To think change is desperately needed in schools?

[GibberingPeck]

I work with young children. Today I was hit twice and scratched on the face so hard it drew blood. This has not happened to me before and I’ve worked in schools for many years. I was trying to stop a child hurting another child. The school’s stance seems to be that I shouldn’t have intervened or somehow dealt with the situation badly. I think they saw I was bleeding, but ignored it as they have so much to deal with. This year, I think I’ve seen more violent and aggressive behaviour from children than I’ve ever seen. And no way of dealing with it - it seems to have become acceptable or ‘the norm’.

A decent tv programme with discussion on fb etc of best advice for child rearing. No idea why no one’s thought to do this - prob too many uninterested parents or privately schooled children in the top media people.

You miss my point.2 parents working IS old stuff and now we are seeing the first generation of 'nursery raised' children becoming parents themselves and having no clue how to parent.
To address your affordability point though, in the mid 90s, yes childcare was cheaper but there were no child tax credits to help with childcare

@Namenamchange

I agree with you. DS was very much left to his own devices at preschool, and over the summer I was aware that he didn’t know how to open a glue stick, use pens, use scissors, hold a pencil because there had been no expectation as this wasn’t his choice.

There is a philosophy that is constantly putting the adults in the wrong, and the children on pedestals. It’s confusing and I think children need to be confidently supported by adults and given secure boundaries.

I haven’t worked in schools for about a decade and it seems things have got much worse since then but I was quite shocked to hear from a friend recently about when her child was in Year 2 she slapped a TA who was shouting in her face.

I appreciate it’s not great to shout in a child’s face but I was gobsmacked that she was so casual about her child slapping an adult and seemed to play it down and focus on the TA’s role in this.

Her children are now a bit older so this happened about 5 years ago. Perhaps she was embarrassed at the time as she didn’t mention it to me back then. But she didn’t sound ashamed when she told me recently.

Exactly! Having to put up with vile behaviour and gang pack culture while watching every word u say and the pressure from above to be perfect at marking, classroom management and results when trying to get blood out of a rock even in gcse classes is unbelievable!

My friend shared an email exchange she had with her kids teachers. In one of the emails she had written “my son is saying you’re always shouting at children”. That bit was absolutely unnecessary and she should’ve just focused on the issue she had which was a specific incident where she felt her child was wrongly punished, rather than share her child’s critique of this teachers performance.

I can tell by various things she tells me her children are rude to teachers but she’s always got a defence for them and will attack the teachers for basically not being perfect . Her children know their mum will always back them up even when they’re wrong. It’s embarrassing. I couldn’t stand for it if I was a teacher.

Exactly, people are asking why. We had a major life event only 4 years ago. These children were born during this time. Parents may have WFH so therefore these little babies/toddlers were left to screens and devices. No social interactions with other children their age or learning how social cues work. Lime someone said the early years are the most important to children. Their brains learn the most here. Parents perhaps let things slide easier because them, themselves were stressed due to the pandemic or couldn't be bothered due to being confined in a home.

Sure this was probably happening before the pandemic but I believe the pandemic has accelerated this extremely quickly

I used to teach. The biggest problem for me was the lack of support from SLT and kids hold ALL the power.
Kids messing around in lessons? ALL your fault.
BUT you shouldn't send the chikd out...no. Your lessons should be that sparkling and engaging that they are comoletely transfixed and facinatibg that they are 109% focussed.
I was once asked to leave a supoly job as a TA as the class were bullying the teacher badly so I stood uo and bollocked them all and sent a few out. Asked a girl to put her kitkat away ..she refused so I put it in the bin.Apparently this was awful of me!
I still do nor regret throwing that kitkat away or bollocking the class and I xare not one jot that I was asked not to come back. Apoarently SLT knew those girls were a nightmare!
I bet mummy and daddy were incenced that the nasty TA violated their precious princesses human rights!

So I showed a united front to help my colleague and this is what happened. So glad im out!

Care*

Kitkat gate hapoened WAY before the pandemic btw!

Sorry for typos...knackered!

The approach during covid was to sacrifice children for the good of the economy.

If it happened again I wouldn't bow to pressure to work from home while my primary aged kid was in the background watching tv all day. I would take parental leave and the financial hit and homeschool.

I realise for many this wouldn't be an option financially. But I saw too many middle class 2 high income households do exactly this because it was what they were told. Now wondering why their kid has behavioural issues.

I was lucky enough to have a newborn and be on mat leave during the worst of it. I would absolutely have made the same choice as those parents. It isn't their fault - they took the advice. Next time we need to do things very, very differently!

I spent my childhood in Canada - lates 90s/early 2000's. I went to a rural school and had about 100 children in each year group, split in to 3 or 4 classes.

When I think of my year group, there's maybe 2 students who I could identify as being obviously autistic. They weren't (as far as I know) diagnosed. Maybe there were others. But the fact was that the other 98 of us all muddled along together. We almost all graduated and went on to be productive members of society. The thought of 'lashing out' in class would have been ludicrous and just not done. Teachers were automatically respected. Detention was not uncommon for minor things (tardiness etc), and the thought of a parent 'kicking off' about it would never have crossed their mind.

I agree with many of the points above - a big reason will be due to lack of activity/discipline/lack of hope and an increase in screens. It seems like a perfect storm and heaven knows what the end game is. I'm so so glad I did not become a teacher...

I see what you're saying but don't agree. The parents raise the child, not the nursery and doubt very much that nursery is the issue.

Hi,

I've just had to take my son out of school because he was having panic attacks, and I am seeing how he changes now he is out of the school system.

The thing I'm really noticing is that he is desperate for outside exercise. At first it was all books, books, books, but now he is desperate to get out in the sunshine and walk around. Our best days are now those where we do physics or maths in the park, or biology or geography looking at an actual pond.

DS has developed an aversion to screen-based teaching because of all the nastiness he has seen on screens in school. He can't bear powerpoint teaching or youtube learning because he never knows what he will be exposed to next and was having paralysing panic attacks.

FWIW DS does definitely does have differences (SEN), because he needed surgery twice as an infant to keep him breathing, and that was caused by wheat intolerance, so that is definitely an environmental factor.

However, he was always immaculately behaved in school, and got all As for attitude.

I am a stay-at-home parent and always have been, so he has had me around, but I have also had health problems that I couldn't get help for, so that has been limiting. I think the under-funding of the NHS is a big problem for parents who are then struggling to help their kids.

I don't think it's fair at all for teachers to blame bad parenting. It may be that in some cases, but it isn't in all.

@WhenIsTheGeneralElection

I think that’s a good point. The school environment I’m in feels toxic. It’s extremely busy with almost a group vying for dominance (and they don’t seem happy) - and then the quieter children who get overlooked, left out and keep well away from the dominant group. They are frequently asking for mummy and asking when it’s time to go home.

I think these children are more likely to experience abuse at school than at home.

The resources that are there are often thrown, used as weapons or broken by the dominant group.

It's such a challenging situation. Both my children have SEN and EHCPs. My youngest has never had any behavioural incidents, at all, along any lines.

My biggest is more challenging, she's never harmed any children or adult but can't be quite vocal when cross. Has never sworm or been verbally abusive. Massively struggles with her anxiety and often overwhelmed by the classroom. We had specialist agreed when she was in year 1, but the options available to her involved her being in a class of 5 highly physically challenging boys, because she comes under the heading of SEMH. You can't put a highly anxious 5YO girl in a classroom with children who have committed SA, so I enforced her right to mainstream. Our ASD schools, only exist for those with learning disabilities and the settings she requires aren't available until secondary. She's in year 4 now and years 2 and 3 went surprisingly well. We've hit a wall this year but there is nowhere viable to move her to, so for her, she's still in mainstream, only in class 50% and still often overwhelmed.

There is a huge number of children like my DD, who are in the wrong environment because there is just no other option for them. It then means that the next tier of children who ordinarily would have been the higher needs children in mainstream, are left to fend for themselves.

Obviously there is lots of poor parenting too, but the SEN situation is unbelievably dire.

@Mumma2024

This is why I think schools need to change. For whatever reason, our cohort of children are changing. Especially in the younger years, where there is more demand/working families. It may well be that we need more schools to potty train, to teach language and communication, we need more space and simplicity, a big focus on teaching social skills and how to behave. I think a teacher needs to be seen as not just a facilitator but ALSO a teacher, and they need to feel valued and allowed to teach in their personal style and not : one size fits all. Displays in schools are often meaningless twinkl signs that the children can’t read. Widgits, now and next etc help the children understand language.

I feel like everything needs to be cleared out and we start again.

I think this is absolutely true. We also need specialist diagnosis for actual problems in the early years.

My DS was one of the ones who arrived not toilet trained, and it wasn't until years later that we found that he had actual anatomical/physical differences.

His bladder scan showed that his bladder capacity was only 80ml when it should have been 350ml, and he has "overactive bladder" which means that he loses urinary incontinence entirely if he has one glass of ribena. So his toilet difficulties were not bad parenting, and not his fault either. But when I was an exhausted reception parent I was getting accusations of all sorts and no help at all. It sets up all sorts of bad patterns and makes everything difficult. Leads to fear in the parents, bullying of the child and so on, when it was actually an undiagnosed physical problem.

I totally agree. I've had to take my son out of school and have had such a fight to get an EHCP assessment. I'm now asking for an EOTAS package, because there is absolutely nothing suitable for my son. It's such a shame because he loved being with his friends and now he is stuck outside and they are all in the school. It really is such a bad situation for kids now.

I saw in Gordon Brown's recent report that he thinks we should have citizen's focus groups to redesign how life in Britain works. I think that is right.

Could we set up some on Mumsnet to examine the issues?

There are so many problems and I don't see why we couldn't just set up a public focus group and brainstorm on how to fix things. It's the ideal time with the general election coming up.

Children with Downs Syndrome account for 1 in 1000 births, and 89-97% of women who have a prenatal diagnosis make a decision to end the pregnancy.

Cerebral Palsy accounts for 1 in 400 births.

ASD accounts for 1 in 100 people

ADHD accounts for 3-4 in 100 people.

So yes, you will see more people with ASD/ADHD then Downs Syndrome because it is relatively rare (although increasing with maternal age) and people can choose not have a baby with Downs Syndrome.

When you then take into account severity, many of those children with Downs Syndrome and CP will be in Special schools, so you won't see them.

@WhenIsTheGeneralElection

Agreed - I don’t think a blame game is the answer because I do see a lot of teachers and parents doing their absolute best. I think it’s higher up that needs to change : training courses, government input, research, over reliance/trust in pseudoscience, more finance, more staff, better resources.

I’d join any group to express my views.

And I often see an Animal Farm type mentality in staffing structures around schools. That needs to change too.

This is important!

I think the issue in schools now is pressure from both sides.

So schools take an increasingly vulnerable cohort both in terms of parents and SEND and actually for the most part schools do know how to help children, what to set up and what strategies will work.

Yet on the other side, you have the govt and the acadamisation process calling for increasingly scripted "one size fits all" curriculum that is so jam packed and demanding that school staff simply can't^^ stop and meet need because if they do they become increasingly behind with curriculum
Demands.

Also, for those who know what it is, I think we will look back at the "Read Write inc" era and think WTF???

It consumes time, money, staff in abundance and yet where's the evidence from outside the scheme that it's actually having a dynamic effect?

Then all these things are further compounded by the fact that we don't have the money to pay good support staff properly therefore there's a MASSIVE recruitment crisis.

I also think that the NHS needs to move faster on getting healthcare in place for ASD people. I had to pay privately for a diagnosis for both DS and myself. When we had it the doctor said "sorry I can't help with ASD health problems - you will need to google for join an online discussion forum for that".

I have now joined NHS focus groups on this and the organisers openly admit that progress is glacially slow and that the situation is "desperate".

If these ASD kids are grinding through school days with undiagnosed health problems it's no wonder they are not coping. I know myself that I have to grind through all sorts because of undiagnosed and unfixed health problems which are just put down to "ASD" and it makes life so difficult.