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.

30 minutes a day is not the cause of her issues 🙄 It does, however, mean she can access the online based learning her school use such as TTRS, educationshed and doodlemaths. No tablet and she accesses even less of her school learning than she currently does.

Good grief.

And that statement exemplifies a core issue - lots of children have SEND because they can't cope academically? There have always been less/more academically able students, just like there are less/ more able people in sports and all areas of life. Does that make it a medical condition requiring a label? No it does not, and is a key reason 'SEND is exploding ', when really parental expectations need managing. It's fundamentally a fashion, like Emu, Goth etc.

It was 14.4% in total in 2017 if that helps as a comparison.

Wrong.

Everything does have a label now. Children who take longer to grasp key pieces of information are labelled with a processing disorder for example. Is this label useful? I am not sure. Yes they need information presented in a different way and a good teacher will pick up on this. They also need longer to complete tasks but does it need a label?

I don't get the angst with labels at all. It's just words to describe things.

I think jts usefjl to have a term that describes an issue, that is widely understood and flagging it to all teachers. You way is saying it is probably better to describe it in a different way by using more different words 'take a bit longer to grasp stuff and could do with longer to complete stuff' and just hope they have good teachers that notice the problem. (Which is a bit of a gamble)

Maybe it's the medicallyness of the terms? Would people be happier if the ly were just seen as education terms for classroom learning

I feel like if any of us underwent a thorough psychiatric evaluation and testing we would be diagnosed with something.

The child has a problem with their leg and can't easily walk. Is something broken or is it a muscular problem? Does it need a label?

The child has a rash. Is it something contagious or something like excema? Does it need a label?

(Before anyone jumps in and says physical issues have definitely right "labels" - it's not actually that easy in practice is it? Medicine often requires a fair bit of informed guesswork before diagnoses can be made - hence all the dramas).

It is very useful to know what you're dealing with, especially as parents of SEND kids are often accused directly or indirectly of making the whole thing up.

That's a separate issue to what practically can be done about identified needs by a school, who pays for any necessary resources, and so on.

Legally, a school has to do their best to meet any special educational needs they've identified.

So it does rather create an incentive for needs not to be identified.

There are no "winners" here.

I wish.

Our children have a high IQ. Wisc tested. They are bilingual and performance above. Polite and well-behaved. But 100% bored in state school.

Private and grammar have worked with them.

State doesn't care. At all.

But this is symptomatic of parents thinking every deficiency in their child needs special attention, heavy investment, and the best bespoke education money can buy to address it.

I have seen a touch of Munchausen in some parents in the way they aggressively pursue a diagnosis. School says they’re fine; GP says they’re fine; so they shop around for a private assessor who eventually just about gets the diagnosis over the line as they’re paid to do so.

Not all send is a medical condition requiring a 'label'.

The 4.8% with ehcps will largely have medically diagnosed conditions but not all.

The group know as sen support which is the bigger group, just meet the requirement for needing support that is greater that what is ordinarily available in the classroom.

It's not a medical term, it's an education one and yes if the children cant cope academically in the classroom and need to have some extra help (over an above what is part of ordinary provision) they fall into that category, so making academic expectations higher and reducing the ordinary level of support in a classroom (which austerity has lead to) has pushed more children into this category.

Rubbish. They might have had a bad experience, who knows, but to make the sweeping starement 'state schools don't care' is ridiculous. Sure, there are big problems in the system but the teachers I know care very much.

It's like the often heard 'the NHS doesn't care' equally stupid.

It is helpful to know if a child physically can't process something at the same speed as others. It isn't a label, it is describing a need. There is also a difference between someone just being a bit slower and them being disordered.

For example, with processing you may have a child who is a bit slower at processing information and just need a bit longer. However, you have some children who can not process the verbal information at all and they, instead, need the information in either writing or pictures. These are the children who may be told the word cat and they hear hat and it means they can't follow what is going on.

Another example is my younger DC has a really severe speech disorder, he isn't delayed as if he were delayed it would be developing typically but just late. It is disordered as his speech has not developed typically, at all.

Disordered is not the same as being a bit slower.

If Quentina is bored/ can't cope/ disordered/ dis-regulated or whichever new term is in vogue, Quentina needs to be taught to cope and behave appropriately by their PARENTS. It's called parental responsibility. The world doesn't revolve around Quentina and their special requirements, they need to be taught by their parents to adapt to the circumstance and society they live in.

I think very few parents think like that (no doubt there are a few and no doubt they are over represented on Mumsnet, however!) The medics doing assessments are subject to professional guidelines and ought to be reported to their regulating body if they're in breach of those.

Most parents want their children happy, healthy and achieving at school.

But there are many, many cases where medical practitioners have said something is "fine" and ditto schools, when there was actually a serious problem that the patient/parent was aware of first. Hence the group "Not Fine in School".

Gatekeeping support heavily just means problems are bigger by the time they are addressed (if they ever are).

So there are false positives if you like (a few parents looking for unnecessary assessments) and false negatives (there is a serious issue but schools or doctors have dismissed it), but I think the latter group is much larger. The OP mentions 400 children in her local area alone needing a special school. it's hard to believe anyone would go down this route if they didn't need to. It's hardly fun or enjoyable getting to that point.

The OP's example of different processing issues shows the difference access to an appropriate professional makes: to distinguish between what's in the normal range but delayed and what's a significant special need.

Those services are very difficult to access these days which is why those who can, are resorting to paying for them.

As a final note, state funded education and healthcare aren't there to "care" (hopefully individual practitioners do) but to make sure we've got an adequately healthy and educated population to sustain our standard of living.

The UK is falling down on that.

If a child has additional needs then you can't force them to be able to cope overnight or even quickly. It can take years. Parents are not physically in school and school throws up a whole host of scenarios and situations that are not present at home.

Fortunately the current requirements on this are detailed in the SEN Code 2014 and not based on value judgements about whether we like people's names and backgrounds or not.

It's freely available online if anyone wants to know what the actual law is.

"Divide and rule" is a tale as old as time.

See this article:

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/120767/pdf/

It says 1.7 million children have difficulties with talking and understanding language. 7.6% of children have a long term developmental language disorder - that is nearly 1 million children or nearly 2 in every classroom. These children should form the SLCN group, but statistics indicate 400,000 are unidentified.

Some children, probably mainly boys externalise the difficulties, they have in the classroom in challenging behaviour. Girls tend to internalise their difficulties in depression and anxiety. See Melanie Cross’ book “Children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, with Communication Problems. There is always a Reason.”

Speech and language therapists know, the more severe the language problems, the worse the behaviour is likely to be. As the article above says, 60% of young offenders have language difficulties. Incidence of mental health problems in adulthood is double.

DD1 was in a language unit from age 4 - 10, and specialist speech and language schools from 10 - 16 for a profound language disorder. Children had to have a statement then, even to be considered for special provision - so as a minimum an assessment by an educational psychologist and speech and language therapist. To be offered a place at a specialist school, children had to undergo the school’s own rigorous assessments by a speech and language therapist, OT, possibly a physio and a specialist language teacher. I met hundreds of parents, and many were articulate, intelligent, no nonsense people, because they had to be to get their child there by tribunal - and they had to have the means to pay upto £45,000 for that tribunal. Other children were placed there by the LA, because even they recognised how severe the child’s problems were.

Speech and language therapists used to tell me, there would be children struggling in mainstream like DD1, because they hadn’t been identified - yet DD1 couldn’t understand a teacher, read the material or understand what she should be doing in a mainstream primary, never mind secondary where she’d have been even more lost, as the complex abstract language increased, which she has never been able to understand. Children with a receptive (comprehension) language disorder have impaired concept formation.

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists say in this publication, 1.5 million people have learning disabilities in the UK

https://www.rcslt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RCSLT-Learning-Disabilities-position-paper-2023.pdf

While some people with learning disabilities may have parents themselves with learning disabilities themselves, many parents of normal intelligence have children with learning disabilities - look at Down’s syndrome, which can be a spontaneous occurrence, as can other genetic conditions like Fragile X, Angelman’s syndrome, etc.

DD1 has a degenerative condition and went from age 16 to specialist schools, which had the majority of children with learning disabilities. I have never met parents there either, who I thought were below average intelligence. In fact, many of them knew as much about their children’s conditions, as their consultants.

The fact is, some inborn conditions are just as likely to occur in children of graduate professional parents, as parents of “below average intelligence.” Most lay people who met DD1 up to age 16, didn’t realise there was anything wrong with her, because she came across as intelligent, warm, kind and very funny. I wonder how teachers, never mind other parents can confidently say, what children have SEN due to poor parenting, as opposed say to an inborn severe language disorder, including impaired concept formation - given 400,000 speech and language children are unidentified?

I agree.

My experience of working in public services is a great deal of time is spent slagging off other services.

I've not worked in a team that didn't seem to have a collective delusion that they were the only ones who really cared and knew what they're doing and that everyone else just wants to pass the buck.

My mental health has been badly affected for the last few years constantly wasting time defending services with workers being willfully obtuse, difficult and emotionally manipulative.

That's v interesting @BlueandWhitePorcelain thanks for that and I'm glad you secured the right educational setting for your daughter.

Of course teachers can't tell (on the whole). We're (mostly) not trained to make those judgements, although I expect the small number of experienced SENCOs and specialist staff may be able to. We can give our observations on what children can do in a classroom, what interventions have helped etc. We can adjust our teaching delivery, resources, explanations. We can believe what parents tell us (in the sense that behaviour can be v different at home and school).

I am a teacher and have learnt so much from parenting a SEN child that is useful at school; the other way round, not so much although occasionally it helps with jargon and procedures.

Whilst every child is the centre of their parents universe ( as they should be) they're not the centre of society' universe and must learn to adapt. A tale as old as time that some entitled parents would like to ensure the world revolves around their child's needs - it does not. The sooner society as a whole shifts their perspective on this the better for everyone, including children who have differences, SEND, unique personalities, whatever challenges they face, the better. The narrative is skewed and needs a reset.

I don't think it constitutes making your child "the centre of the universe" to expect the school and LA to do what's legally required in a reasonably timely way.

We'd be up in arms as adults if public services we needed were routinely denied and the law was routinely broken or ignored.

Not sure why that's considered OK for vulnerable children especially when parents are contributing to what services there are, through tax.

I really feel sad for you. It is very frustrating , when, you only want the best for your child and are completely helpless to do that, l cannot imagine how painful and and angry you must feel. A major problem in this country is money is seriously mismanaged. When MP's etc are flying around the world, first class, paying thousands to redecorate offices, the list is never ending.... Unfortunately, it doesn't matter who leads our country , nothing will change. People who need more help than most are definitely at the bottom of the list....There is no care in the community, no care for our young children, no nothing.... l really hope something changes for you, and you get the help you so dearly need

But the law has massively overpromised and was brought in at a time that less than half of the number now had SEN. It was never designed for a million children. But they can row back without rioting, so they’re stuck.