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

Going to stick my head above the parapet here and say it often feels looks these children are prioritised above everyone else - the teachers, TAs and other children

Gosh I could have written this post 😕

All the ‘in-year’ children we get are always significantly behind into the bargain. They are usually undiagnosed with something, so I assume the parents are moving them because they are frustrated with a lack of progress. We also have a lot of military children with significant needs - honestly don’t know why the stats swing in that direction in those cases.

I don’t mind my job and have no intention of leaving. But then I’m part time and lucky enough not to be dealing with the children who attack their 1:1s. The TAs I know that are trying to manage the violent children do want to leave and talk to me about it frequently.

Well not really. If these children were actually prioritised they would not have been placed in mainstream school where their needs cannot be met, but instead would be in the special schools they need to be in.
The only priority here is money.

The strikes were about pay and conditions. Not being told ‘fuck if you cunt’ by a 5 year old, not being spat at or having a chair thrown at your head is the conditions. Having enough funding is the conditions.

My DIL is a TA. When she started, she worked 4 days pw supporting a child with ASD. She was then asked if she would be prepared to work another day pw, which she was. Come the start of term, it turned out that she was now expected to support a 2nd child with ASD as well as the first one.

It's not possible to meet the needs of a child that requires 1:1 when one TA is supposed to be supporting 2 of them, but there just wasn't enough money to do more.

I attended a very interesting online conference recently related to SEN and the key speaker was a consultant paediatrician from Ireland. She said the majority of her work now is ADHD/ASD referrals for 'out of control' children whise parents are seeking a diagnosis. According to her most of them don't meet the criteria, but she attributes the soaring level of behavioural issues to screen addiction. Children have lost the ability to self regulate, due to exposure from such an early age to screens over prolonged periods, and she believes newer techniques of parenting just pander, rather than establish boundaries and enforce discipline. She's an older lady, not too far off retirement age and said that this level of behavioural problems simply wasn't seen 10 years ago.

Someone else just told me teacher's unions are only legally allowed to strike about pay. But anyway, the underlying point was that the reason the public has little sympathy for striking teachers is they have no idea how common the swearing violent 5 year old now is. Children's behaviour and health has deteriorated so rapidly that people outside the frontline systems have no real idea. How are they supposed to know that 'enough' funding now means enough funding to deal with a reception class where normally developing children are literally a minority, as a teacher above said? There's no open public discussion about this.

It’s scary that they shoehorn children like that into a mainstream school, it was one of my biggest worries actually when DD started reception.

To what extent do these cases of SEN disproportionately effect schools where the intake from the lower end of the socio economic spectrum? My daughters go to schools in a reasonably (but not over) affluent part of town and although there are children with SEN there aren't quite as many severe cases as in on here.

However there is a lot of discussion about seriously disruptive SEN children in schools at the less wealthy side of town.

Do more academic schools or ones with better results off roll SEN children to a greater extent? Do some schools create a toxic environment for SEN children such as a restrictive uniform and behaviour policy to deter SEN children from applying?

Yes it is affecting all ages including adults (myself included) having a lower concentration span

@Ylvamoon I will often think of your poor, suffering children who have been so hurt by the inclusion policy during their education. I will often think of the parents who have been forbidden to speak about this great injustice. I will think of them when the children pass their GCSEs and A levels. I will think of them when they start their first job. I will think of them when they meet their life partner and discuss having children if their own. I will think of them having an ordinary Saturday night out or summer holiday. I will think of them while I care for my own child, who will never live independently, or have a job, or a partner, or even a friend in the normal, reciprocal sense. I will think of them when, in my dotage, I am praying that my child predeceases me for fear of what happens if I go first.

Incidence of SEN strongly correlates with social class yes.

Yes I think there is a link ime

😮

What do you suggest then? Changing the law so that children with significant needs are just accommodated and never get any education or socialisation?

I cannot understand parents who willingly sent their children into school knowing they are a danger to others

Well I send mine because it’s the fucking law. I would happily send him to the specialist provision I’ve been begging the LA for, but until then he’s in mainstream proving that when I say the school can’t meet his needs, I’m right.

He’s also got an IQ of >130, which I’m willing to bet is the highest in his largely NT MS class.

Has anyone ever been convicted for keeping their child at home to prevent them from attacking other children and teachers?

I don't know. Maybe you could do some research and find out? I do know I was threatened with prosecution and on top of being a single parent with two disabled children I just couldn't face that too. Now if you don't mind I am going to ignore your disingenuous, bad faith questions which suggest that disabled children have less rights than NT children and that parents should be subservient and apologetic and remove their children from society and hide them away at home so that the "normies" can go about their business unhindered.

Has anyone ever been convicted for refusing to send a violent child to school in order to protect other children and teachers?

Yes wasn't going to mention this but she said parents are addicted themselves, and not only are infants now not getting the appropriate serve and respond interactions, she said that parents cba to discipline, and instead seek a diagnosis to explain bad behaviour.

And did you have any difficult experience with regards to this?

What a fucking horrible thread. Well not the thread as these matters need to be discussed but some of the arseholes on it. Going to hide it.

That's not fair. NO child should have to be bullied in school, attacked, hit or bitten. How you you think that affects THEIR experience of school life or their anxiety never mind their learning.
Don't blame parents who don't have a special needs child standing up for their kids who are mercilessly tormented in the school setting. They will be thinking of their OWN kids and the repercussions of being attacked is having on them.

Speaking of bad faith and disingenuousness, where have I ever argued any of that rant? Nowhere, of course.

That’s appalling.
You need classrooms like jails, by the sound of it-
Chairs and desks bolted to the floors, grilles over the windows, armour including full face for the staff and other children - and restraints for the violent children.

It sounds absolute mayhem.

Assuming private schools can be more selective -NO government ministers will be sending their children to state schools, that’s for sure.

I've seen the same addicted adults give the kids screens as soon as they can hold them, to keep them busy so the parents' screen addiction isn't interrupted too much. They'll justify it because they don't want to admit that their own screen time is out of hand. And discipline would also take parent's time away from their screens. Makes a lot of sense to me. And the timing of screen addictions over the last 10-15 years would fit with the pattern of things getting substantially worse over that time.