Inclusion policies are not working

[somewherbetweenHoneyandTrunchbull]

I am an experienced teacher. And every year budgets are being cut and more and more children are being chucked into mainstream. Non-verbal, extremely sensitive to noisy kids being put into an overcrowded open plan mainstream school. Some have a little speech but couldn't hold a conversation. Many not toilet trained. Many cannot control their emotions and anger. Some where English isn't a first language. Many with social work involvement and living through ongoing trauma at home.
Meanwhile support staff numbers are being cut, year on year.
I had been managing just about. Spinning many plates. Constantly juggling. But then they enrol another two kids with complex needs into my class on 28 individuals. I just can't do it any more. This week I've been bitten, scratched, hit so hard I thought they had cracked a rib. Violent incident forms all filled in but reality means not much will change as I can't get more that 2 20 minute slots of teaching assistant time each week.
I love my job. I love the kids. I love those lightbulb moments. But at the moment I can't do my job of teaching children. I can barely keep them and myself safe in my class. I try. I'm exhausted. I'm worn out working day and night so that I'm super organised so everything can go smoothly but it never does. If it was just one child having a meltdown I probably coolyld cope. I just do t know which firework will go off when. I don't know what is setting them off and once they go, others follow.
I cry most days at how hopeless it feels. I have some really bright and eager children too. They are also being let down by this system. I'm not sure who the current education policies help. It doesn't seem to help anyone except desensitising children to daily bouts of violence and the language.
I'm very broken tonight. I'm so sleepy but won't help x

I think inclusion could work, or could at least work better if there were proper funding available and it wasn't a battle to get that funding or support. Often by the time any support has been put in place, the child has reached crisis and they've often got really negative associations with school.

I do think we also need to acknowledge that for some children, a large mainstream school will never be the right place for them. I teach in secondary where perhaps it's more obvious, but there are some students who can't cope with being in a class with 32 others or busy corridors, or 5 transitions a day plus the unpredictability of maybe having a cover teacher or a room swap or something else that's changed.

Fwiw, I don't think this means these children won't ever work or be successful. There are loads of jobs you can do where you don't have to be in a crowded building with 1000 others - plenty now where you can work from home and control your environment, and this is what they need and it will never be possible to do that in a large school.

And yes also to competing needs. Child x needs a quiet and calm environment in order to focus, child y has unpredictable tics, child z needs regular movement breaks, child w has anxiety and doesn't like working with others and needs to be sat by the door, but child v also needs to be sat by the door, and they struggle with appropriate social boundaries.

Inevitably, someone's needs aren't met, and they get upset and maybe this leads to a meltdown. And inevitably, someone (parent, SENCo, senior leadership) will ask why you weren't meeting their needs even though you already feel absolutely awful about what has happened.

The reply function doesn’t appear to be working - my last post was in reply to @Coolblur post.

My dd with ASD is on the SEN register. She's very quiet, not problematic in any way (the school often give her 1:1 hours to higher needs students) but has a 1:1 due to dyspraxia as she needs a scribe. She has no intellectual disabilities. If we are saying inclusion is wrong, then she would need to be in a specialist school for children with ASD

My Dd was the same. She then got autistic burnout from being in a NT environment all her life. She crashed out of A levels. High functioning ASD are not enabled to reach full potential in mainstream.

It's so hard, I left schools in 2021, was an inclusion lead in mainstream and just spent my days firefighting with not enough resources. So many dedicated teaching staff are leaving not sure what it's going to take for Government to take notice and actually do something instead of fobbing us off with plans for 2030.

I am a 1:1 TA and am currently trying to support 3 extremely challenging y3 children in a class of 29 pupils in a mainstream school this year.
2 children are awaiting a place in specialist settings, but could be with us for years the way things are in this area.

I have a TA diploma and 5 year’s experience of being in a mainstream primary school. I am not special needs trained (apart from the very basic CPD type online training for ADHD/autism)

In the last 3 weeks I have been pushed in the stomach and back, spat at, burped at, sworn at and one child screamed that that they want to kill me.

These are 7 year olds.

I am so exhausted already and I feel so out of my depth I feel sick.

The child who pushed me was excluded for a half day but has since pushed/punched/sworn at other children, and apart from having to sit in with a member of SLT for an hour where they can calm down (and get to talk about their feelings) they are soon back in class being rude and disruptive.

Two of these children call out, completely ignore and talk loudly over the teacher, screech loudly, get up and walk around the class.

One child wants to learn but cannot retain any information and is so low academically that he is classed aa pre key stage. I’d love to help him more as I’m sure I could make a big difference but I don’t know which child to try to support first.

The senco has not even so much as poked her head round the door. SLT are overwhelmed with children’s behaviour in general throughout the school and often there is no one on hand to call. The CT is out of her depth too and is trying to teach the rest of the class, which is hard enough and she just tells me to try my best.

This is so so disruptive to the rest of the pupils education I could cry. It’s so so unfair that this will be their experience of school.

We have another child starting next week. He has ADHD, is unmedicated through the choice of his parents and is prone to violent outbursts.

I honestly don’t think I can stay in this role much longer.

Absolutely one of my wee ones is extremely bright but gets deregulated by loud noises. He also makes very loud noises.
He has many friends who always try to include him. That is lovely.
However, he definitely should have more support as he can get very physical and is huge so even though it is not deliberate he does regularly hurt people when he is in flight mode. He just doesn't see the others, knocks them over and tramples them. It is fine if I'm right beside him. I can help him. If I'm at the other side of the room with another pupil, I can't.
He then gets really upset if he has hurt someone and that is when everyone else needs the ear defenders. I'm trying to calm him down...another child kicks off at the noise and starts flipping tables. Then someone needs their nappy changes.
And now another a child in the class has started screaming.
Meanwhile all the other kids are trying to do their maths.
And there is no other adult.
This is happening every single day. It is very upsetting for everyone in that environment.

I am a class TA in reception, and we had a nonverbal, huge, violent 7 year old back yeared into our class. He could unlock every safety door. I was set as his 1:1 (taken from a class with multiple other EHCPs), and we were told all we needed to do was keep him and the other children safe. No learning, just childcare. We still ended up with multiple staff injuries, a child sent to hospital after having a chair thrown at them and so many violent incident forms that we ran out of a notebook that had been going for nearly 10 years. Then, when his EHCP was approved, it was for mainstream placement. Our headteacher actually cried. He has tried everything to get this boy the support he needs but every local specialist provision has 40+ children on the waitlist.

One TA joked that we need to swap schools. Smaller mainstream schools and larger, more comprehensive specialist provision. It is getting so much worse with the ongoing poverty and underfunding of every public service.

To be fair not many children can reach their full potential in today's mainstream non selective schools, NT or ND

Local authorities CAN fully fund support packages. They just try not too

@somewherbetweenHoneyandTrunchbull
Thanks for sharing your experiences, which I am sure are not in the minority - so many children are being failed with the current system, be they children with extra needs, or 'average' children (i.e. with no diagnosed learning/behavioural/developmental/physical issue), plus thousands of teaching and support staff are drowning under the pressure of keeping everything running - an almost impossible task I imagine!
From our own experience of my child's primary school class - there were 3 pupils who consistently disrupted the rest of the class (consistently hitting, throwing chairs)/took all the teacher's attention, so much that support staff (not experienced teachers) ended up 'teaching' the rest of the class. While I don't blame these pupils or their parents for wanting their children to be in a mainstream class, I do blame the LA for putting them there without adequate support.

One child has taking to spitting on people, preferably on the face to get attention.
We just get told it is his form of communication so basically we are supposed to just put up with it. In what other profession would you be expected to just put up with being spat at, bitten pinched and punched every single day. And be seen to be unprofessional if you complain.

We have fully funded ehcps. We have to part fund some of them, but once we hit a certain number of ehcps any extras are fully funded.

Ideally, yes, but who is going to pay for it? If resources are very limited, it does make sense to concentrate them on those who are actually likely to benefit from them.

They will benefit from it. It may not be them reaching your ideal of where someone should be in society but it doesn’t mean they don’t benefit.

in society the more vulnerable will nearly always need more from the “system” than they put in but that’s not a reason to not support them

Lots of reasons.

More babies surviving now at birth when they would have otherwise died-especially those who were born prematurely; this can cause lasting problems for them.

More children generally.

Leas funding in mainstream so they can’t manage what they might have been able to manage previously, eg when I was at school there were own ‘remedial’ sets with their own teacher (qualified!) who took small groups off every morning.

The curriculum has changed massively and there are swathes of pupils that can’t access it, but the school are still expected-by parents/league tables/LA/Ofsted, to get good results from everyone. If results drop, the consequences for the school can be awful. Drop some of these expectations for ‘all’ and there would be more wriggle room for flexibility.

Schools used to be able to exclude/suspend children for violent behaviour-this is now extremely difficult and teachers are expected to not raise their voice, not give any sanctions (there was a post here outraged last week that a child was told to face the wall), but still be able to have full control of difficult classes.

The process to get a child the support they need is lengthy and often results in a disappointing outcome. The Statutory request process is supposed to be 20 weeks (which is a hell of a long time anyway) once you’ve actually done all the paperwork, but the LA here isn’t even meeting that anyway because it has no EPs. When I was at school-a new child attacked the teacher-badly enough to put them in hospital and they were whisked out promptly and were found a special school place by the next week. Now, I can’t think of many staff in my school who haven’t been attacked. There is no early intervention-no specialist teachers, no EPs, no pupil referral units with places which means the only time a pupil can get support is when they’ve already had to fail.

Ideally, yes, but who is going to pay for it? If resources are very limited, it does make sense to concentrate them on those who are actually likely to benefit from them.

Have a look at the prison population; work out how much that all costs versus the cost of the special education of children, who will end up in prison? I believe there’s a fair few prisoners with ADHD; and iirc 90% have literacy difficulties? How many had dyslexia and how many didn’t get reading within the required time in the National Curriculum; and were never able to catch up?

Exactly. What a foul post, and shame on the people agreeing as well.

It's interesting so much is about the disruption caused by pupils with SEN to the non-SEN kids but much less about the bullying and violence going the other way, despite it being extensively documented.

It does feel like education needs a complete overhaul, with proper investment and care to ensure everyone's needs are met, the environment is safe and nurturing, and staff feel protected and empowered to do their jobs well with appropriate oversight. But I'm not sure I'd hire some of the PP on this thread to achieve that.

But why are resources limited? So much money is wasted within education. Different learning schemes are introduced at great expense which are then abandoned in favour of the next Government agenda.

Ideally, yes, but who is going to pay for it? If resources are very limited, it does make sense to concentrate them on those who are actually likely to benefit from them.

Just because a child has additional needs doesn’t mean they can’t learn. All children benefit from education, and all children deserve education.

This to me is worse than violence! I just couldn’t! Well I guess it is violence actually as spitting is an assault…but I mean it worse than being slapped or kicked.

Awful just absolutely awful 😣 surely this isn’t the norm in most schools?!

It's interesting so much is about the disruption caused by pupils with SEN to the non-SEN kids but much less about the bullying and violence going the other way, despite it being extensively documented.

I can only speak from my experience, but in my child's class the bullying/aggression very much came from the two SEN kids in particular.

The non-SEN kids did get frustrated that one SEN kid in particular was allowed to steal from them or hit them, and they just had to accept it. Another SEN kid threw chairs around the classroom and at windows, and again they were supposed to just sit back happily and accept it. A system like this is failing hard working staff and pupils, be they SEN or not!

Phonics has been the most recent one.

We used to use Letters and Sounds which was a free government strategy-it was good, it worked, we used it for years and there were loads of free resources for it.

A couple of years ago, someone in the government decided that it wasn’t good enough. Did they revise it and re-release it for all schools to use? Did they fuck. They released a list of ‘state sanctioned’ phonics schemes which you needed to buy into, to be compliant with the new regime. Your phonics scheme also has to match your reading books, or Ofsted will find you wanting (I know schools who were massively criticised for this last year). This has cost cash-strapped primary schools thousands and thousands of pounds in new resources, new book and staff training. What a total waste of money.

Someone somewhere has made a lot of money out of that decision…

Yes l completely agree.

But HF ASD girls are usually quiet. And just slide under the radar. This means they get much less support and intervention than others. And then they crash around mid teens. But no one noticed them.

Phonics has been the most recent one.
Yes! It wouldn’t have taken much to update Letters and Sounds, but instead there are all the different schemes to choose from, which are all much of a muchness, with associated books, resources and training.
And every time a new headteacher takes over they want to change to their preferred scheme.

I don't think you should be drawing this conclusion from anecdotal evidence alone. To counter your experience, two of my children and two of my nieces were prem babies (one was a micro prem) and all were 'kept alive with technology'. All three are NT, all high academic achievers, musical, sporty, heavily involved in their school communities. I realise this is my anecdotal evidence, but unless you have reliable data that proves your assertion, I don't think this line of discussion helps this thread.

For what it's worth, I'm a teacher who now works in a learning support role in a MS school. The number of children we support has exploded in the last five years and we can now only provide the bare minimum support in class. Teachers are struggling, we're all stressed, parents are angry that their child isn't getting the help they need, and no child is getting the educational experience they deserve. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, there's no end in sight and no plan to fix the problem.