To think something has gone wrong in schools? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz0m2x30p4eo

[RebelBabybel]

From the BBC : school exclusions have doubled in the last 10 years.

I’ve worked in schools for 30 years : KS1/Early Years.

When I first started I was expected to do : hand written, detailed plans. Assessments. Handwritten reports. I had no TA. I had a blackboard. Children had books. I had to be firm with behaviour, schools had very clear behaviour policies in place, and the head would have an overview, was visible, check classes, be the ‘go to’ person if anything was difficult to manage.

Over the years, particularly in the Early Years things have changed massively.
My latest role has involved a manager who is mostly on the computer and rarely interacts with the children. No planning, no assessment. Resources are put out, but there is an ethos that it’s ‘wrong’ to show the children how to use them. Therefore children don’t use jigsaws as puzzles, they take the pieces out and transport them round the classroom. A doctors role play is set up, but with no input as to what the resources are there are for or how to role play ‘being a doctor’.

There is an expectation, a ‘box’ of what constitutes ‘normal’ behaviour : even with very young children. Any child who is outside this box, is often labelled ‘I think they’ve got autism, I think they’ve got ADHD’ without a formal assessment. These children - rather than getting to know them, or putting clear strategies in place, are quickly labelled as difficult : and fall into a stereotype that causes a negative cycle. There seems to be little ‘fault’ addressed to the teaching style, and the ‘fault??’ is centred on the child, I’d also argue that it is NOT a fault. It’s called being a child.

Children seem to be very readily excluded from schools without the adults fully questioning their teaching style and whether that might be at fault.

To be completely honest, teaching was far easier 30 years ago. Children were better behaved, and there was far better, stronger support from senior management. It felt more like a team, rather than:

an SLT who are in meetings, on a computer, off to conferences, in the staff room, pushing ‘new’ initiatives and criticising their staff.

I agree something is wrong, but I think it is a social problem. Poverty, cultural fragmentation, screen time, social media. Children in school are canaries in the coalmine.
These children who cannot cope in school will by and large become adults who cannot cope in society. We have big problems I’m afraid.

@Tangledmane

My first 10 years of teaching was in a school in a deprived area. We had a very strong, visible head with a clear behaviour policy. I can’t remember one child who was ever excluded.

The required academic standards have increased dramatically in the last 10 years. Great for some children but it’s not achievable by all

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65610397.amp

Ten years ago the curriculum was less packed and was less stringent. Student behaviour was nowhere near as difficult.

You’re not wrong. And things are also utterly toxic at Local Authority level where the rhetoric seems to be to apply incredible financial burdens on schools, fail to meet their duties both to schools and to children, and then blame the parents.

My child’s school was excellent for SEN, and became something of a local hot spot for SEN kids. But SEN kids are expensive and not particularly easy, and then add to that, reduced resources and catastrophic cuts to associated services such as OT and Speech therapy and there’s a sudden cohort of kids who aren’t even able to access a basic education. And demoralised exhausted teachers who can see how the children are being failed.

Lifeglowup
I completely agree. The relentless drive by ofsted and academies to have teachers teach to the top and have all children study the same curriculum means students who are not able to reach these standards are bored and demoralised. Some of the joy has been stripped out of lessons.

@cansu

I’m not so sure. There seems to have been a movement away from planning with children. It seems a lot more lax. With the youngest children, we used to have clear roles for each adult in the classroom.
One adult would play a board game, or teach how to use scissors.
Now these things are put out, but with no guidance. So the board game is distributed around the classroom and pieces lost - while the adults cut out Twinkl signs or are called out to a meeting, leaving one person trying to cope with behaviour.

I think there are a lot of kids in mainstream that possibly shouldn't be due to SEN, they are set up to fail so they do.

I think reliance on screen time at home and at school is reducing kids' ability to cope with real life.

On the plus side, I'm glad that disruptive children appear to be being removed for the benefit of the majority.

I wonder if children’s behaviour has gone down because there’s so much more expected of them?
One of mine is autistic, one of the books we bought to help him stayed that children do well if they can - I’m a great believer in that. Children aren’t coping in schools any more. Come to think of it neither are teachers.
The whole thing needs knocking down, scrap OFSTED (wasn’t there a post office style scandal rumoured earlier this year around them?), scrap SATs. Build it up in a way that children can access better and that doesn’t leave droves of teachers leaving.

@hellooooooomama

Completely disagree. That’s segregation. Us and them mentality. Placing the fault on all these ‘SEN’ children, it wasn’t like that 30 years ago. There was a feeling of inclusivity - and caring for ALL children.

I loved teaching 30 years ago. Loved it. And teachers weren’t leaving in droves. We had a solid staff with low turnover,

This is the inevitable outcome of refusing to fund proper SEN education and allowing parents to demand bespoke education in mainstream schools for children with very high needs. All under the banner of inclusivity. The children are failed, their classmates are failed, the teachers are exhausted and leaving the profession. The parents are broken with the stress and anxiety of watching their children go uneducated.

I do think a lot of this is a bit of rose tinted glasses. 2014 wasn’t an educational utopia; far from it. Neither was 2004. Or 1994!

You’ve been a teacher for 30 years and you think the problem is teachers?

There are far bigger problems with education than that. Have you not noticed the decimation of special education and the huge rise in genuine SEN in that time?

To think parents should parent adequately....

What's the reasoning behind not helping children to use to things they're meant to play with?

It wasn't like that 30 years ago because there were more children placed in 'special schools'. Also, society is vastly different today, there is very little point comparing.

A just want to state an incident that happened to me last week.
A SENCO came up to me and said ‘that child’s non verbal, and don’t get too close or he’ll hit you.’
I smiled and played with him for a bit. He loves singing.

I sang with him and he was finishing lines of the song,
He also said some words to me.
I reported this back.
I’d say the SENCO was pissed off, because he’d behaved differently to her assessment of him.
There was no, that’s great - or praising the child.

Her ego was more important than the child’s well being.

I honestly think 'normal' people do not understand that a massive swathe of the population have lost their grip on how to live in the world. Many of them were barely parented themselves and now they are parents and grandparents. They have no idea of how to parent. The numbers used to be smaller and therefore interventions were easier to manage.

Now we have in some areas a third or fourth generation of a semi-feral underclass. Add in a whole separate wave of economically privileged but increasingly fragile kidults and Britain is more fucked every decade.

@Teacherprebaby

That’s just not true.

• Number of special schools
• The number of state-funded special schools has been increasing slightly in recent years. In England, the number of schools with SEN units increased from 373 in 2023 to 392 in 2024.

I am not saying all was great then but each year that I teach, I am struck by how the curriculum content is tightly controlled and packed with difficulty. If we want all children to enjoy and value coming to school, we do need to consider this alongside lack of funding for trips and enrichment, lack of TA support, increasing numbers of children inappropriately placed in mainstream school, lack of parental support and respect for teachers.

It's a different world. Completely

Families have far less time as 2 working parents is needed just to survive.

Schools have too much content and so kids are labelled as behind that otherwise would have just caught up the following year. This affects so much.

Lack of fun, going outdoors, serious cut back on time for building proper for the nativity, doing off timetable stuff, things that let off steam for those struggling with the formal work.

Crazy expectations for sats.

Lack of understanding and support around send. And policies which make those that previously would have been borderline and survive with a bit of TA support and understanding really struggle in the regime.

Exhausted burnt out teachers who want to leave. When you have happy staff you have more energy and excitement for the kids. Schools are so broken.

Losing experienced staff. For all these reasons but also because they're expensive so schools push them out and recruit nqts.

Pressure on schools with funding are crazy. Managers turn into people they don't like. Instead of the gentle head that knows all the children and chats to them they're worrying how to meet funds and targets.

Ofsted.

And yes I liked teaching 20 years ago. It's unbelievably different.

@cansu

But thirty years ago, We had excellent tight, differentiated planning. No TA. I trip a year. No computer. A blackboard. No worksheets. Children from a deprived area, no exclusions and a strong visible leadership team. I remember two children in wheelchairs who we accommodated - and it wasn’t really questioned that they shouldn’t be there. Bad behaviour was dealt with very firmly,