Wildflowers.

The difference between school and work is that school is mandatory and all schools seem to mostly follow the same structure. Children have no option.
Adults can find jobs that suit them. If you have anxiety about large offices you can find a role that isn't office based. If you prefer to be outdoors all day you can find a job that does that. If you don't like being told what to do and micro managed you can be self employed.

Making adjustments isn't setting children up to fail. It's making an unsuitable system more bearable for them until they have more autonomy over their own lives.

If schools were SEN friendly and adjustments were made to make schools a more pleasant environment for everybody with more flexibility, because all children are different and thrive in different ways, there wouldn't need to be constant small adjustments made for individual children. It would be part of the school ethos from the start.

I've sat through countless primary assemblies. It's absolutely not unreasonable to expect children to sit through 20/25mins quietly, with a break for the song or suchlike. They aren't noisy and chaotic.

And most children will learn to deal with playgrounds, and schools will generally have a quiet option for those who need it already. I've seen many parents refuse to accept that their child would manage to find their own path through.

More TAs to sit with smaller groups is not the right answer. Schools don't simply have the space to put all these small groups. Children who need support need high quality teachers, not minimum wage TAs. I'm sure they'd have a jolly old time in small groups, but how effective is it really going to be? And that's before you get to the cost.

And I really hate the use of the world "trauma" to discuss things that are a child struggling to adapt to a normal everyday experiences. Everything is trauma informed these days, and most children simply don't have traumatic backgrounds in their past. The ones that do, need proper, experienced, qualified support.

There's also a disconnect - more flexibility for one child means more disruption for everyone else. Which doesn't work with your calmer, less disruptive environment.

How about more flexibility for all children?

There needs to be a huge shift in the way we view schools and child behaviour.

Which of these scenarios do you think would lead to higher employee morale?

An office where everyone has to be in at the exact same time every day, breaks are taken at the designated times, you have to go to the toilet within those break times, a bell goes to remind you to go to meetings right on time with no dawdling, no food or drink except at designated lunch times, no working from home, no flexi time. Everyone works in the same room and you're not allowed to wear headphones to drown out the noise.

Or, an office where it's like that for most people, but a special few get to have reasonable adjustments made.

Or, an office where flexible working is the norm and people can take breaks when they need them and make whatever reasonable adjustments they need. Where everybody's needs are taken into consideration and the office is set up so people with different preferences can work in the way that makes them most productive.

I think the latter is the way that a lot of companies are going. So why do we treat children in schools as if we are preparing them for adult life in the first scenario. Education should exist to educate children, not turn them into conforming drone workers.

How to address what is going on in schools at the moment is so complex, and is so entangled with what is going on in society as a whole that everything apart from a huge overhaul seems like tinkering around the edges.
The cohort of children has changed, with higher levels of send, higher levels of anxiety, the long, long hangover from Covid.
The cohort of families have changed, many with both parents working, struggles with cost of living and an increase in mental health issues across the board.
What SEND is and how it should be supported in schools and society as a whole has/is and should change... inclusion is vital, but needs to involve a change in the way schools work and needs to be part of a wider picture that includes specialist provision.
The support and funding provided for children who are struggling as a result of factors other than SEND needs to expand... there are an increasing number of children who require bespoke/ 1-1 / tailored support as a result of challenging behaviour, but with no diagnosable need (for example as a result of trauma, family issues etc)... the impact of just one child with needs like this can be huge, but there is very little in the way if support for them.
Schools have changed, with an overstuffed curriculum, play and subjects like music, art and drama being squeezed out by targets.
The role of schools has changed with teachers and support staff being required to support behavioural, emotional and social needs to a level that is often beyond the time, training and pay that the job involves.
Society has changed, the impact of screens, the Internet and social media on adults and children is SO vast that it has to be a part of every discussion over how we move forward in educations and supporting the development of children.
Thinking about why so many children are struggling with attendance becomes a blame game, from all sides, and the assumption that attendance is as a result of one thing doesn't help address any of the individual reasons.
There are families who struggle to get their children to school for so many complex reasons.
It is the responsibility of parents and schools to support children in attending school. I have been on both sides of this, having had a child who struggled to go in due to anxiety, a child who struggled to go in due to his sen needs not being met, and having also worked in a school, specifically with children who are struggling to attend school (for a variety of compex reasons).

I don't understand how a teacher can teach if people don't turn up to the lesson because they have flexi working, then those that do turn up can head off to the loo for the 20 minute input that is important to the lesson, then go off to a different quiet room to do the task, but actually live feedback and questions from the teacher are part of the task.

I think there are huge amounts that could be done within current budgets to improve the school experience but I think at it's core, children need to be with the teacher when they are teaching or we'd be looking at increasing the education budget 10 fold and that simply isnt going to happen.

And whilst offices might be all flexible, home working, ear defenders etc. Not all workplaces are offices. I know people would gravitate towards jobs they'd manage better but we aren't just preparing people for offices. There is everything from construction, retail, heslthcare, factories, agriculture.

As a parent of a SEN child (ASD, DCD, EHCP in place) as well, I'm also really keen she's not out before she's out. A lot of the adaptations people often suggest as standard just seem to involve having really low expectations of her, both academically and in the future, like online learning or a reduced curriculum. All the local specials for academically in line with expectation children still only offer 4 or 5 GCSEs, and often only at Foundation.

I don't want her in a special classroom for SEND kids who also have behavioural needs where she's likely to find the disruption massively disruptive herself- I don't understand how that can't be dysregulating (and it is, we've been there). She would, horrible to say, probably really thrive somewhere like Michaela where there are very strict rules and no messing about (although she couldn't do SLANT for all the money in the world...). At the moment she even finds shouting out, or others leaving the classroom, quite tricky to manage and loves the rules of school. She loves school! Which is the other thing you're not supposed to admit if your child has SEND. That may not always continue but for now, it's where we are.

When really I want her to be able to manage herself in a range of situations and self-advocate, get some extra time to deal with her slower processing and access to smaller groups to ensure she's understood the content, with the OT input she needs to support with her exec functioning. So it just shows, doesn't it, that 'SEND Friendly' could mean a wide range of different things for different children. How do you do that, realistically, within one school, with finite resources (and they will always be finite)?

There's absolutely no way a single school can incorporate a million different ways to do things. A range of institution types would also be great and in big urban areas you already get some of that. But what if you're in rural Yorkshire, or Cornwall, where the numbers would be so small they would be largely non-viable? You end up with a 2 tier system with some children being able to access something different at 14 and others crashing out.

I don't know what the answer is, but it's not a 100% bespoke for every child. It's undo-able. You can do that with EHE and/or an EOTAS package if you can get one.

One of my worries is that SN numbers are rising, but there’s still an air of “we must focus on the majority non-SN pupils”, which is all well and good (but leaving behind many very academically able children), but at what point do things change? When 60% of the class has SN? 70%

My oldest son started a school in 2012, it had 10% SN. The same school, serving the same area, is now up to 30% and it’s growing every year. Something is going on that’s causing this, likely a combination of factors, but doing the same thing over and over again to avoid the difficulties and cost in managing a growing number of children with support needs is going to backfire.

We need to adopt a different attitude to how schooling works for all our children, not just SN. And frankly the acceptance of neurodiverse children being left behind is revolting. Some of the greatest, life changing inventions are down to ND people. Great art, films, music, innovation, down to ND people. The U.K. is holding itself back massively by not adapting in simple ways that could make huge differences to a lot of children.

I'm not always sure how accurate the 'numbers' are. My 2 DC are at different primary schools and DC2's primary has 3x the number of SEND children 'on the book' but is in a much wealthier area with fewer complex families, and I suspect more MC families that push for different accommodations. I know they refer for SALT very early for example (DC1's SALT provides SALT there).

Some schools are also just much more on it with adding children to the SEN register.

'In that case then why couldn’t parents still remain under the umbrella of a local school but have an alternative provision like this as a back up without taking away the option of physically attending school.'

Agree with this. I also think it would be useful for when children feel well but are contagious and would help with the increasing number of children with chronic health conditions (e.g. the last ONS covid survey in 2024 showed an average of 1,000 kids per week getting long covid, personal bugbear is people talking about covid in the past when it so clearly isn't). It would help for children for whom whole days or weeks are too overwhelming which causes a spiral. There is a real 'bums on seats' drive irrespective to whether it's genuinely in the child's best interest or not. This includes children who are too physically or mentally unwell to be in school on a specific day. Where a child is well, but contagious, this is clearly not in the interests of others in the class.

Because, as has been explained numerous times on this thread, it's logistically impossible. Schools are still responsible for safeguarding and progress of all children on their roll, and you can't ask a headteacher to be responsible for children who aren't in their care.

You don't fix this problem by endlessly making schools put in place adaptions of dubious utility.