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.

The expectations 30 years ago would have been vastly different to now - so more and more children are unable to meet targets and that “problem” presents itself in different ways - kids becoming disheartened because they can’t reach an arbitrary target, stressed pressured teachers who are forced to teach to the test instead of general education, it all mounts up.

40 years ago when I was at school, I’d have been on the SEN register, probably with an EHCP for anxiety and hyper mobility. Instead they made me the library monitor and said I could hang out in the office with Mrs. Ryan the school secretary rather than do PE.

Teaching literally is something else now. I'm 21 years in and absolutely would not go into it now if I had my time again.
I went in it for the children.

Part of the issue is parenting

How is a kid appearing at school at 4/5 not knowing how to do a simple jigsaw puzzle, role play doctors, or use scissors?

Children usually just imitate adults, you don't "show them" how to role play doctors. Its experience based. If theyve been in in hospital they might pretend cannulas with a bandaged hand or an oxygen mask etc. If they haven't they'll pretend giving syringes of calpol or GP type activities like looking in ears/throats, or want to stick endless plasters on your arms.

In the 1990s there was an issue with adult literacy and it wasn’t uncommon for adults to not be able to read. Children with sen were not catered for and left school with nothing. Schools were awful. They are much better now but still have a long way to go to be truly child centered.

It all appeared to be imploding well over a decade ago. I only had to listen to my head teacher MIL for 5 minutes to realise that. Her utter frustration and sometimes vile comments about her pupils helped cement our decision to home educate.

That was 15 years ago. Reading all these comments makes me very glad my children haven't been put through the wringer system.

This sounds like a crap teacher, but doesn't mean that the whole of EY is flawed.

I don't understand why some schools have gone down this road, my daughter's reception class is quite old school in this respect. They still take groups of children to the craft table and direct them how to do it, the TAs and teacher will often model what is supposed to be done with resources and they don't allow them to be tipped out or messed up for no good reason. I think we've found a bit of a moon on a stick though, class of 20 with one teacher and two TAs, I wish all schools could be more like this

This thread is sad and worrying, but interesting.

30 years ago I was in year 5. Have been thinking about my primary school recently - in hindsight it seems such a good place. Caring, sharing, learning about difference but everyone being treated as equal, being taught good values - explicitly taught, talked about whenever something came up.

It was considered to be the roughest primary school in the area (a quick search on MN tells me it still is!) but they just seemed to do all the above so well. Class sizes were smaller, although not hugely (maybe 28?). In my class we had a couple of children who lost parents young, a child living in (in hindsight) absolute poverty with 10 siblings in a small house, a couple of really badly behaved boys, a couple of pupils who came and went a few times (nearby traveller's site), a pupil who lived with a grandparent (no idea why), several BAME pupils (a few newly arrived), children of very young single mothers without much money, loads of kids from poorer backgrounds actually, a boy raised by a single dad who was actually neglected, at least one refugee...
But we didn't have the problems detailed on this thread.

I think something has gone wrong in society. Or several somethings coming together. We know neglect and neurodiversity can look similar. I myself am one of the previously undiagnosed neurodiverse people, so I'm not saying that all kids now diagnosed don't have those issues. But I wonder how much is made worse by poor parenting/other social issues, or even where that is the sole cause.

A family member was a nursery teacher and I remember her being shocked and saddened when doing pre-nursery home visits - kids still in nappies, kids not being spoken to at home (whilst TV blaring nonstop), not being taught basic things by parents, neglect. (She was so frustrated at the Ofsted standards because they didn't seem to take into account the starting level of kids and their progress, just whether they'd reached the expected standard or not!) This was almost 25 years ago, and a nursery in a very rough area, but I wonder if this sort of thing is more widespread now?

Perhaps the same sort of people who were just about managing 30 years ago - when one wage was enough, with a parent at home or working very part time, with a simpler less 24/7 alert lifestyle - are not managing any more. Perhaps they are somewhat neurodiverse, perhaps other reasons. Because modern life is so demanding they are not coping, children are neglected, not taught basic behaviour, surrounded by more volatile relationships so more trauma. And schools are just seeing the results of this.

Apologies for the long rambles, just been pondering this recently!

You never came across them because they were educated apart, in (to use the terminology of the time) special schools for mentally and for physically handicapped children. I remember doing lesson observations in one around 1970.

There were ESN and SESN schools, for educationally subnormal and severely educationally subnormal children. However appalling we’d find those terms now it doesn’t seem that I’m misremembering them.

As @noblegiraffe says above, David Blunkett was the Ed Sec whose policy of inclusion in the late 90s saw the widespread closure of special schools. The idea was the all but the most seriously disabled children would be educated in mainstream.

I have no idea if they were ever funded properly in mainstream. I would like to think they were, but it seems unlikely.

You can't just lower standards to accommodate less able children or those with a chaotic home life. That is totally counterproductive because kids leave school and need to enter the workplace where you need advanced skills. There aren't that many non-skilled jobs around nowadays, the days of kids being factory fodder or working down t'pit are long gone.

I was in infant school 30 odd years ago and vividly remember the SEN kids. Only they weren’t the SEN kids…. They were just Daniel who had one of us read to him and help him with his cutting. Or Anne who preferred to spend her break times ‘helping’ with playground duty. It was so very much integrated and every child was heard. There was far less academic work and an awful lot of raising decent people.

'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’.

This is absolutely not my experience of Early Years. I've worked in many schools over the last 22 years, almost exclusively in Early Years and I have NEVER seen 'an ethos where it's wrong to show children how to use resources'

There is now more emphasis in EY on encouraging children to develop their own interests, but that absolutely doesn't mean it's a free for all! What it does do is recognise that young children learn most effectively when they are interested in something and will therefore be motivated to concentrate for longer and think more deeply about what they are doing. However what I've experienced throughout my years in schools and EY settings is children being explicitly taught how to use resources, how to behave etc.

It's sad that your experience has been one of poor EY teachers and poor EY practice. I would robustly dispute that what you're describing is the norm though.

Inclusion per se is a Good Thing when done properly. Our village school has enhanced funding for severe additional needs so even though it’s a mainstream primary they have hoists and lifts and massive bathrooms and all sorts of equipment. The kids with additional needs are all in with the mainstream. My children wouldn’t have come across severe physical disability in any other sphere but they rarely commented. It just wasn’t a thing.

There was a little girl in my son’s class who had a genetic issue and some deformities of her hands and feet. My son said “Ivy does my spellings and I do her laces.” His learning partner that year was a child who was functionally blind and he chatted to me at home time and said “I’m different to Josh, because I don’t like peas and he likes peas.” Then he and Josh couldn’t breathe they were laughing so hard because one of them said “pea-ness”.

This certainly wasn't true of my infant school experience 30 years ago, we were sat round tables from day dot in reception. In fact I vividly remember my first day of school, we had to copy sums from the board and read flash cards, not something my children did on their first day. I also found one of my school books recently from when I was 5, we wrote weekend reports each Monday and were using full sentences and being corrected on spelling, again not something my daughter is doing yet.

The children and youth of today are utterly screwed, a bad education system with exhausted demoralised teachers, addicted to screens, a broken society, no money, no prospects, no aspirations, no creativity, vapes, terrible diets, a world at war.

Think of them like plants trying to grow in dark rooms with no water. 🥀🍂

A bright future seems like a distant dream.

It’s so depressing. I thank my lucky stars every day that I grew up long before screens and social media. I feel like it’s TikTok that’s been the most destructive coupled with the lockdown it was the worst combination

I'm sorry OP but I don't recognise this classroom set up and I taught EYFS / KS1 until last year.
It's like others have said. Cuts in support staff and specialist services and the ridiculously too highly pitched and irrelevant, boring, dry curriculum that expects 5 year olds to use question marks and exclamation marks in their writing and year 4 children to add fractions.

I remember doing weekend write ups too. They don't do that any more because some kids have such miserable lives.

I think it's a great way of getting some insight re safeguarding and for those with ok/happy homes it's nice to document things at a young age as we forget so much.

I agree. Shorts and reels have completely destroyed attention spans.

And yet it's not linked to ADHD?

Exactly this. I blame social media.

My friend lives on a very quiet road where much of the fairly new estate cuts through a path to her road & goes for a walk past her front room. We sat watching them a couple of weeks ago while we sipped our coffees.
Lots of babies in prams and pushchairs. Every single mother WITHOUT EXCEPTION had their head buried in their phone as they pushed their offspring past. Now maybe some babies were asleep but surely those that are awake you talk to, point things out like the horses in the field, the leaves falling off the trees?
Children are not learning from their parents because their parents ignore them at a time they could be learning from them. My eldest does a bit of volunteering with kids and was surprised recently that none of the group (primary) could identify common birds such as a blackbird or a magpie - she could identify loads as soon as she could talk (under 2) because we did RSPB Birdwatch every year.

Is it not because we have loads of academies now . Watched a documentary about off rolling and basically any kid that perhaps had learning difficulties etc that was bringing results down they off rolled which js bloody bad.
Also listening to the radio many teachers tonight on lbc said that parents are siding with kids if teacher says thwy have been naughty etc. So are parents not helping the situation either

Mum when young taught in a very deprived area of London {Poplar} and said the children were lovely.
She managed a class of 30 on her own and with ease.

The children were generally well behaved and the head teacher was wonderful.

Something has gone very awry with society and 'parenting' as a whole- Screens and lack of stories/reading.

Obviously there are parents who do lots of reading and games like puzzles with their children still- but generally iPads and other tech for little kids is bad news.

So so true.

I was having coffee at local cafe alone and sitting with dog on the grass, and a darling little toddler was running around with early autumn leaves, catching them and wanting to show them to his Dad {who was old}
The Dad was just oblivious, glued to his phone.

The sweet child tried to get the Dad to look, and then picked up his /her Ball and again tried to get Dad's attention.

The little tot wandered off -I kept an eye on them, and the Dad was head down all the time.

It was so upsetting.

Watch your Kids! interact with them.

Same with dog owners- head down in phone rather than watching dog. {Dogs also check in with owners a lot -or should.}

''Pea-ness'' now that is a witty child! I'm laughing at that joke and have woken the dog.

But you didn't have Jack, who was born at 23 weeks and is doing amazingly from where he started as it was predicted he'd never walk or be able to manipulate objects. He is walking and that's amazing, but he can't run, he can't yet use a pencil, and he only speaks in single words.

You didn't have Hana, who has complex autism and often bangs her head on the table, never sleeps through the night, has no verbal communication and is only just beginning to use intentional pointing or hand-leading.

You didn't have Ilmi, who has down syndrome and associated hearing and visual impairments, difficulties with producing speech sounds, behavioural challenges and physical disabilities.

You would now have the first because they wouldn't have survived the NICU. Medical advances and changes in treatment protocols increased survival rate in babies born at 23 weeks by 12% (4% to 20%) from 1995 to 2006 alone.

You would now have the third because the average life expectancy of a child with down syndrome is now 60 years old. In 1983, that was 25. In 1960, it was 10. Therefore, more of them are alive long enough to go to senior school, and the expectations for what they will be taught have improved because of social change and a desire to better their life chances.

You would now have the second. I don't know why. Perhaps because of environmental factors causing an increase. Perhaps because they previously would have been in a special school, or at home as parents were too embarrassed to send them to school. Not because of increased awareness; that makes no sense. These are not children we would ever have looked at and thought "she's ok." They have complex, pervasive and multiple challenges due to something innate within them.