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 also left because the system broke me. It wasn't so much the kids, but the constant demands and ever-shifting goal posts from SLT.

I do supply teaching nowadays, and alongside a bit of private tutoring and some holiday club work, I comfortably make ends meet.

My DD is very much like the other DD mentioned here who has greater depth attainment but absolutely no social skills.

School are trying, yet they have no money for extra resourses out of teaching time and DD cannot get an EHCP as her 'behaviour' presents at home. We are all becoming more and more broken down.

Its interesting how someone mentioned about a lot of children with additional needs being prem. Mine was over 2 weeks late and a very long labour. I feel there must be a connection with this somewhere.

I don't think this is a new problem. My poor brother couldn't speak coherently until he was at least 12 years old and consequently couldn't read. He did 'catch up', but the damage to his confidence and emotional state was done. Now he's an alcoholic, an absolute waste all for needing more help as a child.

At the current rate of increase of behavioural problems and SEN how much would it cost in 5 years to pay for adequate healthcare, social care interventions and education for all of them? And how much in 10 years?

They tell you this about ehcps. But it's not true.

If she's falling apart at home it's because her needs aren't being met and she's having to hold it together. My ds had hardly any behaviours at school. Academically very able but did have to have support to reach his full potential.

He had an ehcp for 20 hours support.

Genuine question: are there more children with complex needs compared to, say, 30 years ago, or is it just that they are now in mainstream education whereas before there was funding for them to be in special schools?

Because it feels like there are more. And if so, why?

You are absolutely right. At my school it is almost impossible to teach most days due to the number of very high-needs students without adequate support. Parents who wanted to try mainstream and then decided after a couple of years that it wasn't the right setting for their child now can't get a special school place.

When I first started teaching 20 years ago inclusion existed but you simply didn't get students with such high levels of need (or not the ones I worked in). We had some students with Down syndrome, high functioning autism, physical disabilities and other needs but there was more awareness of which students would cope in mainstream. Or if they tried it and it wasn't the right setting, it was easy to move. There was also far, far more support. I sometimes taught on classes with 3 other adults supporting. There were regular visits from specialist Local Authority teachers to support with planning etc. Now my small one-form entry school has four non-verbal students as well as a myriad of other needs.

Now budgets are so stretched that schools can't afford to buy on support. Only the highest needs students get LSA support because we can't afford to employ more people. And as there is no training available for either teachers or LSAs they basically babysit and try to keep the kids safe. The pupils with high needs learn pretty much nothing. It also makes the LSA role stressful so it's harder and harder to recruit. Children who would have got additional adult support when I first started teaching now get nothing. We barely run interventions in reading, maths etc for the other students because so much of the LSA budget is spent on 1:1 support.

It's an absolute disgrace.The burden of cuts to educational funding has fallen primarily on kids with SEND but with a knock-on effect for all students. There needs to be new special school provision, hubs attached to existing schools and centralised support for all schools to access. Won't get a penny from the current government though.

@Totaly that is crazy. Was it a female member of staff who got beat up ? Did they leave their job?

I’m also wondering what they will be like as strong teens who are around girls.

There are proportionately more, lots more. See the links I posted above. Some claim it's just increased diagnosis but that's been well studied and it's not that alone. The increase is clearly real.

Some theories about the causes include more and earlier premature babies surviving, environmental toxins, older parents, vaccines, increased use of prescription meds during pregnancy, more people who themselves have SEN having children and more of them compared to people who don't (because susceptibility is partly genetic), increased drug use and alcoholism while pregnant. There are probably more theories.

Premature births, treatments for conditions meaning children live longer (such as cancer)

Do you mean that cancer treatments cause special needs?

This is anecdotal and has nothing to do with severe SEND and the violent or health needs we are seeing, but there are also a growing number of pupils in our local area who are suffering high levels of anxiety, school refusal, separation/attachment difficulties, bed wetting, nightmares and other sleeping issues who have parents both in full time work-using childminders to drop to breakfast club in the mornings, then collect from after school club at night. It’s very difficult for us at school to speak to the parents about what’s happening as they don’t have the chance to come up the school but there are huge levels of anxiety there. The way society increasingly needs both parents to work to pay the bills, may well be having an impact on some children as well.

I removed my child with multiple additional needs from mainstream school when he was 8 years old. It was clear that suitable support was completely impossible to provide. We tried for 3 years and finally admitted defeat when a teacher lost control, held him down forcibly and banged his head repeatedly off the table every time he tried to raise it. I've been told on here that this could never have happened but it did so soju bother saying it again.

No winners here, children in distress daily at being restrained & figuratively hammered into shape and teachers giving their all then finally losing it because it's not possible to accommodate many of these children. Current mainstream education is largely a total shit show for children with additional needs and it's time we all admitted it. My other child also with autism went to a mainstream secondary and thrived but she was compliant, it was a single sex small school and her teachers bent over backwards to support her.

I don't know what the answers are. The current system is a large creaky galleon, which was built in another time and all they do is hammer up planks every now and then to keep it afloat. Depressing and I am glad my kids are out of it.

A family member left teaching because of this. She had children with severe complex needs but the council insisted on mainstream although the parents fought there was no space for them at specialist schooling.

She had black eyes, one of her front teeth chipped, her walls ripped down repeatedly, her stuff broken. None of the children getting the education they deserve, parental complaints. She was broken and left teaching.

Not a bash on children with additional needs at all, I have 2 of my own with asn who cope well but my family members situation wasn't fair on the children with complex needs who couldn't cope in the classroom and the children in the classroom who couldn't cope with the constant disruption and beatings from the children with complex needs.

Yes, could be. But you'd need to look at whether rates of two parents working full time has increased in lockstep with the increase in behavioural problems and SEN. I don't know if it has or not.

Do you know why both parents work not just full time but such long hours? It's not always due to financial pressures. Parents who value their careers and money above their children, who lack empathy and don't pay much attention to their children, or get them the help they need, are no doubt parenting extremely badly even when they are around the unfortunate kids. I know people like that too, it's not financial necessity. But I don't know if that's more or less prevalent than it used to be.

@dearanon Did you family member sue her employers for allowing her to be repeatedly assaulted and injured at work?

The absolute kick in the teeth moment is when you fight and fight and fight to get a specialist in to come in and see a child (or four in my class’ case last year) with violence, aggression, lack of speech, awful home situations, PDA etc, for that specialist to write a report that basically says ‘get a now and next board and visual timetable’. As if we haven’t tried ALL the reasonable adjustments and then some already.

DD1 is now in reception at my school. A poor boy in their class has a genetic disorder and is non verbal, is operating at a <12mo cognitive level, in nappies and needs to be spoon fed. His parents tried to get him into our local special school but it’s massively oversubscribed and he’s 7th on the waiting list. He requires 2:1 support but isn’t funded even for a full time 1:1. He’s already bitten a member of staff and two children, cracked a window by head butting it repeatedly and thrown himself down the stairs. The poor soul is just completely overwhelmed by a mainstream setting, but our headteacher is coming to against block after block in trying to get him a suitable placement.

The whole system is completely broken. I love my job but if I can’t actually teach children, then what’s the point.

• less than 12mo

The absolute kick in the teeth moment is when you fight and fight and fight to get a specialist in to come in and see a child (or four in my class’ case last year) with violence, aggression, lack of speech, awful home situations, PDA etc, for that specialist to write a report that basically says ‘get a now and next board and visual timetable’. As if we haven’t tried ALL the reasonable adjustments and then some already.

Absolutely! Or some ‘1:1 work around The Colour Monster picture book’ will crack this child’s severe SEMH difficulties!

The absolute kick in the teeth moment is when you fight and fight and fight to get a specialist in to come in and see a child (or four in my class’ case last year) with violence, aggression, lack of speech, awful home situations, PDA etc, for that specialist to write a report that basically says ‘get a now and next board and visual timetable’. As if we haven’t tried ALL the reasonable adjustments and then some already.

This is sadly so very true.

Yes, and "so we are going to write some social stories..." social stories are great and can be really effective but they're a band aid not a cure!

In my class this year I have one child with extremely high needs, they have a 1:1 because without that they would be wandering around the class swearing and spitting. I also have a child who is academically able but had ASD and will have 5 or 6 complete melt downs a day, this can be over anything. I also have another child with additional needs who is struggling to access the class. Then there are the 27 other children who it is almost impossible to teach due to the other children. I’ve been told that the one with the 1:1 should be in the classroom. No idea who is benefiting from that. Not the child, not the rest of the class.
Every teacher I know is either counting down to retirement or looking to leave. I’m hoping I can go at Christmas.

That’s the other thing, you can only leave at 3 points in the year. Any other jobs like that?

As for people saying, why aren’t teachers complaining. Look at what happened when we went on strike? Look at all the threads on here saying that we were lazy whingers.

That’s all you get. Now and next boards, visual time tables and fucking social stories.

I think it is absolutely awful that the teachers and staff are getting hurt by these children

It's unacceptable whatever their needs are.

Weren't the strike complaints simply about pay and, to a much smaller extent, excessive workload? Are the unions saying that you're striking because there are ever more SEN children in mainstream schools who shouldn't be there and more violent and disruptive students attacking teachers and other students etc? I very much doubt it. I don't think the majority of people are aware of the state of children currently arriving into early years education and reception.