to want to know what parents can do about the teaching crisis?!

[BrightRedSharpie]

I'm in Scotland, btw, but I know there is a similar problem in England.

My DD's school is really understaffed. The P1 teachers have both been off all week, which has caused absolute havoc. They have had different teachers for mornings and afternoons because there are also no supply teachers available. P7 had to be split up for a teacher to come and take the little ones.

2 classroom assistants are also off on maternity leave, which either isn't or can't be covered. That's left 3 classroom assistants for around 300 children.

I know the school are doing their best. I've written to my MP and MSP. Is there anything else a concerned parent can actually do?

I left teaching very recently because it's not actually teaching anymore, it's not about helping the students being the best they can.

It's about providing pointless paperwork to 'evidence' what I was doing in class. About the 'data', not the individuals. About specific data for a narrow range of skills that doesn't take into account the full range of achievement the amazing little people I was teaching were making. I don't mind working long hours if this helps the students. I do resent missing time with my own children if I am wasting time ticking boxes and constantly assessing an incredibly narrow band of skills.

The whole education system is in a mess and I couldn't see it changing any time soon. The forced academies fiasco is the icing on the cake at the cake and arse party. It just shows that the Government see education of the masses as just another commodity to be sold off. There is no evidence that academies improve education.

Maybe I was lucky, but it was never the actions of the students or the parents which prompted me to leave. It's the clueless Department for Education who just seem to be pulling new ideas out of their arses and refuse to listen to what teachers and parents are telling them.

I think the best thing parents to support teachers is write to their local MP to ask what they are doing about the situation.

As a parent myself the whole situation is extremely worrying.

"Overuse of Special Needs as excuse for poor behaviour"

Given that there are literally 10's of 1000's of children with undiagnosed ASD, ADD, dyslexia etc in our schools (many of whom have been flagged but who wait longer than a year for a formal assessment) who get no special support or consideration I think this comment is incredibly wrongheaded.

Oh, and I think schools should be forced to publish data showing what percentage of their staff are considering leaving in the next two years, and levels of job satisfaction. This data could be gathered anonymously.

Surely the most practical thing any single parent can do is to seek to become a parent governor. Then you have at least some influence over the way that the school is run, how it treats its staff, and how it spends its money.

I occasionally visit the TES website. Today the first thread I clicked on was about a school paying for consultants to come in and do mock OFSTED inspections. That is money being spent on consultants that could be spent on employing teachers or on improving the working conditions of the teachers already in post. Parents need to start getting more outraged about poor financial management and weak oversight in English schools (I realise the OP is in Scotland, don't know if schools there have the same issues).

Ha, consultants.

The old definition still works: paying a shitload of money to someone to tell you the time using your clock.

I think schools should be forced to publish data showing what percentage of their staff are considering leaving in the next two years, and levels of job satisfaction. This data could be gathered anonymously.

Or at least actual rates of staff turnover.

And YY to the PP who said that education should be taken out of political control altogether.

I think schools should definitely publish staff turnover. As a parent-that's what I would want to know before sending my kids there. If results are good and teachers are happy and stay-that says a lot to me. Far more than lots of other pointless things.

We all have both rights and responsibilities as I see it.

The teachers have a right to be able to teach in a safe environment, not under threat from abuse or violence from either student or parent, and not brought to the edge of endurance by endless stats. The teachers have a responsibility to ensure they know their stuff, know the students, care about what they do, keep up training and keep parents on board.

The parents have a right for their child to have the best education the system can provide. BUT parents also have responsibility to ensure that their child is ready to learn, can behave, turns up, is respectful to the teachers, and is equipped. These are the skills that helps the child see its place in the bigger picture so they know their place in the world. This is the job of a parent, not a teacher. A teacher teaches.

So many parents feel it is the responsibility of the teachers and school to instil respect, manners, and appropriate behaviour and/or run around after their individual child to the exclusion of the other 29 in the class. These are the parents who know all about their "rights" but address none of their responsibilities towards their own child or the school.

A child lives what he learns. A child absorbs more from what he witnesses going on around him than you can teach in words.

It is not an ideal world I know but a good start would be respect for teachers. Just think what it would be like if there were no teachers.

Great post regarding parents who know their rights but take no responsibility, and to the person who said that SEN was often undiagnosed. . This is the problem.

It's fine to have SEN and lots of students get help despite not having statements, but for years some parents have used SEN as an excuse for very poor behaviour. It's not an excuse.

It is the reason for challenging behaviour in at least some cases.

But not in a lot of others. The children who mocked my son, excluded him and found entertainment in his meltdowns had no SN.
They did come from families that either encouraged this behaviour or were indifferent to it and saw it as banter and normal.
DS's teachers worked their arses off to try and control what was happening and support him.

I meant the challenging behaviour in children with sn. Challenging behaviour does not mean there is sn but sn can cause, in some cases, challenging behaviour.

The root of challenging behaviour can be SN, and yes teachers know this and that's fine.

But all to often what is just bad behaviour, willful disruption of lessons, doing things out of malice or to be deliberately badly behaved is passed off by parents as SN.

It isn't your child made the choice to behave like that, we can make allowances when the behaviour is influenced by an SN but not when the child is perfectly able to distinguish between the right and wrong choice.

"But all to often what is just bad behaviour, willful disruption of lessons, doing things out of malice or to be deliberately badly behaved is passed off by parents as SN"

How do you know?

Seriously?

I got a letter home about ds(10) swearing at another child in the dinner queue. This child had been winding him up, and ds lost the plot and swore at him. DS's ASD means he finds conflict massively more difficult to deal with than other children, and quickly becomes overwhelmed with negative emotions.

I expect this is the sort of situation you'd classify as a child just 'being naughty'. The problem is that ds's special needs aren't a 'bolt on' to his personality, they shape every single aspect of his school experience and his interaction with his teachers and peers.

If these are children without a diagnosis and whose parents are not asking for investigations into a diagnosis (ie purely making it up) then fair enough.

I've just been told on another thread that, as a music teacher in a comp, perhaps I should be endeavouring to find out everything the students are doing in other subjects.

?????????

I literally have no idea what some parents think we do all day.

The vast majority of my child's challenging behaviour happens with no choice at all on his part.

How do you know?

Seriously?"

When you are witness to it, and say "don't do that." and it gets done anyway, all the while with a big grin on the child's face for example? That's how I know, that isn't involuntary bad behaviour due to SN or SN related poor decision making.

When you give clear and repeated instructions as to why this sort of behaviour can't got on, using all the techniques that are suggested, and it still goes on. That's how.

Your case of swearing in the dinner queue? Another child might have faced a worse sanction than your son.

Please don't presume what I would think, your little statement about your sons ASD is extremely patronising I have a wealth of experience with ASD students and know exactly what impacts it can have.

I'd have sent a letter home btw, so that you can discuss with your son why its not ok to swear at others in a calm manner, and try to explain to him solutions if other students were winding him up.

Oh so another bit, don't assume that because your child has SN they take precedent over every other child in the class. There are 30 of them each with their own needs and foibles, your child has a prescribed need that we will meet to the best of our ability, sometimes we won't be perfect, but don't assume that your childs needs come first all the time

Oh and if you promise not to believe half of what is said to go on in school, we will promise not to believe half of what is said to go on at home ( except when it sounds a risk issue).

My DH has recently left 6th form teaching never to return. He coped with the red tape, outrageous targets and being given crap by students every day even threatening with a knife once.

The final straw was when he was marked down by OFSTED for a pupil missing his lesson without letting the college know. Turned out the student had been killed in a car accident the day before but DH was still marked down because this was not known before the lesson .

Think the parents may have had other priorities that came before letting college know why there son would not be in.

"When you are witness to it, and say "don't do that." and it gets done anyway, all the while with a big grin on the child's face for example? That's how I know, that isn't involuntary bad behaviour due to SN or SN related poor decision making. "

You have no idea.

My ds feels persecuted by his teacher and a couple of the TA's. He really feels like they hate him. This affects his decision making when it comes to behaviour.

His facial expressions are also often really odd and not always in keeping with his emotions.

He also thinks sometimes thinks are just lighthearted fun when nobody else is interpreting the situation as such.

You are starting from the position of believing that you and the children in your care are on the same social and emotional plane. I can assure you that if you have children with ASD in your classroom that you are not.

"Oh and if you promise not to believe half of what is said to go on in school, we will promise not to believe half of what is said to go on at home ( except when it sounds a risk issue

I really hope you're not addressing that patronising and rude comment to me.

Would add - I'm a qualified teacher myself and my sister is a teacher too.

I have every sympathy with teachers.

But when one comes along who has such a simplistic and unnuanced understanding of s/n - well it makes me depressed.

"I have no idea? "

Your son would most likley have lots of exceptions made, you are on the defensive now because you feel like this applies to you, it doesn't. A statemented child with ASD will have all sorts of exceptions made for him/her, in fact I'd go as far as to say, a child with ASD behaving in the manner identified would be dealt with completely differently than one with any other type of SN or behaviour difficulty.

If you remember, the original point of this was not to use SN as an excuse for bad behaviour when it isn't applicable, ASD students have SN related decision making issues and this of course would be taken into consideration , I did state that. If a child doesn't have SN reklated decision making issues, but SN is used as an excuse, then it doesn't count, get it?

Thanks for your attack on my professional ability btw, its great to see that you are taking such a reasoned approach to this.

And no that comment was said by the head of my DC's primary school years ago, I thought it was a great approach really.

"But when one comes along who has such a simplistic and unnuanced understanding of s/n"

My understanding is just fine, maybe I'm not making my self clear.

If your child has a SN that relates to behaviour, decision making etc, of course exceptions for them will be made. However there are circumstances where bad behaviour is blamed on SN by parents when it has no relation to the issue and is about bad behaviour. What I'm saying is that not all bad behaviour can be related back to SN and to do so is unfair to the teachers and also to those children who have SN which effects their behaviour. See?