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.

There were far, far less children with SEN 30 years ago. I know people will come along and say they've always been there but were hidden etc, but many more children have SEN and behavioural challenges now. Previously children from deprived backgrounds were left to sink or swim, they either did exceptionally well at school or fell behind. I don't think people value education anymore, and don't respect teachers. Teachers are unable to lead with discipline as parents don't support it. For many it is a thankless task & I'm not surprised people want to leave. The children by and large are not the issue, it's the parents.

Where have you shown more special school places over 30 years? Not 8n this post. Have you adjusted it for population numbers?

Well I've found some interesting statistics from 2005... https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmeduski/478/47808.htm

Which claim that the number of special school had declined sharply since 1979, and then fell again by 7% between 1997 and 2005. I can't imagine they've increased since that... In fact I know of 2 in our tiny district council area that closed in the first round of Tory austerity (leaving a terrible lack of provision locally).

@RebelBabybel I think perhaps you just didn't come across the SEN children 30 years ago. There were 1.45 million of them in 2005 and 1.7 million in January 2024 so it's not like the increase has been that dramatic especially when compared with overall population growth! So it would stand to reason that more of them went to the special schools that don't exist anymore.

The SEN was always there. They were just called disruptive.

We’ve just been to my Y6 parents evening. Her reading age is currently at 11. We were told she is meeting expectations. Thing is she’s 9 and 4 months. I struggle to comprehend how she can’t be exceeding expectations if her level of reading is graded at more than 18 months beyond her age. School are taking her out of science and music this half term for extra English lessons as SATs prep, last term she missed science and PE for extra maths. The focus on targets and meeting rigid expectations is very different to what myself and my husband experienced as kids 30 odd years ago.

How is she in Y6 if she's only 9?

there are exponentially more pupils requiring a place in a different educational environment. Whether that is the result of more diagnoses, more children with SEND, more self diagnoses or whatever else, there are still too few places for the children requiring them.

This.

I bet it's not like that in private schools. And very few of the problems you cited depend on budgets. So it's not all about buying 'privilege', but parents desperate for an escape route from failed ideologies.

If we agree behaviour is relational, the lack of funding leads to less adults, leads to more exclusions. That's certainly our experience in my school.

I think parenting is a large contributing factor. The fact that so many children are simply not school ready demonstrates that parents are failing. We actually booked leave to potty train our first before nursery because it’s our job. I think people expect more and more from the state.

I remember that Labour MP talking about a child who needed massive dental work and blaming the tories for it. If the parents had just brushed the kids teeth they wouldn’t have been in that situation, yet it was apparently someone elses fault.

restorative justice is also bollocks and we need to stop doing it in schools.

Agree with @Porcelainpig about the specialist provision is increasing in mainstream schools. Often they will have a "resource provision" which is a whole SEN class or two providing mixed year provision. In the city where I work 3 primary schools went to this model this year as their KS1 rolls are falling, they have empty classrooms and the special schools are beyond full with lengthy waiting lists. A lot of the kids in the resource provision really need to be in a specialist SEMH provision but there is none.

30 years ago my daughter would have been considered a bit quirky and occasionally disruptive in class. She's bright but struggles with social cues and is very literal. She would have been called a day dreamer. She's actually autistic and those kids where always there but it was rarely diagnosed especially in girls. The ADHD kids were always there too and the ones with learning disabilities but many weren't picked up on. The ones who were diagnosed were often dumped into the bottom sets and would get the worst teachers who absolutely shouldn't have been in a classroom.

A child was given a suspension from my kids' primary school after he threatened my daughter with a knife at dinner time. This was in Year 1. He was trying to stab her with it and saying I'll cut you I'll stab you and make you bleed. This was a little boy who was adopted having been removed from abusive parents. He had learning disabilities and dealt with rejection very very badly. The school were great with him and my daughter but it was absolutely not sustainable for him to be at that school. He needed a much more therapeutic environment where he could be supported not have to think about adverbs at age 6.

I'm not sure why you keep talking about computers in schools now as if somehow it's because headteachers are using computers. That's just the way the world has developed. 30 years ago my job was largely without computers and now it's very computerised. That's just the world we live in. We also realised the importance of professional development for school staff and sharing good practice, hence conferences etc. Using interactive whiteboards instead of a chalk and blackboards is great, teachers have more resources available and no longer have to hope that an enthusiastic board monitor won't erase the key phrases they want to the class to recall while also being able to share examples from the class of good sentences or whatever. How great it is my children's teachers can look up a question if they don't know the answer about why Cy Twombly was called Cy when his name is Edwin or why the pope looks like he is wearing a kippah.

I forgot something.

When I was at school, if you got into a fight or somebody hit you and you hit them back, nobody got excluded or suspended. You'd probably lose a playtime at most, many were seen as 'Well, you hit her first - what did you expect would happen?' and only the big fights/ones involving black eyes, bloody noses, other visible injuries or a huge mismatch in size would be reported to parents.

These days, both get suspended and everybody goes ballistic. That's going to affect suspension figures hugely.

I think SEN has increased, whether officially recognised or not.

And yes OP of course special school places have increased. So has the population! It hasn't kept up with the explosion of SEN though, has it?

Can't believe you used an example of wheelchair users to compare. Disgraceful imo.

i'm a parent, i'm also a teaching assistant, and i've been a nursery nurse in my time.

I think there needs to be balance between teaching children how things SHOULD be, and allowing them to explore possibilities of their imagination.

One incident i remember vividly from my time as a nursery nurse was sitting with a bunch of 3yo doing art, we were drawing and colouring and i was allowing them to use whatever colours they liked.. one had a purple sun, orange grass and a blue tree and was so proud of his drawing!

One of the Nursery Supervisors came over, looked at the childs drawing, picked it up and looked at the child before handing him another piece of paper and said "Do it again, but properly, remember the sun is yellow, grass and trees are green." then threw the childs drawing away.

He cried, funnily enough, and i saw a little creativity and imagination die that day.

We all KNOW the sun is yellow, but so fucking what if they want to colour it purple.

I'd rather live in a world where we encourage childrens creativity, and a world of purple suns and blue trees than one that is cookie cutter and dull and normal.

The official figures haven't increased much. 1.45 million in 2005 and 1.7 million in 2024. Definitely an issue with SEN not being recognised but I can't imagine that's a bigger issue than it was 20 years ago?

20 years ago I had a class of 24. I now have a class of 34.
20 years ago I didn't have anyone swearing, shouting, pushing, refusing or hitting. Now I have many.
Two children in wheelchairs would cause me no problems
20 years ago all of the children in my class said please and thank you. Now I have 4 and the rest need reminding.
Children increasingly find it hard to do anything for themselves and need cajoling through everything.

If anything I'm seeing more children being labelled with ADHD and autism when if anything they have trauma and / or neglect.

Editing to add that sometimes this is the only way of getting children ANY help in school.

One of our local Primaries has a recently opened SEN unit, it has 10 places. Doesn't touch the surface.

And that isn't the whole picture.
In the london borough I work in, the total number of special school places has doubled over the past 8 years. 1 new school, plus existing special schools have significantly increased their places, set up satellite sites.

My daughters mainstream school used to have 2 classes in their SEN unit, now they have 4

The number of SEN places across the country is increasing every year, but still somehow unable to meet demand. It's really worrying, both for the future of these young people, and the economy.

At the special school I work at, a place costs around 60k per year, a standard mainstream place costs around 6k I think.

I don’t think there was even such a thing as a SENCO 30 years ago.

Now every school it’s a major role, and we have an explosion of ‘unteachable’ children.

What on Earth has happened??

I just remember it being - this is your class, you differentiate your planning. The head, or year group leader would oversee additional help - but I think the onus was on me as a teacher to ensure they were accommodated. No TA.

The curriculum has narrowed so much with such a focus on testing that the joy has been sucked out of education. The war on attendance has been the icing on the cake. You’ve got to go every day, whether you are ill, miserable, your mum is dying, you’re homeless etc etc

Whereas 30 years ago, you could go to school and be a bit quirky or different and that was fine, you could probably muddle through regardless and you’d find subjects you liked and were good at. Now, you have to be learning exactly the same as everyone else, you are tested to the nth degree continually on maths and English and if you aren’t doing well enough, you’re taken out of the fun subjects you enjoy, to do more maths and English. Once you’ve done 11 years of that every day, you are probably given a handful of grades that mean you still have to keep resitting maths and English till you’re 18. There’s no wriggle room for anything other than ‘achieving what the average child should be able to achieve’.

Traits of ADHD would have made you a sought-after hunter in years gone by! Those skills just don’t translate well to sitting at a desk filling your head with enough facts so that you can pass maths, two English, three sciences, a humanity and a language exam at the end of your school career. It’s that or nothing-there’s no alternatives, no creativity, no fun.

But I also didn’t try to segregate, label or pigeon-hole anyone who needed additional help. They were very much part of the class.

I started teaching in 1996 and there were SENCos at every school I did teaching practices in.