To say the behaviour crisis in schools can't just be blamed on parenting

[Sendcrisis2025]

I speak as a mum of two children with EHCPs and someone who is a SENDIASS officer, name changed to protect my identity/job.

There is a strong rhetoric from the teaching unions this week about behaviour in schools and poor parenting. No mention of the bigger picture, just poor parenting.

My DC are 10 and 8, just two years behind them. When DC1 was a toddler there was a huge range of groups, support, targeted interventions through the local sure start centre. These were already being cut by the time my DC2 was a toddler. Then covid happened and the services and groups have just not returned. There is no early support anymore.

One of my DC is a challenge in school, fortuantly she is predominantly a flight risk rather than violent but still a behavioural challenge. We have had one physical incident where she shoved a teacher. Pure combination of factors that had led to DC being enclosed within a corner by several children and with nowhere to escape to she shoved to escape. Unacceptable but that was the reasoning of why and she was suspended for two days etc. She struggles to cope with the sensory demands of mainstream. Too many children, too much going on. They fly through the content whereas she likes to master things in depth before moving on. Too many low level behavioural issues like children who just don't ever stop talking. She can't navigate social dynamics. None of this DC can cope with. There is a lack of consistency in the school day and the routines. None of this is the school's fault but realistically how it is in every mainstream school. We are struggling to get her moved to a specialist setting. She has no learning needs and generally with the one exception, she isnt violent so the SEMH schools are not appropriate either.

My other DC would never dream of acting out, is not a behavioural issue at all despite his needs.

Based on the unions DC is entirely due to my poor parenting. It doesnt matter that DC2 is a behavioural dream. It doesnt matter that I have no behavioural issues with DC1 at home where it is quiet, the same rigid routine for the past 6 years and less social demands. It doesnt matter that she is in a completely wrong setting.

In my LA there are over 400 children like my DC1 who have specialist agreed but are stuck in mainstream with no setting to go to. There is nowhere for them to go. These are the children with specialist agreed by the LA. This doesn't include the many hundreds more who don't have specialist agreed or don't even have EHCPs yet.

Our health trust is on 3+ years for an initial appointment. CAMHs are almost non-existent. You are only considered for medication if you are already a behavioural problem in school, it doesn't matter if a child has severe ADHD until they are at the point they can no longer cope and it is at crisis point.

Early help, if accepted, offers 6 weeks of support. There is a huge gap between early help and child in need.

I speak to parents day in day out at work who are desperate for help as their children can not cope at school.

There will always be poorly behaved children due to poor parents but the majority? The majority are children who simply cannot cope in the setting they are in with nowhere to go to.

Over 400 children in my LA with specialist agreed but stuck in mainstream. That is an incredible number.

I know my DC spends 8.45am-2pm in a small cupboard with a 1-1 TA. She joins a much younger year group for the last hour a day. She does 95% of her schoolwork with me at home.

I agree with you entirely. They do have different societies, hence why comparing ourselves to them is futile. What we need is societal change.

Yeah we do!!!

Theres no respect for education or society in this country. I was just thinking about this after l posted.

Nothibg works, everyone hates each other and everything is under invested.

I went to private school on a scholarship and appreciate was very lucky- what I thought worked was smaller class sizes, having a dedicated 1.1 tutorial every term with a tutor who looked at holistic academic and social progress and goal setting, regular outdoors time, lessons that developed social skills (largely unintentional but we were allowed to just ask loads of questions during classes) and various after school clubs and compulsory extra curricular activities. I was usually in school 8-6.30 as a day pupil which included homework time, plus we had to go in on a Saturday morning until 12.30pm. When there were matches I'd be playing sport until 3/4pm on a Saturday.

I'm sure if there was funding there is more that could be done. The issue is that there's no money. It's not parenting, it's lack of investment.

Completely agree. We're expecting far too much from very small people, especially those who are young for the year. Being made to sit still before you're ready isn't good.

im in the process of getting an EHCP to force the school to improve support. A link to the thread would be helpful thank you :) Part of the part time reduced timetable education is via the LA medical education team online who are very good, but the rest should be in school but school wont coordinate anything and refuse me information when I ask and refuse educaitonal info to my child. Its a ridiculous situation. So Im requesting SEN input to coordinate and have done a formal request for reasonable adjustments as well as being on 3rd complaint. They say the right words but their actions and manipulations of the process tell a different story.

As a primary school teacher I know and value children being active and champion and afternoon play in my school.

However, some parents complain that their child won’t sit still in class to listen and needs brain breaks whilst I know they keep their child at home all weekend in front of a screen.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/special_educational_needs/5309128-ehcp-support-thread-no-5?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share here you go @Wooky073 and I'm sorry the school aren't being helpful.

I think it is a potent mix of parents, screens, society and the way kids are educated - the primary curriculum in particular e.g.
Not enough play in school and unrealistic/unnatural expectations of kids ability to sit still, homework, chopping and changing between topics, preoccupation with output looking a certain way, too many kids in a class resulting in bullying tactics to keep control and gain compliance (NOT all teachers).
The list goes on...

All kids would benefit from a slower, less jam-packed curriculum and smaller classes. A lot of SEN kids would be able to cope just fine in mainstream school if the curriculum was simplified, made less fraught with fewer demands on executive function. This wouldn't be to the detriment of neurotypical and above average kids and could actually allow time to explore topics in depth - relative to ability - ultimately benefitting all students.
.

@SinuheWhy on earth have you kept your DC at a school where you say that teachers are the cause of bad behaviour? Surely you’d want your child to move school? Never understand parents who keep children at a school they’re desperately unhappy with.

Yes I’ve heard many non-British or immigrant parents say how shocked they are at British parenting and how enabling, unhealthy and navel gazing it is.

We’ve encouraged introspection to a point where teenagers and young people know MH is key to everything and a way of avoiding anything they don’t want to do by using the buzz words every parent dreads.

So although apparently every other child has a mental health related condition, and we have skyrocketing rates of anxiety, suicides have actually been steadily decreasing since the 1980s and we have not seen, thankfully, any suicide spike relating to the MH ‘epidemic’ in young people.

We seem to think no teenager would lie, be dramatic, or exaggerate, even though this was literally what they were known for until 2015. When I was at school in the 2000s, being a bit depressed and self harm was actually a fashion (I know I’ll be shouted down but it WAS - I did it myself!). Everyone was ‘emo’ and cutting their wrists (not very deep) and posting pictures of themselves crying to MySpace while listening to sad emo songs. It was treated as a fad, and I’m happy to say all the girls I knew who went through this phase are alive today and doing well (and have ditched the huge side fringes).

Before emo there was goth, skater, punk etc - all subcultures showing rage, distress and depression in teenagers, because teenagers are a bit like that and it was an outlet.

But we don’t really have subcultures now - everyone is in a North Face jacket and leggings - so what’s left? Gender identity and other diversity labels, anxiety and school refusal. And while there have been a small core that are truly suffering, parents are no longer waving away their kids outbursts as teenage drama, they’re somewhat growing them by encouraging introspection and giving the results of keeping them off school and sending them to CAMHs etc.

Gove's misguided education reform has much to answer for. It is a huge regret of mine that, as a profession, we didn't do more to disrupt and challenge his plans in the early stages despite the writing being very much on the wall.

The curriculum is bloated and revised expectations for attainment have left children and young people stressed and struggling to access learning, both developmentally and cognitively.

Learners in both primary and secondary schools who feel the strain find it harder and harder to keep up, and the gaps are widening much earlier. The impact on self-esteem and sense of belonging is a given. Ask any teacher; it is pretty standard to have a considerable number of children and young people working significantly below the age-related expectations in Maths and English in every class, often more than a year or two below. The pace and lack of resource is such that catching up is nigh on impossible. Imagine being a young person and realising that.

Children who, had they been given appropriate support to close those gaps, would never have become cut adrift from learning are overwhelmed, ashamed and acutely aware that they are suddenly viewed as 'the problem' when it is a systemic issue not of their own making. The transition to secondary school is particularly brutal, but I see tragic realisations of personal 'failure' in Y6 as children are drilled and pressured to deliver results for SATs. Again, imagine being a child and the penny dropping.

As an electorate, our children have the schools we deserve; places with exclusion and outsiderhood 'built in' to the system by design, and teachers working themselves into the ground to minimise and alleviate the detrimental effects thereof. It is cruel and cynical and absolutely no surprise that children and young people's mental health is at an all time low.

All teachers will be intimately familiar with the safeguarding document 'Keeping Children Safe in Education'. We need to turn our lens inward and take a very honest look at how our education system itself is, in many cases, a major contributing factor in pushing young people toward the very harm and poor outcomes we must guard so scrupulously against.

Gove’s reforms sent England up the tables for achievement internationally.

Pathetic ‘concern’ for children’s ‘worry’ - for which there’s no evidence - about their academic progress is once again hobbling the country.

I despair.

Edit: for ref to England: Wales, NI and Scotland obviously separate.

@Rummly "Gove’s reforms sent England up the tables for achievement internationally."

Correct. But at what cost? Sure, many children and young people are coping well, some are even thriving in our schools. But why do you 'despair' at concerns for the wellbeing of the children and young people who are not, those who are, by definition, the most vulnerable? I assume you work in education -we have a professional duty to act in the best interest of all learners in our care, and noticing where the system lets children down is a good starting point for designing effective intervention.

We've gone up the league tables academically whilst hurtled into a SEND crisis at a catastrophic speed. I'm fairly certain if school was less intense my DC would be able to manage her social difficulties.

What’s her life like outside of school? Does she have siblings? Does she have a tablet? Does she have any independence?

I was doing differentiated work when l
oeft in 2021. It’s a basic core of teaching.

There's been a big shift to reduce it in the last 2-3 years. Many schools will now have a whole year one class on the same reading book level- both those reading fluently and those struggling their way through. Google "keep up not catch up" and "mastery" etc and you will see current approaches which are designed to ensure brighter children cannot race ahead and are held back to the level of the majority of the class.

Her life outside of school is predictable and routine led. She has a brother. She does have a tablet but uses it for maybe 30 minutes a day, if that. She loves to read (upside down!) And she spent this evening writing fact cards on the European countries, she did about 12 tonight and will do the rest tomorrow. Last week she wrote an entire project on Henry VIII.

She doesn't have a huge amount of independence as she is a massive safety risk. I'm not talking minor issues, in this sense if you wouldn't leave a 2 year old unsupervised to do something you wouldn't leave her. She isn't able to access non-SEN holiday clubs or after school activities. She does have independence in that she has her daily routines at home that she does without fail.

She accesses short break activities run by the LA where they also have her on a strict 1-1 following their own risk assessment. It is the flight risk that is the issue. As an example, school had to relocate all of their door release buttons as she could let herself out of school with ease. It is all over her reports and assessments by various psychologists (not stated by me) that her flight response is out of her cognitive control.

Socially she has significant problems with her understanding, she has been in consistent social programmes and receiving SALT since she was 2, she's nearly 11 now. It hasn't made any difference. Her entire social interaction at school is when she spends an hour in the foundation class. She has no issue with the 4 and 5 year olds as they are at the same level as her socially.

She can't cope with busy, she never has been able to even from toddlerhood. She can't cope with things being too fast paced, possibly due to her auditory and information processing being so weak that it takes her twice as long to take the information in. She struggles with too much noise, but noise like people chatting not huge loud noises. She is good at self regulating in that her self regulation is she leaves the space and finds somewhere to hide but obviously this is a big issue in another way. She can't self regulate within the classroom. She hasn't been in her classroom since before Christmas, not because she is disruptive or not allowed but because she is so overwhelmed by it she just won't enter.

I'm so sorry that sounds like such a difficult situation for her and for you. You've probably already thought of this but would interhigh or another online school be any good for her? (They offer primary as well). The LEA can pay for it if you can get it named on a ehcp, or you can pay privately if that's doable.

From my limited knowledge of education in other countries , teachers teach lessons at one level and all children , regardless of ability / need , are expected to keep up .

Unsure how this would help those on EHCP or with SEN needs ?

Easier job for teachers though !
Maybe needs are less recognised / diagnosed in other countries ?

Other countries have far fewer children with SEN. France has under 3% compared with our 11%.

Please ditch the iPad. She doesn’t need it and they are linked with the behaviours you talk about.

Correlation isn’t causation. I don’t believe it to be here.

AMEN!!

The question is why would two very similar populations have such differences in SEND rates?

There's a difference somewhere, it can't be biological, therefore we need to look elsewhere.

Begs the question, are we over diagnosing? Is it a perfect storm of naff parenting, social media, early birth rate survival, older parents...?

4.8% have an EHCP and 13.6%SEN with no EHCP so 18.4% in total in England and Wales. Not sure what data in France you are comparing it to.