To tell you how schools changed within 15-10 years

[HerNeighbourTotoro]

I have been a teacher (on off, contracts and lots of supply) for almost 15 years now with some other work in between. If you have a child going through the system now and no older kids, you would not know how different things were even a few years ago.
15 years ago I did my PGCE in a fantastic school, I sadly missed out on the job they had at the end of that year and moved to a different location.

The staffroom was vibrant, lots of people always working, talking, exchanging ideas, they had a core team of teachers who were in charge of teaching and learning and each specialised in a different area, and were happy to pop in and observe or be observed. So many things were just amazing. They were also able to offer both more academic and vocational subjets.The department I worked in was wonderfuly resourced and they had a budget to buy into a few subscriptions offering students additional learning opportunities, they did trips, clubs, there were cross curricular days where departments collaborated to do projects. A dream place to work.

Over the years I worked in a few different schools and each year I have been noticing a change for worse, especially if I had a break from teaching/supply.

As it happens, last year we moved back closer to town with my PGCE school and an opportunity to do supply came up. No one I remember works there anymore, which was a shame, but what was really striking to me is how many things got lost in between. The staff rotation is however huge, and some departments have failed to recruit teachers for the vacancies and have either long term or daily supply to cover for the shortage (bear in mind when I applied, there were 50 applications for the job I ended up not getting and it was a norm to have over 30 applications in most schools in the area, and a lot more for shortage subject).

My subject lost a technician who was vital and it massively increased the workload. The department is half the size (as are many others). The classes are much bigger and some have 33-34 students. They run far fewer trips because a) the cost for the school to book suply is too big b) the workload increased so much that there is little time to organise these c) they lost office staff who used to help with the admin and now the team is smaller and can't help anymore.

The Language department used to have 3 language assistants (one for each language hey offered)- they now only offer one language and have no language assistants. The amount of subjects the school offers is much smaller and there apparently have been talks of closing down their 6th form.

All of the TAs are now mostly inexperienced agency staff that come and go and the SEN team is probably half of what it used to be as well. I have not seen a TA in any of my classes so far despite quite a few students desperately needing support.
The staffroom looks like a graveyard. Most people spend their lunches in their classrooms, eating as they prepare/mark. Forget about things like replacing damaged textbooks or other resources, so many people have to bring in their own pens and glues they buy in bulk because there is no budget.

I won't even mention the behaviour, 'teaching' a class of 30 or 30+ instead of 26 feels more like controlling chaos. There used to be a behaviour team supporting teachers, but now this is also gone because the school could not afford keeping 3-4 support staff on the team.

I genuinely feel sorry for children who are getting such different experience compared to before, with a small choice of subjects, supervised by supply teachers (I won't say taught) in the absence of teachers the school didn't manage to recruit, with few resources and few extracurricural opportunities.

For the record, the school is in a relatively well of area, I can tell you I have seen much worse elsewhere. But it is such a shame to see what was once a thriving school community in such a sorry state. All as the government is saying how supposedly schools are getting so much more money than at any given point in the past.

Maybe I am misremembering but we used to punish kids for what we now see as learning difficulties (ADD etc). We may not be doing a good job, but we are not putting them in detention or suspending / excluding them.

I'm a primary teacher but my DC are in secondary school. The worst thing has been the huge cuts in support staff since a rather dubious report came out under the coalition/Tory government which claimed that having TAs makes barely any difference to children's learning. Academy chains and local authorities leapt on this as a chance to save money. Now we have higher than ever levels of SEND in schools and less support than ever. TAs were also invaluable for pastoral support. Teachers don't always have the opportunity when responsible for 30+ children to take a bit of time with the anxious child who needs a but of reassurance, or the child with ADHD who needs a 5 minute run around.

My own autistic DC has ended up barely able to attend her secondary school due to severe anxiety, which could probably have been managed in the early stages if there were sufficient pastoral staff to support children like her.

There are way more kids with SEND in mainstream schools than there were even a few years ago.

In fact there are just way more kids with SEND.

Also, a shortage of teaching staff means schools create environments that are strict and unhelpful to most students. Our local school does 100 minute lessons because it minimises the time students are moving around the school, which is easier for the school to manage, despite the fact that evidence shows children learn better in shorter chunks. Children aren't allowed to go to the toilet in case the odd one misbehaves and there are no staff to supervise corridors etc during lesson time.

And yet English schools rank very highly in international league tables. Our reading levels and science/maths attainment are some of the best in the world.

Genuinely interested to know how that can be

The SEND kids and those who can't attend school won't be the ones selected to take the tests. To be honest, what's the point in doing "well" in international rankings if it doesn't translate into a successful economy and society? Do they take into account all the kids who get left behind in the system?

Academisation has sucked so much money out of schools. There are now so many CEOs, CFOs, directors of this and that, all on six figure salaries where once you’d have two or three people in each local authority doing those kinds of roles.
Many people are overpromoted before they have really acquired any wisdom because of shortages that lead to people running departments when they are barely out of ECT years.
So many lessons are death by PowerPoint and anyone can click a PowerPoint so that doesn’t help the argument we should be paid as other professionals. The pay sucks and won’t improve

Worth noting our PISA scores dropped since 2018, however other countries dropped more which is why we increased our rankings.

As a pp mentioned, they don't test the kids who don't attend school and it is worth noting that our kids rank as some of the unhappiest in the OECD.

And still - 80% of this discussion focused on SEND! What about your average non-SEN kids? I genuinely want to know if these schools are good places for those kids.

I can resonate so much with this. I started properly in 2007 and it was wonderful. Not without fault but I never saw the day I would leave altogether. That happened 2 years ago and I haven’t looked back

I'd like to hear other views on this.

I'm not a teacher but had this conversation with a teacher friend - who noted -

The most academically able students just drift towards the middle as there is a lack of capacity to push them. This is due to increased class sizes, more discipline issues, and also higher numbers of children with additional needs in the class.

This is partially due to an increased number of children with SEND who historically would have been in specialist provision schools, who are now in mainstream. That is no fault of the child, it is due to a massive decline in capacity at specialist provision schools.

So her take is that it may not be easily visible in aggregate data - but the performance of children with high potential is lowered towards the middle. And the middle is falling due to watering down of subjects.

When I heard this I realised just how long term the issues we face as a society will be.

Children don't vote... So since Blair education has seen massive cuts in real terms.

I haven't read the full thread but SEND and high ability aren't mutually exclusive categories.

This. I'm always surprised when people say schools have got worse... My memories if secondary school in the late 90's were of several of my classes having 37-40 kids in them, no TA's whatsoever at secondary, TA's/ LSA's just weren't a thing. Yes we had a fair amount of supply and at my bog standard large secondary there was some pretty crap behaviour with minor drugs dealt behind the bike sheds, smoking in the far corners of the playing field, plenty of teens telling teachers to fuck off and just walking out of the classroom.

Despite all this, hwk was marked and you got a proper grade back that gave you a sense of whether you were doing well or not (whereas schools now do everything they can to obfuscate things so that its near impossible for parents to work out how their child is doing in relation to peers!).

I've got kids at secondary now and the picture doesn't seem any worse than my school experience - the main observation is that there are some kids with incredibly high needs who quite obviously should be in a different environment, but are nonetheless in a regular school albeit with 1:1 support.

This. I'm always surprised when people say schools have got worse... My memories if secondary school in the late 90's were of several of my classes having 37-40 kids in them, no TA's whatsoever at secondary

But you are comparing apples with oranges because this was before they closed loads of special schools and put those kids in mainstream.

In the 90s you also had kids legally allowed to leave school and get a job the Easter of Y11!

I think schools have deteriorated. Whilst I agree that students are listened to more they are listened to in many situations too much - they are pupils they don’t know why things need to happen, they don’t know all the reasons why teachers do what they do. Agreed students with additional needs are more supported but in main stream education which can be to the detriment of the majority of children in classes. There is too much focus upon the minority and the quiet and compliant students get lost.

Remember the PISA poll said that our kids were among the unhappiest in the OECD. Not just kids with SEND.

I've been at my school for longer than 15 years so I can compare like with like. It was a crumbling shithole back then and it still is now because the new school building we were supposed to get was cancelled by the Tories. There have been massive restructuring changes staff-wise to save money, we've become part of a MAT which has good points and bad points tbh. Definitely far fewer teaching assistants in lessons and generally only if there is a child with an EHCP funding them, however the TA will change on a regular basis, or just randomly not turn up to your lesson. But teaching staff, omg it's awful. We are pretty much never fully staffed in maths anymore, and constantly having to set cover work for a random selection of supply teachers (and the time spent fielding the entirely reasonable parental complaints about this....) but it seems to be even worse in other subjects. The kids are regularly having cover lessons, teachers quitting, or extended absence, even in exam years. They say to me 'Miss, you are never off, are you?' Because me being there as a consistent presence to teach them is unusual. Cover lessons are seen as an excuse for kids to dick around and do nothing so the fact that they have so many of them affects their behaviour in proper lessons.

This has got much, much worse in recent years, particularly since covid. And I hear from colleagues that it's even worse in other schools.

I have memories of primary classes of 37-it doesn't mean that things haven't got worse. We didn't have any children who couldn't cope in a mainstream school though as there were plenty of special school places.

It depends so much on the school, as state schools vary enormously. On average about 3 years of a child’s education is wasted because of class disruption caused by bad behaviour. If you have a girl, and live in an area with single sex schools then go for one of them, as the behaviour is better. If you want your children to do well academically look at the GCSE results and read the ofsted report. There is info on pupil behaviour and intake. You can tell a bit about the academic aspirations of the pupils from this. Obviously, you might not get allocated the school you want, but you can at least try.

The thing is, even the schools around us that have good academic results (we are in quite a prosperous area) don’t really seem to be very inspiring places to me (and I grew up in the state sector). Too many kids in too small a space, too many behavioural issues, and too many previously-special school SEN kids necessarily requiring a lot of teacher attention. Yes lots of children still get good exam results (lots with tutors here) but that doesn’t mean a lot to me - I want my children to have inspiring, stimulating discussion, role models in their peers and teachers, time to just think and have their minds changed, etc. The system seems to fail SEN kids and fail the able children too, where it feels like a race to the middle (which I understand is a rise for low performing children but is a shame for those capable of more but who are forgotten because resources are spent elsewhere). It just feels like a celebration of mediocrity for many children and that’s not something we should be striving for.

I don’t think that it necessarily meant that these children with SEN would have been in a specialist provision.
We forget school is now compulsory. Children with ADHD/ASD may not have attended school and found a trade or an apprenticeship years ago. So many of my friends and colleagues left school in year 7.
The school system suits one type of child and does not cater to all. Personally I wouldn’t be able to sit and focus for as long as a child is expected to in school.

@Bridgetoo because they are not taught to be curious, to love learning, to debate or to orate. They are taught how to answer exam questions. They are taught, in the majority of schools, from year nine to sit with a mark scheme and learn how to answer the questions to get the most marks. It is entirely devoid of joy, ruins children’s joy in learning and sets them up to fail as they are over anxious from the constant testing and underprepared for the work place because their broader knowledge is seriously lacking. Children in schools across Europe are getting an education, children in England are learning an exam criteria

This has been the case for some time though. I remember having the mark scheme in front of me 20 years ago. I still don’t understand what has changed recently to make kids so unhappy to attend school. Apart from schools closing in Covid causing a change in attitude.

Did I not mention the massive shortage of teachers which means endless cover lessons full of kids dicking about instead of learning?

I don’t know why anyone would even touch the state education sector. Those places are like giant prison complexes.

Yes, I agree with this. I'm sure it's down to funding but I have also found that junior and infant school had a lovely, positive environment, the school choir had an amazing music teacher that put them in the O2 competition. The junior school had discos and many after school clubs. The secondary school was a catapult into the Lion's den, there are quite a few rules about the corridor since COVID, I worked with schools in my job for a bit, not anything to do with the education side of things but I couldn't believe the way that you are spoken to as an adult in the workplace, stick to the left, walk this way etc. no concern for any child's happiness really, no seating in the canteen or not enough beyond year 7 so it leads to things like sitting in the rain having a roast dinner in a polystyrene container. My DD always resorts to a bag of popcorn for lunch, such is the sorry state of lunchtimes, she needs to ensure she gets to the loo before end of lunch so constant panic about anything elaborate when nowhere to sit. Then at the other end my DS is in his last year of sixth form college and they are so caring, they notice if he is stressed or something and contact you, they provide endless amazing trips and experiences. My youngest who is 14 is now just biding her time until the good sixth form experience, just like the good junior school experience.