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.

Yes - one of my issues. I don’t need more counsellors, pastoral care assistants, SEN coordinators etc. I need subject specialists who can teach my kids algebra, Latin, etc.

I get that we need these because some kids need them and therefore in order that the subject specialists can focus on teaching algebra and Latin, someone needs to deal with behaviour and SEN to avoid whole classes being disrupted by kids having meltdowns. But that’s what I’m saying - this very necessary massive shift to these non-academic issues is hurting everyone.

I agree and will go further... I think people are forgetting what secondary schools were actually like.

I went to a comprehensive secondary but in a very affluent area at around the same time you started teaching. It was chaos and there was quite a high threat level all the time. Just a few memorable incidents include:

• A group of year 8s took it upon themselves to make jokes about a teacher's breast cancer and would throw things at her to see if they made a sound if they hit her (presumed wooden for some reason) prosthetic breast.
• A group of pupils crowding around the only black pupil in the school making monkey noises while she cried.
• Food fights.
• Real Fights.
• Smoking and very heavy petting in the toilets so frequently the younger children would hold their need to go to the toilet until home.
• Very regular sexual assaults and things like boys dumping bottles of water over girls to make their white shirts go see through.
• Happy slapping became a thing, although we didn't have smartphones so I actually can't remember how this happened but it had just become a 'thing' with a group of friends having to go to the police because of a more serious incident.

The SEN provision, as far as I'm aware, was children being taken out of nearly every mainstream class (even the non streamed ones) and 'educated' in a temporary shack building all together.

Even in the toughest schools I've worked in more recently (PRUs / SEMH schools), it is nothing like that anymore.

Can't speak about the primary sector - don't remember as much, very little experience of it later in life.

What happens to the ‘runt’ children?
What if your child struggled in school? Would you still feel the same?

Oh and about resources - every single book had to be shared, even the copies of class novels (I.e. not just textbooks). Pupils would also fight over the non broken musical instruments, PE equipment science equipment and have to share instruments. The whole school was really run down and tired, with lots of chewing gum stuck everywhere.

There are a few things that were better about schools 20 years ago, mainly teachers were more permanent so there wasn't the constant use of supply. I can definitely see how disruptive that is.

Not enough money to pay for TAs or whiteboard pens, but enough cash sloshing about in these wealthy academies to pay for the salaries of 10 assistant headteachers who don't teach. The bloat is unreal.

That doesn't sound particularly different to today in terms of resources and run down tired schools?

I don't think your behaviour list sounds wildly different to today either, maybe exchange smoking for vaping. Behaviour is less visibly chaotic, I think, probably because there are so many CCTV cameras around, but there are still fights, racism, sexual assaults and abuse of teachers. A lot of that behaviour has moved online. 20 years ago we didn't have to deal with students' 'nude pics' being shared with the year group, for example. Knife crime is also far more of a concern than it was.

Now I dont even have textbooks, forget shared ones. We have an electronic textbook I can project on the board but the writing is so tiny students in the back cant see anything.
I have to screenshot everything and print (and we dont have much budget for that either), so really they get the essentials. As far as I could tell my school does not have any musical instruments for students, they bring their own if they pay for additional music lessons.
I could go on and on about incidents I am aware of that happened in the past 2 years only (either in schools I did some work in or schools my friends work in), including realy fights, pulling someone's trousers down, making fake FB/IG accounts of another student, sexting, online bullying, multiple counts of theft etc, gang activity, selling drugs on school premises, assaulting a member of staff. It is happening in schools now.

It is tougher to deal with those with much more limited resources and fewer members of staff.

You write as if taking SEN kids out of mainstream class was a bad thing. Inclusion policy has been an epic fail.
Do you know what is worse than being taken out of class and being educated with other children who also struggle in class ? (I was one of those children btw).
It is worse to be left in the class when the work makes no sense, you can't keep up, left with no choice but to copy from peers or get everything wrong and deal with getting detention for being wrong. At least when they took the child out they were taught at a level they could make progress at. Now they are left to drown and the gap with their peers widens constantly.

I think I was trying to get at the fact that there hasn't been this massive decline in what schools / behaviour are like, they were bloody rough 20 years ago.

We have a situation now where kids with SEN are educated in 'SEN units' on the mainstream site and this is in fact the proposed model moving forward https://www.gov.uk/government/news/740-million-allocated-for-10000-new-places-for-pupils-with-send

So 'taking kids with SEN out of lessons and educating them together' certainly wasn't left behind 20 years ago.

And cover staff will most likely not be teaching the subject that they have a degree in and are often not qualified teachers...

I actually agree with you that 'inclusion' as it was imagined has failed. My children go to special schools and there is absolutely no way I would ever, ever want them in mainstream unless things radically changed.

BUT, I don't think it is good just to isolate and segregate disabled children on a mainstream campus without trying any inclusive strategies, especially not in a freezing temporary shack. They weren't even allowed in our PSRE lessons, only tutor group. It was really othering.

Yeah, I have really mixed feelings about SEN provision. I can see it from all sides.

Behaviour at my school has gone up and down depending on behaviour policy. It's much better now that we have a stricter behaviour policy than it was a few years back.

But the teacher recruitment situation is definitely a crisis. My school didn't used to have any problems with recruitment, we have more than one teacher training provider nearby that used to be a constant source. But they don't have the trainees anymore.

I'm surprised that stricter behaviour policy is actually effective - is this because children with entrenched behaviour problems are excluded or has the stricter policy actually caused behaviour modification for the better?

I totally agree with this.
I was an additional needs TA for nearly 15 years and the decline, especially in behaviour, is enormous! This isn’t helped by parents who complain about anything being said about their child, even if that child’s behaviour at school is atrocious.
I was trained to run interventions with children that weren’t at the expected level but was then moved from this to ‘babysit’ an autistic, pretty much non verbal child that was still in nappies. We fought and fought for an assessment to move them to a specialist school and it was like walking through treacle. I left. It’s demoralising.
Oh and TAs are paid peanuts for what we have to do. Apart from not having to do planning etc, we were easily doing the same jobs as the teachers were.
So yes, in my opinion, schools have definitely got worse!

I was a technician in a school for 12 years 10 years ago. When I started, my own children were in school (not the one I worked in) so I saw two different views of education, but both were positive, although when I started 22 years ago SEN wasn't as recognised as it is now. But, by and large, education both for my kids and where I worked was a good, largely positive experience.

When I left (because I was going to be expected to teach classes on a technician's salary because we couldn't recruit teachers) the entire department handed in its resignation. Only one teacher remained. Classes are now being taught by anyone they can find who is upright and can read. There is a lot of recognition for SEN but no provision being made because the numbers are just so high, and any TAs are being used to teach.

All the money that should be spent directly on supporting children and supporting teachers is being spent on supporting the academisation- the layers and layers of fat cat salaries, all duplicating effort- all that 'management' and yet, the experience for pupils and teachers is largely shit.

Biggest changes I have seen in my 25 year career-
Far more pupils with SEN in a mainstream setting that isn’t suitable. We are just told to ‘make adjustments’
Lack of parental support over homework, uniform and attendance.
Class sizes are bigger and buildings are getting more shabby.

IMO rudeness has got worse but big behaviour issues are probably about the same eg smoking has just been replaced with vaping.

Agree re: TA and support with pastoral needs. This was my experience too as to where TA’s are best deployed (outside very complex 1:1 needs that is).

I do agree with the report that TA’s have little impact on T&L and/or outcomes. I never had any TA as a secondary teacher (and never thought they were needed in this capacity (many do not understand/have any knowledge of the curriculum subject in a secondary setting for a start) and why should they? but they are wonderful as 1:1 for high needs and for meeting and supporting pastoral needs as you say.

I also think schools are too utalitarian now and we, as a society, need to decide what we want schools to be and do (with the funding available) as at the min it’s a ‘jack of all trades’ master of none approach and many children including the invisible hard working middles of the road (future tax papers!) who don’t fall into SEN/GAP group kids - are failed massively too.

very sad all round really.

It's OK though - pupil numbers are dropping so you can all take the SEN kids from private schools, paid for with a paltry amount of tax that forces them to be put into mainstream education. Who needs to tax billionaires when we can all be poorer?

Winning.

Really surprised at this. Please can show the data? I would I like to see how we compare with other countries. Thanks

There isn't a perfect solution. Your children have been segregated into a specialist provision you state you wouldn't want them in mainstream..
I assume they get a better education experience and more of their needs met in the specialist provision.
By contrast there is a huge number of SEN kids who can't get a specialist school place and are being failed in mainstream. My own child can not attend mainstream school but there is no alternative option for us so currently they get no education at all. We are told mainstream can meet needs (they can't), meanwhile child gets no education and the gap which was already huge is getting bigger.
A shack with a small group and SEN teacher giving some type of education experience would be huge improvement.

And alongside the education failing we also have the schools and wellbeing act which removes even more rights from families like ours.

Education is a mess. Stressed teachers being covered by supply costs a fortune and the impact is awful for the students. I don’t know why ofsted continues to crack the whip as I can’t see how anything is getting better with the way things are now. There is no way children with complex SEN can be differentiated for adequately in a standard classroom with one supply teacher and 30 other kids.

I agree with a pp, you as a parent have to do as much as you can yourself, even though this is difficult and unfair and expensive.

I am not a Teacher but I am a Governor so have a bit of insight
Behaviour is bad, the bar is pretty low and a lot of kids can't even reach that. Social Media plays a part but so does bad parenting.
The teachers/SLT have to tiptoe around bad behaviour - the verbal gymnastics I saw a Deputy Head employ to avoid saying "lying litle toerag who has the whole year terrified of you" was pretty impressive.
The kids "know their rights" and many of them are not bothered about getting into trouble
Poverty and deprivation, parents struggling with the basics are less able to parent well in general.
Recruitment is an issue
Our school is actually quite well funded for SEN but despite having funds we can't recruit support staff