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.

“Finland's special needs education system aims to help students with special needs complete compulsory school alongside their peers. The system is based on the idea of integrating students into mainstream education whenever possible.”

“Finnish legislation does not categorise learners according to disabilities or difficulties.”

And Finland's education system is going down the toilet.

Most children who are not feeling mentally well will act out where they feel safe. Home is usually a child's safe place. When that isn't the case then the child will act out in school. I have witnessed this over and over.

I feel my eyes starting to prickle. Thank you for being a kind, generous person to those who need it the most. 💐

Are you in the U.K?

This is not at all my experience of EYFS teaching.

Modelling, playing with the children, challenging them, showing them new things they can do, asking them questions, in the moment planning. These are all things that absolutely should and must be happening in the EYFS.

If you are putting stuff out then leaving the kids to freely run around the setting with it then I feel like you may have misunderstood something or you school has a very unusual ethos.

This is a quote from the EYFS framework for example:

' With reference to play, 'Play and Exploration' is a commitment which comes under 'Learning & Development'. There are six areas of Learning & Development all of which, according to the EYFS framework, 'must be delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult led and child initiated activities'.

Oh!
Well your approach sounds lovely, the SENDCo not so much.

I think the problems you are describing may be quite specific to your school.

Id take what she’s saying with a pinch of salt as in her OP she states she didn’t have a TA (or any other adult) yet she goes on to say, one adult would do jigsaws and another learn them to use scissors etc.

If only that information was always accurate and unbiased...

I think this is a really good point

Despite the fact that information online can be reliable or unreliable (depending on the source), having it at our finger tips certainly does make a sort of mockery of the whole process of memorising and regurgitating information and facts. Ie the curriculum and qualification system we have. Children today are digital natives and to them it is kind of pointless to learn facts to regurgitate for an exam to then be able to look it up again in a split second. I’m not saying all learning is pointless in school today but certainly the way we measure it has to be modernised. I’d go as far to say this information accessibility is partly what is disengaging young people.

Children today are digital natives

They really aren't. They are absolutely shit at using computers and doing basic stuff that kids of the 90s are brilliant at.

I disagree that you don't need to remember stuff. You can't spend your whole life looking stuff up, especially if you plan on making a living out of it!

Anyway there is much more to learning than simply knowing facts.

You can't be creative without underlying knowledge.

And without knowledge you don't know what you don't know.

Also, imagine the stuff you wouldn't even find if you were just relying on the Internet.

The curriculum takes children many places they wouldn't otherwise go, sometimes sparking lifelong interests.

That must be one of the best things about teaching. I'm not a teacher but I imagine it must be.

So which of these do you think parents can’t influence/control?

• Being neglected at home, but not removed because there were literally no foster carers / moved into care 500 miles away because it was the only foster placement available
• Watching violent porn at age 11
• Stuck in their bedrooms all evening and weekends on devices because there are no heap or free youth activity or social clubs, or no transport to get them there.
• Contactable 24/7 through social media / smartphones, and riddled with anxiety.
• Living in poverty but watching influencers living heavenly-looking lives, daring to dream it might be possible for them before reality hits.
• Brought up in a home where adults interacted with their personal screens more than their children.

I usually answer ‘brain development!’

Works for most subject areas including stuff that a lot of teens see as a waste of time (eg Algebra or musical instrument practice or PE or a MFL from a country they have no interest in ever visiting).

When I was a kid I knew maybe 10 or 15 different phone numbers off by heart so I could use a telephone kiosk or a friend’s parent’s landline. I’d get 6 books from the library on Saturday morning (while my mum shopped in Prestos) and read them all by Sunday, I’d listen to 5 -6 whole tracks on a record or cassette before turning it over and listening to the 5-6 more on the B side. We used to watch an episode of a live show at the scheduled time and be able to discuss it with our class mates next day.

I observe kids and teens now and they listen to three quarters of a Spotify track before skipping to the next random track, no one remembers more than 2 or 3 phone numbers and reading a whole book chapter by chapter has been replaced by doomscrolling snippets of opinion. The Netflix algorithm (and many others) serves up what it anticipatee you will like and it may well be right but it’s likely completely different to what it’s serving up to your sister and your best friend.

It must be changing the way kids brains develop - how could it not? Best keep learning the Algebra and memorising French vocab lest our brains become incapable of simple adulting tasks, like making a phone call or walking to a friend’s house without Siri telling us when to take a left turn.

It's nuts. I work in a secondary school (there's pretty much a zero exclusion policy here in Scotland). There's a minority of kids who don't attend class but wander about the school, sometimes causing havoc. Nothing we can do.
We have swung SO far the other way in our treatment of children and will live to regret it.

Lack of discipline, the removal of physical discipline especially. A very predictable result of a failed social experiment to remove it. France where physical discipline is still very much a thing don't have this problem and the behavioural difference (children sitting quietly at the table in restaurants etc, silent, no speaking back or tantrums in public) is a complete 180. Clutch your pearls at this all you want, I am not arguing for or against, just saying the facts are there, and it is what it is.

Lack of discipline yes but I have never used physical punishment on my kids and they always behaved very well. I was smacked as a child. I think it was very damaging to me emotionally. Good behaviour can be achieved without resorting to physical punishment. Most important is having sanctions you follow through imo.

Schools and parenting need to go back to basics. Chalk and talk, and the 3 Rs at school, and sending kids out to play, and giving them the slipper at home.

The most unmanageable kids at my school are the ones who get hit at home.

She wrote 5 lines for the whole test. I scored it 0. I am her teacher and I always polite thankyou. Can’t even believe I’m having to justify myself!

No discipline either. The kids know this and have the 'You can't touch me mindset.'Spills over into adult life and creates adults who think they can do as they like without cconsequences.

@wellington77 I didn't ask you to justify yourself, or specific details on that incident.

I was replying to this comment of yours.

Exactly! My parents were the same! I wouldn’t even think the teacher would have marked it wrong. They are the expert not the kid

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

This has been exactly my experience as a parent with a SENCO and Headteacher. The class teachers and TAs are fantastic but the SENCO and Head are toxic and incompetent and not fit to have children in their care.

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.

Also this. Local Authorities deliberately break the law and deny children their legal right to education in order to save money. They are losing 98% of tribunals for EHCPs so it's quite clear that they are denying them to children that they know should have one: that is far above the level that could possibly result from genuine error. It is a deliberate policy to save money knowing the catastrophic harm this causes both to the children with SEN and to the other children whose learning is disrupted. And then they try to blame the child or the parent for the entirely predictable outcome of their behaviour.

It is a complete shitshow and education funding needs to be doubled, class sizes halved. This would pay for itself given the long-term costs that will be incurred as a direct result of the shambles that pretends to be an education system.

@LemonadeCrayon

Agree, and I quite often see that Animal Farm mentality at the top. They ‘avoid’ the difficult situations, the discipline, the cohesiveness, the actual teaching - while swiftly avoiding any elephants in the room. If a teacher was out, the head used to cover the class. Now heads get their TA’s to do it. Their focus seems to be on new initiatives, meetings, computer based activities and discussions in their SLT huddle.

I was totally shocked by the negative cloud that hit my DC with a EHCP before he’d even started reception. Not from preschool, but from mainstream schooling.

And you are completely right about LA’s breaking the law and saving money. It causes a situation where the persistent parents win, and those who don’t fight lose.