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...

Literally nobody thinks that.

Teachers and pupils should not have to be in a classroom with a pupil who will cause them injury (including sexual assault). It’s basic safeguarding. A no exclusion policy will cause physical harm. Unfortunately I think the only way authorities will listen is if teachers and parents sue the school for assaults caused by such a policy. It’s not necessarily the violent child’s fault - I’m sure many have had awful lives and been abused - but I don’t think that means they should be allowed to hurt other people. This would not be allowed in many adult workplace settings - why would we put children in this type of environment? probably the answer is for the parents to sue the local authority in order to get an education for a violent child. Perhaps crowdfunding where half the money raised goes to each of those causes?

As a mostly retired teacher I do a lot of childcare for my grandchildren. There is a Church hall soft play I often take my grandchild along to. I bumped into a former student there with his girlfriend and toddler son. My grandson was a late ish walker. It was touching to be given advice on physical development by my ex student and even more touching to see his huge pride in his family unit and his toddler son. He expressed the wish that one day his son would work with him and his dad.
I am sad that they cannot afford to live in the Borough. He had bought his family over for the day.
I was once walking home after midnight from babysitting and felt a bit anxious until a load of ex students found me and insisted on seeing me home. I certainly don't feel the fear of teenagers and young adults that so many posters seem to feel.
I really love encountering former students. There is a lovely mum of three that I talk to at the school gate when I pick up my grandchild. I used to teach her and her partner. She asked me for advice the other day on becoming a TA. She will be great.
I am so lucky to have taught in a community school and to regularly bump into these lovely adults. They love it when I recognise them ( and amazingly I do mostly) and remember them so fondly

my child was assaulted at school, by another child who would probably fill the description and needs you are talking about.

the school completely took his side (apart from the teacher who used to be a police officer, funnily enough.) and she just had to go back into the classroom with him.

There is some really disturbing entitlement in your post. What it comes down to is you want the classroom and its resources to be focussed to the one child regardless of any impact on other children.
Already probably 30% of the classroom time is focused on the violent children, and No I’m not prepared to use only the language you permit of “lashing out” or “frustrated” because it minimises the awfulness others experience.

if your child is getting the message that the teacher is to blame if he/she wraps a chair around the teachers head, and school is responsible when he/she is violent then actually that is bad parenting, in that the minimum standards of behaviour are not being explained properly.
If your child cannot (as opposed to will not) avoid escalating to violence then they aren’t fit for a big standard classroom- it isn’t fair or appropriate on anyone.

They will say they will come at it using a trauma informed models but the reality is they will not use a trauma informed model at all. If they label these kids as having a mental health disorder then they are not using a trauma informed model as this opposes all biological factors for mental health.

They will use a deficit model such as ACES despite it being damaging to children or they will use a biopsychosocial model, social model or biological model.

It'll be a hodge podge of models and none of which will apply to the other children who suffer as a result of the actions of these children or the staff who suffer also.

I think it’s disgusting that adults are no longer being allowed to discipline or remove these children.
A Friends daughter sits in a separate room at school almost every day to escape bullies. She’s missing out on a proper education when it’s the bullies that should be removed. Schools seem to have lost any authority.

It is the attitude of people like you which has destroyed all respect and discipline in this country and typically you blame the teacher! Why should adults who take the trouble to parent properly have their efforts undermined by those who continue to have kid after kid but can’t be bothered to bring them up to be a decent human being. I taught plenty of ASD children who knew the boundaries. I have also had classes suffer due to constant low level disruption and worse and I know which children deserve the time and attention the most.

". I taught plenty of ASD children who knew the boundaries"

It is not just about knowing boundaries. It is about forcing a child into situations that they cannot cope in and then being suprised when the child doesn't cope eg forcing them into a busy noisy dining room and then restraining them when they try to leave and being suprised that the child lashes out.

What would a trauma-informed approach actually look like in a classroom? Say a year 10, 1 hour science lesson where a couple of kids are kicking off and refusing to sit down and listen?

My autistic 7YO knows the boundaries, she thrives of boundaries. She gets upset when boundaries are blurred. She can't manage without a firm boundary and when she is overwhelmed by what she perceives as chaos (ie PE) she runs to hide, usually under a table or chair out of the classroom. Initially they tried to catch her and hold on to her so she lashed out. Then they learnt to let her go to her table to hide under and give her 10 minutes to stim. When they were attempting to restrain her she went into such severe flight/fight she would have zero recollection after of what had just happened.

It is nothing at all to do with not knowing boundaries. There is definitely a difference between a complete overwhelm fight/flight and just playing up but it is not good enough to say they just aren't following a boundary. It is pretty ignorant.

It was also ironic when in the very early days and school tried to blame parenting, we had early help for a few months who visited us weekly. She commented on how we have two different children, home was fine because at home I can give her the firm boundaries and adapt to her difficulties without issue (ie I wouldn't shove her in a crowded noisy hall!). We got sorted after a couple of years and she now isn't an issue at all in school either.

Yes i bloody do!!! These children (sometimes through no fault of their own) can cause absolute bloody chaos in schools. The environment isn't right for them. The UK needs more schools geared up to helping these kids which the more extreme additional needs.

Mumofsend

I see you a lot on these types of threads and I just want you to know that when teachers talk about exclusion or not wanting to teach certain children we are really never talking about students like your daughter. We may think that mainstream isn’t necessarily the right place for her or that she should be in a different set where behaviour is better or should have more adult support.
we are talking about children who relentlessly bully others, who will disrupt a silent classroom for attention, who tell the teacher to ‘f* off’ in response to a simple calm request.
and those talking of meeting with former pupils, I totally agree - but we are not talking of the cheeky boy or the ones who were clearly not suited to a school environment. This is children who are violent, who have no conception of how to behave and do not wish to learn, who already brag that they will be pimps or drug dealers when they leave school, who have parents who encourage them on the phone to ‘ignore that bitch.’

many of you really have no idea at all what a small minority of students are like.

It wouldn’t think that’s the point, my sons now in an asd school and there learning is more hands on and child led even though he’s year 7 so there’s no sitting listening to a teacher in a class of 30 other kid. Inclusion isn’t actually inclusion it’s just trying to do Sen teaching on the cheap, true inclusion into mainstream for Sen kids would require a lot more investment, Sen funding isn’t even ring fenced so when schools are underfunded no wonder they will use for other things

Teachers should be teaching their subject ( talking secondary here) to a class of pupils who are engaged and learning. The preparation involved , marking, exams, reports etc etc, never mind the delivery of lessons, is exhausting enough. Teachers should not have to manage behaviours of children unable to cope with the learning environment. What is supposed to happen to the compliant majority while the teacher manages the behaviour and applies the latest model? Because it won’t take seconds…. and there may well be several such children. Management of these behaviours should be out of the hands of the classroom teacher.

The thing is though “risk to other children” is a fairly low bar, they’ve not said it should only relate to targeting of other children so a child being violent to staff for example would still pose a risk to other children, or a child who threw things would still pose a risk. Whatever people think there is a lot of off rolling of sen kids especially by some of the bigger zero tolerance academy chains, my child has asd so I’m on several fb groups and there’s lots of occurrences where children are being excluded for minor things where exclusion is totally disproportionate, so things like forgetting their pen 3 times in a row, infringement of uniform policy, not doing homework, obviously these are things that need to be dealt with but the child poses no risk to other children so doesn’t need to be excluded. I think the general idea is to treat sen kids badly so they will eventually leave

There are children who should not be in schools due to things they have done. Yes they are children and yes they are still finding their way but exclusions need to be possible.

My DN was raped in May. By a child at her school. She is 12. He is the year above. She didn’t report it for a few weeks because she was scared but eventually told her mum. The police and social services were involved (plus the school of course) but nothing could be proved and the boy denied it. That child is still at school with my DN and the school have said that because his parents insist that he’s there, there is nothing they can do in terms of exclusion apart from closely supervise him. The school are just hoping his parents move him.

Exclusions should not be so difficult.

@User952539 I'm so sorry to hear about your DN. The same thing happened to a girl at my school - parents insisted that his needs took priority, and she had to move schools. I dread to think what lessons she learned from it. I hope that the parents in your DN's case move their child on.

If you have a kid who would be excluded on the basis of their behaviour, even though its not violent, the issue here is that the school has already failed. Perhaps because of resources or particular staff.

Kids who have needs this severe, realistically aren't going to thrive and get the support they need in mainstream education. They need a better teacher to pupil ratio and more time devoted to them.

What would be better would be more expansion of specialist provision of these services and more small units which can give this support.

Keeping them in school is just a cost cutting exercise dressed up as being progressive.

Some children can do well at mainstream schools with resource bases. Unfortunately there isn't enough of this type of school and true resource bases are rare at secondary level.

The expansion of academies is also creating more exclusions and off rolling for send pupils as this type of school is more likely to do this ( rather than try to get more support for a child) than maintained schools.

English state education is close to breaking point. Huge numbers of teachers leave, and the government cannot recruit enough to replace them (they only got 16% of their target for Physics teacher training this year).

It isn't (IME) about the pay, though inflation is a real problem - it is the working conditions. Underfunded schools and support services mean teachers are being asked to do too much. I'm not a mental health professional, nor a social worker, nor a parent. Even with all the funding and training in the world I would still not have time to be all of those things (let alone teaching on top). My priority as a teacher needs to be the actual teaching (obviously including providing for children SEN).

Schools and teachers have been begging for years for proper funding, and I think we've reached the stage where we need to be saying "no, this is not my job". Where a child will not or cannot behave appropriately in a classroom they need either alternative provision or specialist service support or both. They do not need an already just-about-coping teacher to compromise their own safety and the education of the rest of the children just to make the LA stats on exclusion look good.

I understand the argument that excluding doesn't help the individual child. But I'm not at all convinced that keeping a violent, aggressive or persistently misbehaving child in school without appropriate support helps them either.

It’s horrendous, my DN is traumatised as you would expect, the boy is being “accompanied” at school but clearly that still means she see him and I have my doubts about whether it is genuinely the case that he is accompanied at all times. He is a former looked after child (now adopted) and as such it is even more difficult to exclude him. The reality is that he won’t be accompanied every moment for the next five years of school and so in all likelihood my DN will have to move. This is a village senior school (with a fairly large catchment area) and there are no other schools close by. As you say, what message does that send? In addition other children are at risk.

Exclusion doesn’t have to be a negative. Now I do teach at an independent school, so it is very different. We still have SEN and parents who can pay does not equate to ‘good’ parents.

Exclusion, both temporary or permanently, can be beneficial.

All kids need boundaries, kids often push the boundaries. A fixed term exclusion can be the reminder that actions have consequences and can be the reminder a student needs of expectations. And the other students in the class/year, who can and do copy behaviour.

I have tutored a kid who was excluded by another school, akin to a managed move, there were reasons for the poor behaviour but it was still not acceptable. Yes there was SEN involved as well. The change in school, change in peer group, and the shock that went with this meant they stayed at school, didn’t repeat the behaviour and competed Alevels. It gave them a fresh start.

I agree to an extent. But we shouldn’t be excluded children on this basis, we should be funding and moving them to better provision for their needs. Exclusion is stuff a poor concept.
Ironically one of the reasons I oppose the current schools bill is that it will make getting your child into a specialist setting harder (which many, many parents want). The current ‘inclusion’ by lobbing them all together with competing and conflicting needs is anything but inclusion.

Sorry, so many typos! I’m typing from under a baby.

I am not even sure your post should be in response to mine? I made no statements or descriptions as you've described?
I also made no references to "languages you'd permit" (I would actually agree with you on this FWIW).

Your last paragraph though I would say that in many, many cases I have been involved in witnessed hugely positive changes in children previously labelled uncontrollable/beyond challenging, where once the correct support haas been implemented within the classroom, they have not only ceased in the negative behaviours, but gone on to positively participate within the class setting and learn/thrive. Sadly his kind of support is costly in terms of funding and collective time identifying what will work following much pressure, endless research and persistence on the part of parents.