As a parent, would you be happy with this? And teachers?

[ThrallsWife]

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So some schools in South London are now encouraged to not exclude any students "unless they pose risk to another child". In my nearly 2 decades of teaching , I have had my family threatened, racist remarks made against me, chairs thrown at me, as well as books and various other bits.

Students have had to suffer through lessons dominated by the moods of one or two children, made to sit through countless lessons where learning was impossible because the same regular students would disrupt. Sometimes, not a single student was being threatened, but a whole class had to be evacuated to protect them from the rages of others.

Do we really hold the rights of the few above the rights of the many?

"Teachers will be encouraged to try to understand the reason for bad behaviour by using a "trauma-informed" response and are being told not to take misbehaviour at "face value"."

That is a weak response by any school I've ever worked in. Sometimes the answer is just bad parenting, not trauma. And those who have had severe trauma respond much better to talking to a professional with mental health training, which many teachers don't have enough of - nor the time to invest that would be necessary.

It would stop me from ever working in any of those schools, but I fear that this is the road we will all be forced down sooner or later...

"Exclusion absolutely is the answer."

No the right provision ( in this case special school) being given at the right time was the answer. It should never have got to exclusion.

I am very committed to the ‘trauma informed’ approach for my line of work (not education, MH services). But I have so much sympathy for teachers. We are basically asking them to respond to pupils in a trauma informed way while also teaching and looking after 29 kids. Anyone who knows about such trauma informed practice will know that this is impossible.

I also find it very hard as a parent. One of my DC had a terrible time with one lad in his class, I knew hos family background and understood his trauma. BUT my DC was hurt by him, had his stiff damaged by him and was becoming terrified of him. Luckily he moved schools. But if he hadn’t I don’t know what we would have done.

So for every parent saying that their kids have the right to an education when they are the ones causing such disruption there are multiple parents also going ‘what about my child, who is innocent in this’. It’s an impossible situation.

What is the trauma informed response?

To be fair to the op I don't see where they mentioned autism.Your post is pretty unfair and very angry sounding .And I say that as a parent of two high functioning autistic teenagers one of whom does attend a specialist school because they found mainstream overwhelming. I was for a while a team leader with challenging behaviour and not every badly behaved child has a horrible home life some children are just plain badly behaved and disruptive .

I agree OP there is a limit to what you can do and what disruption to the other children's education is .Mainstream is not the right place , they need a specialist schools with one to one and therapy and boundaries you can't give them that .But that will never happen because the funding will never be there so they get put in mainstream and failed badly.

Exclusion is not the answer but exposing other children (and teachers) to violence is also not the answer.

I also think there is a potentially a very dodgy lesson being given to our children, which is ‘you put up with any level of violence because of the perpetrators needs’. This is not a lesson I want either of my children to learn.

Responding to the cause of the dysregulation rather than the behaviour, recognising the root of the behaviour, being empathetic and accepting of the child’s emotional state, supporting them in managing the bodies state that causes behaviour (sensory support for example) and avoiding responses that cause shame in children.

I expect someone might explain it better.

Thank you.

I am also a parent who took on the education system for a specialist placement and through sheer determination and standing my ground I got it .But seriously fully get your anger but you are also ranting at the wrong person.You took the post very personally when it wasn't even about you 🤷‍♀️.

This is spot on .This is why any child for whatever reason be it autism , adhd or anything else will potentially fail at mainstream because teachers don't have the specialist training sen teachers do .

Sockwomble

yes, you’re right. I probably should have said removal to a more appropriate setting rather than exclusion. However for some children who do not have additional needs exclusion is.

we are lucky that we have a number of new schools for students with autism in my area.

Autumnalblooms

Absolutely, yet the idea of inclusion in mainstream has been pushed and pushed.

It's not just the training, it's the capacity. In a large class of 30+ at primary school there is a tiny snippet of individual time I can give.

I can't talk to a child on their own in a lesson if they request it without asking for cover. I eat in my classroom so I'm available for anyone who needs me but it's far from ideal as I have marking and setting up to do plus a myriad of other things.

I would love to do more to support children but how?

Yes, I think the last bit is important.

While exclusions don't necessarily in and of themselves help the child excluded, there is the bigger picture where we have a standard of behaviour kids experience and expect in school.

It affects everyone, including kids with problems, when the school community is a place where violent or really disruptive behaviour is allowed to go on. It affects everyone, including the kids with problems, when the classes are calmer and there is an expectation that everyone behaves in a way that is respectful to the group.

Classes with this stuff going on are teaching the kids lessons about how to behave and how we treat other people. That's not helpful including to kids who are struggling with their own behaviour.

The trauma informed response is great. However, there also needs to be strict boundaries around violence, as well as understanding the limits of a busy teacher. How can a teacher manage a trauma response while also teaching the rest of the class. Not a rhetorical question, genuinely wondering, how can they?
It's not just teachers. A lot of parents, especially mothers, are regularly experiencing violence from their children. They have to just take it, too, because what else can they do about it? It's so wrong and upsetting. Why is always women are the punching bags? I hate the rhetoric that if they were only better parents/teachers/behavioural managers, the problem would dissolve. Stop blaming the victim. If men were being regularly beaten up in the construction industry, say, the conversation would be so different.

First of all bad parenting does lead to trauma

Secondly what do you propose happens to these children who need an education?

I am a foster carer so see my fair share of trauma and believe me if an adult went through half of what some of these children go through then they would be disruptive also. But excluding them from society doesn’t help them recover it simply moves the problem on.

In a way that's not her problem, practically. Just like it's not my problem to say what should be done for a kid who makes it impossible for my daughter to learn in her class. The teachers job is to teach the class and a child that makes that impossible isn't going to be something she will be able to fix.

Some of these kids need special schools to deal with specific cognitive or mental issues. Some are delinquent and need to be treated as such in another kind of school. Some probably need to be kept in a home environment and home educated, at least for a while, while having other specialist intervention. There may be some kids who aren't going to get an education no matter what anyone does.

I have links with a wonderful AP school which was set up specifically for exactly the type if students OP is talking about. The staff have excellent training in mental health and a trauma informed approach and they have a great track record for helping these kids gain qualifications they would otherwise leave school without. However, they are nowhere near capacity because the local authority will no longer fund such places.

I teach primary school. We have children with severe additional needs in virtually every class from Reception upwards who disrupt lessons across the whole school and we have little to no training in how to deal with them. We have a five year old non-verbal pupil who spends his entire time running around the school screaming and hitting people. There are no special school places, no EP, Speech and Language or Behaviour support available. When I was first teaching 20 years ago, if you had children with specific extra needs then you would receive regular visits from LA specialist teachers to help you plan and manage specific behaviour. Now there is absolutely nothing available due to a lack of funding.

I don’t think you understand how difficult it is to get a child into a special school without a diagnosis and when they are intelligent.

My current foster child would thrive in a special school as his ASD makes him struggle in busy classrooms but as he in intelligent and not behind in school they will not accept him.

It’s really not as simple as you think and these children need to be educated somewhere. Delinquent children don’t just become so overnight, there is usually a long history behind them leading to their behaviour. Why should they be denied an education and a chance at reintegration when it’s usually the adults in their lives that have failed them. We can’t punish children for the parents failings.

I'm not sure why you came to that conclusion, I didn't say anything about it being simple.

But whether it is simple or not, keeping those kinds in the general classroom doesn't help them, and it screws over everyone else as well.

I think there needs to be a whole-system rejection of the inclusion principle in terms of mainstream classes. Yes, there are kids who do much better there and those kids should be kept there. Some of them may need one on one support to manage that.

But this underlying idea that it's the blanket approach is just not realistic. It's based on a kind of ideological viewpoint that we can just makes things ok for every kid if we try hard enough and that's an eight year old POV. Politically, it makes it that much easier to ignore the need for specialist places or other approaches when they are seen as exceptional situations.

I mean, kids that are disruptive in that way are not closer to reintegration by being allowed to disrupt other kids learning.

I don't think people realise how difficult it is to get a diagnosis/medical support.

By luck my youngest DC is not behaviourally problematic. He is in year R and 5yr10m. At 3yr3m he was diagnosed global development delay which is a descriptor rather than cause diagnosis. This was Jan 2020, we received 0 support due to Covid until May 2021, everything stopped. Due to backlogs when he started school the Paediatrician discharged him and asked school to re-refer if he still needed to be seen/delayed.

His EHCP was issued January 2021 and he started school with it. He is not toilet trained and open to SALT, Physiotherapy and the school nurse. It has taken 15 months and a formal complaint to access the incontinence service.

School re-referred. Referral rejected after four 4 months waiting because of a technicality (they sent EHCP rather than the individual reports). I wasn't allowed to just send in the reports, it was a start again job. He still is not on the waiting list.

In the mean time incontinence service rang, they can't do much due to his communication and the severe phobia he has developed as a result of being over forced to try and train. They have told me camhs need to work with him to unpick but if he can't communicate that will be futile. I already know camhs won't take him until paeds do their ASD assessment, he isn't even on the 18 month waiting list for it. Camhs then has about a year as things said but if he gets an ASD diagnosis then they are unlikely to accept him as its "part of having autism" even though its something specific he needs support with.

It is all well and good saying schools shouldn't be supporting pastorly/with difficult needs but when a child has been in the system for 3 years, has an EHCP and still can't see a bloody medical professional then those children are absolutely screwed.

Theoretically despite 0 behavioural incidents with no learning disability diagnosis and no ASD diagnosis the only specialist schools who would take him at behavioural schools.

My entire line of work professionally now is working with SEND families, I wish my DS was just a case gone wrong and badly affected by covid.

We will be going private in November. At £2500 for an assessment and £125 per hour of therapy the cost is prohibitive for too many families. My fear is my lovely, well behaved boy will get so upset by his communication difficulties that he will become a challenging child.

It is all well and good saying they need to go somewhere else but unless you've actually understood how difficult A) diagnosis is B) getting a place is you fail to realise thousands of children are thrown under the bus and have their futures written for them.

We should instead be screaming from the roof tops for the correct funding, training and support services.

And what would realistically happen is these kids banished to home. Parent has to give up work. Poverty then becomes problematic. Meanwhile they are out of sight out of mind and forgotten about by all.

Perhaps if they are kept as everyone's problem so they can't be forgotten about then more people will push for the correct support to be available and funded.

At the risk of sounding overly hopeful, I taught for a very long time in my local secondary school. Everyday I bump into former students. For so many of them they start by apologising for bad behaviour in the classroom ( I really don't remember) and by and large they find being an adult much easier.
Many of them find work in the construction industry or with their dads and uncles. A lot of them have lovely girlfriends and perhaps children. They find adult life so much easier to manage. Having a job gives them status and real self worth. They are not going to mess up at work in the way they messed around at school. I feel so proud of them. They were always lovely but struggled in a school setting. One young Dad chased after me in Tesco's to show me his lovely daughter. His huge pride in her made me want to cry.
I have taught loads of very high achieving students as well who are always charming to bump into. It is one of the really nice things about teaching in a community comprehensive and living in the same area.
What I am trying to say is that school classrooms can be hard places to cope with and traditional teaching methods don't always work with lively restless students.
So much is asked of teachers. It can be an impossible job. Seeing them as adults with families and jobs makes me burst with pride. It may just be my experience but the majority of kids in my small part of London thrive as adults. I have never encountered aggression or hostility. They are kind and responsible and pleased to be away from school life which made them feel bad about themselves.
Yes I have taught a few that ended up at a Young Offenders institute but again the majority come through in the end.
I suppose I would wish for a far more varied and practical curriculum for those that would benefit. Too many feel rubbish about themselves and kick off in class. More money, more support for teachers and for struggling students. It has been a privilege to be involved in so many of their lives and to see them settled brings me joy

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