All these issues with schools!

[Capercaille]

I feel so sorry for schools and teachers these days. All I see on here is contant moaning and whining!

Has it always been like this?!

It's crazy how little special provision there is. I grew up near a boarding school for disabled children. My friend's dad taught there, they lived on site and some of the students attended our Guide pack.

I looked the school up recently. It has 100 places (I should think similar to when my friend lived there).

It serves the whole of Kent and neighbouring counties if the LA makes a good enough case. There are about 1.6m people in Kent.

Yes. From my understanding there are already countries like Finland who are doing this and they have proven it works, so hard to find an excuse to pushing so much academics on children, having them sat indoors for so long.

I was told recently schools can only exclude if they have made provisions for the child elsewhere. You cannot just exclude a child and be done with it.

There are pressures on schools not to exclude as said because there's no place for them to go!!

I think they will also be measured in terms of numbers of exclusions ( I'm guessing).

What's going on in the school system is akin to en masse gaslighting. The schools themselves are gaslit by the Government! You do this and that but we will deny or refuse to help you with all these additional problems we caused you. We will blame you. Then you will blame the parents.

What the Government has done to our public services is hideous beyond words.

20% of my minstream KS1 primary class have high level SEND. 2 non-verbal autistic children, 2 with autism and ADHD which causes a high level of behaviour issues, 2 working at pre-Reception level. Then the full range of a standard KS1 class on top of that. I have one full time TA and one additional TA in the mornings. No extra support with how to plan for all these needs. Tiny classroom without space for the needs of the SEND kids. No money for the resources they need.

The system is truly broken and doesn't work for any of these kids.

I just don’t understand why so much has changed since I was a child. I am in my early 40s. When I was at school if a child swore at or physically assaulted a teacher they were excluded. There were no special sensory rooms, reflection spaces or anything like that. Nowadays a child who behaves badly is almost automatically labelled SEN.

I cannot recall being forbidden from bringing nuts into school because some children had severe allergies when I was at school. No-one in my school died. Why is there such a huge increase in the number of kids with life threatening allergies now?

My parents did not get involved in any playground disputes I might have had with another child. Fast forward to my time as a parent - I was contacted by a school mum who was upset that her child was being excluded at play time by a group of girls DD is friends with. The girls were 10 years old. I didn’t know how to reply to her message.

We are raising a generation of children who cannot solve issues for themselves because of ridiculous helicopter parenting.

I always think Finnish comparisons are odd. We've got 30x their population! Twice the Finnish population live in London alone.

I mean, I agree the syllabus needs to change but we'd probably be best advised to look at what more similarly sized countries, or at least, ones with similar demographics, do.

Things like shorter school days, more time outdoors, and emphasis on play and well-being are absolutely doable here too.

@Jaboodyv2 the thing is, alot of behaviour you call badly behaved is not actually badly behaved. Getting up out of seat continually for example. That's often not bad behaviour. I wouldn't call that bad behaviour ever. Poor kids.

There are arsehole kids also. Some are Autistic some are not.

Most these kids being so terrible by shouting out and moving about are undoubtedly going to have additional issues making sitting still pretty difficult. Not exactly borstal material.

I don't understand why posters get upset at the very reality that most these issues are ND kids in an environment they're struggling with.

SEN/D covers such a wide range of need.

My 20 year old son had ASD because of his very poor start in life was seriously delayed in his education - he was taken into care age 4 and I adopted him age 8. He was lucky enough to get his diagnosis at 4. He attended 2 fabulous special schools and transitioned into mainstream for year 6. He went to a small secondary school with amazing teachers and a strong pastoral ethos. He is now at university. He would have been completely lost and overlooked at the nearest school with 2000 students.

I'm now a foster carer. My current fosterling has just turned 11. He is exceptionally bright and articulate - far more able than my son.
He attends an SEMH school but has been excluded for the last 7 weeks. Its clear to everyone that he has ADHD and would benefit from medication. He has however been waiting 4 years for an assessment. The school environment is hugely triggering and cannot meet his needs. So I have a disruptive child, taking up huge amounts of the wrong resources, but who is missing out on an education. He has so much potential that is being frittered away.
He won't be the only one.

This seems to be the case in secondary schools here. Kids get moved from school to school for a trial (for want of a better word). Our primary was a feeder to 3 secondaries so I have friends with kids at each. We can compare which disruptive children we've had moved about causing trouble and moving on / back again.

Also internal exclusion can be tricky, because sometimes so many kids need excluding at any one time they don't have space for them and they end up on a table in the corridor.

This is in a 'nice' area in the SE. I don't know what the answer is but the number of very disruptive children is rife and they don't seem to be able to exclude them (probably because there isn't anywhere for them to go)

It's only going to get worse with Labour's drive for "inclusion" which in reality = tiny amount of funding to keep kids who should be in specialist SEN/PRU in mainstream schools

Where I grew up the town had three types of school. Mainstream, learning difficulties (down syndrome, autistic children etc), and a complex needs school. I've just had a look what they have now and it's just mainstream with a very small unit. Nowhere near a replacement for what there used to be.

@Ted27 what a hideous situation. I appreciate each ND person is different but so so many of these kids are incredibly capable and bright! They just struggle being forced by Ms Trunchball to sit still for prolonged periods particularly where the work is challenging or too easy. But then what alternative does the teacher have with no extra resources. It's a mess.

I have been looking into medication for ADHD. It appears to help a great deal for many in the school environment. But without the diagnosis you haven't a chance trying it of course.

Exactly personally my youngest son enjoys his school he was gutted having time off however he does go to a special school small class allowed movement breaks they have even said should he require a nap during the day (he has sleep issues we are waiting for an appointment with paediatrics) they will allow a nap...at school for a 11 nearly 12 year old it's very very child focused my eldest is mainstream it is NOT child focused he walked to school in the snow as he missed his bus they said we won't mark you late because of the circumstances and did it anyway he wasn't given homework because he was ill and he was given a detention for not doing homework he didn't know about (wasn't even put on Google classroom ffs) the punitive measures taken towards children for things outside their control in a mainstream secondary are sometimes ridiculous

The SEN system has collapsed. Children's mental health services have collapsed. Teacher recruitment has collapsed. School funding levels have got to the point where schools are literally falling down.

And people are wondering why there are suddenly more negative posts about schools?

@noblegiraffe do you see this as a Tory thing? I do yet I'm not expert here. I recall working for public services under the Labour Government. It was not like this.

I don’t remember any kids throwing furniture around 20/30 years ago whether ND or not …..it just didn’t happen, did it?

Secondary schools in the UK (state ones, anyway) are generally open to the kids 8.30 to 3: it's not THAT long a day. (The private ones are general open quite a bit longer). I don't think that's the main issue, especially given we can barely staff those hours as it is...

The primary curriculum does need to change for sure. Too much, too soon and so much of it repeats in KS3.

It did...just rarely. And the kid that did it would generally be moved on pretty swiftly to a specialist school.

I don’t have children at school either (as they are adults) but it wouldn’t insult me if someone asked. Odd 🤷🏼‍♀️

Children aren’t as resilient anymore and parents are too controlling and involved in every single aspect of their lives.

You only have to see the ridiculous things on this forum that parents complain to schools about.

Plenty of schools for children with special needs?

Are you OK???

40% of my class have an identified, diagnosed SEN. I have no TA support apart from 2 hours a week. The needs are vast and include ASC, different types of ADHD, various speech and language needs, dyslexia to the point they need a reading pen to even access the work, global development delay which means a couple of my children need a bespoke curriculum in EVERYTHING that stretches as far back as nursery.

Added to that, this current cohort in year 3 doesn't have basic skills such as sentence structure means I'm on a hiding to nothing.

I've got parents complaining about bullying behaviour from a child with complex trauma based behavioural needs with emails at all hours of the day and night.

The curriculum is over-stuffed with concepts they just can't grasp and at the end of the year, I will be judged on my performance in meeting their needs whilst teaching them the bullshit the government dictates.