Aibu to hate Michael Gove?

[merrycola]

AIBU to hate Michael Gove for single-handedly creating the “overdiagnosis” crisis he’s now nowhere near enough to answer for?
Because let’s connect the dots.
He made the curriculum harder, narrower, and more rigid. Ofsted built an inspection framework around it that treats children like data points. And now — years later — we’ve got CAMHS referrals through the roof, school avoidance at record levels, exclusion rates climbing, teachers quitting in droves, and a growing media narrative that too many children are being diagnosed and parents are being pushy.
But nobody seems to want to say the obvious thing: we didn’t suddenly produce a generation of broken children. We built a system that broke the environment around them and then pathologised the ones who couldn’t cope.
The strategies that actually help — clear instructions, sensory breaks, mutual respect, not shouting — aren’t special needs strategies. They’re just good teaching. But there’s no time for good teaching when you’re trying to force a curriculum designed by a man who apparently thinks childhood is an inefficiency to be optimised.

And here’s what really gets me. Every education secretary since could have undone it. But none of them have, because reversing course would mean admitting the whole framework was wrong and that it’s been harming children for over a decade. So instead we get headlines about overdiagnosis and parents wanting labels for benefits, while the man who lit the match is off doing whatever Michael Gove does now.

We didn’t get an overdiagnosis crisis. We got a system that can’t admit it failed, so it diagnosed the kids instead.

As someone who went through school in the 1980s and 1990s with undiagnosed autism and ADHD and another autistic sibling also undiagnosed I can verify that these conditions did indeed exist at that time. They were just ignored and we were punished for them. Bullying was rife. It was utter hell.

The curriculum was boring and far too easy then, as well. And the same problem of shoving all kids into a one-size-fits all school regardless of ability.

I think the thing that has shocked me is that ignorance is no longer an excuse. Many school staff have outdated “opinions” about these conditions still and woefully little knowledge, receiving what little “training” they have on it from equally clueless LA staff (!) who give them information which is years out of date and long-debunked by academic research. I had hoped that by now schools might be better for autistic children but they are not, they are utterly hellish still.

Being academically bright and autistic means there are literally no state schools at all that provide for your needs, hence this group being - per the research I posted above - by far the largest group of children who end up receiving little to no education and developing severe mental health difficulties as a direct result of school.

SEN schools aren’t appropriate for children like mine (this is what the SEN schools and LA have confirmed) because they can’t meet their academic needs and they’d have no peer group AND those schools are now largely populated by children with behavioural problems who are the ones that make school impossible for them with loud, unpredictable, disruptive or violent behaviour. Mainstream state schools state that they cannot meet their academic needs AND can’t provide an environment in which they can learn because they need smaller classes and a calm environment, so they are doubly discriminated against.

Where are kids like this meant to go to get an adequate education? I have paid a large amount of tax for many years and think it’s reasonable to expect my children to be able to go to school. They are highly intelligent and not disruptive at all, love learning and were so enthusiastic when they started school, and yet the state provides NO educational establishment in which they can learn and has caused two previously happy children to develop severe mental health difficulties during their first years of primary school and now hate and dread school. I am furious about it and see no proposal from any political party to do anything about this despite copious evidence like the study I posted above which shows that they are far from alone in this regard.

We don’t have an over diagnosis crisis for send we have an increased referrals due to more awareness. Backed up by academic researchers at Loughborough university.
I think Gov policy was to raise the standards of the UK academic performance which does demonstrate the UK’s increased performance In the PISA league tables where the movement has been an upward trajectory in the past 10 years. Singapore and the like are well ahead of the UK in attainment by 1 to 2 years. We can sit back and put the breaks on but there will be a direct impact on the UK’s capacity to drive forward innovation without a highly skilled and educated work force. Not sure what the answer is but there are choices to be made.

Oh God - “smashed”. I hope he’s smashing his degree too, and his career. Next up: “How to smash your life”.

i guess it’s what you value. To you want mostly happy, well educated children who enjoy school, socialise well and ask the right questions or do you want the ‘best’ educated, dubiously happy children who just learn what they are told by rote and do as they’re told unquestioningly (not saying this is Singapore or any other country - just what I feel Gove’s curriculum unfortunately churns out

Most of those points would apply to any document/paper written to explain complex scientific/technical designs and findings to a less expert audience. I’ve put old papers written for clients and internal use into the checkers - large numbers are identified as AI generated when they were written before common business usage of AI tools or free widely available tools. Pretty much any post with bullet points is accused of being AI drafted these days on MN - to which my question would be first and eye roll followed by "so what?”.

I use such tools daily to draft documents, pull back sources for research and do a mountain of admin type tasks. I would assume you do as well. That doesn’t make the content any less mine or me any less accountable for the content.

All that aside I agree entirely with the last part of your post. Correlation is not causation and its nonsense to take one component of change and blame it for all of society’s ills, especially when it ignores the impact of 24*7 mass media bombardment which is huge even compared to the experience of my young end millennial children. It also ignores the comparison made by a pp with the Scottish totally child centred system with similar levels of diagnosis and even worse educational outcomes (especially when compared to 25 years ago).

Your post starts

"AIBU to hate Michael Gove for single-handedly creating the “overdiagnosis” crisis he’s now nowhere near enough to answer for?"

And yet now you claim you're saying nothing about whether these diagnoses are real or not - despite saying that they were created by Michael Gove?

"You can’t just blame it all on iPads."

You haven't blamed any of it on iPads. You've blamed all of it (single-handedly) on Gove.

If you didn't mean to write that, perhaps you shouldn't have got AI to write for you.

Your premise is that the children are the same as they always have been, but the curriculum changes have created a change in their behaviour.

This is false. Children are not the same as they always have been. And far be it from me to 'blame' iPads, but we know for a fact that attention spans are shrinking due to use of social media. Adults who previously read voraciously now admit they can't concentrate long enough on a book to finish it. We know that the figures for reading for pleasure have fallen through the floor. And we also know that reading for pleasure is a key predictor of GCSE success. Of course kids having much shorter attention spans than previously has a massive impact on schools.

We've also been through a pandemic. We also know that this has had a big impact on behaviour in children.

I am first in line to say that a lot of Gove's reforms were detrimental to education (not all of them, mind you. There was a lot of progressive bollocks about kinaesthetic learning, brain gym and so on prior to his 'reign' that was rightly consigned the bin), but your OP is simplistic, yet crowd-pleasing bollocks.

One reason my children often cannot go to school (aside from learning little when they are there and getting so overwhelmed by the noise and boredom that they often have to come home) is because absolutely nothing is done about violence and disgusting behaviour like children throwing furniture across the classroom or hitting people. Why should they have to tolerate that when if someone did that to me at work they’d be fired and arrested?

I wholeheartedly agree.

We report it to SLT and nothing is done. Nothing is put in place. There are limited consequences.

As class teachers, our capacity to deal with it is limited. I can dock 5-10 mins of breaktime (depending on severity of behaviour) and call parents. That's all.

But when we refer it to SLT, we are just told to 'monitor the situation' and told to build better relationships so that the children want to behave for us.

We are monitoring it. We are reporting it. We are even often aware of exactly why it is happening but there is nothing we can do to make the changes that might stop it from happening again because those decisions are not ours to make or are related to factors beyond our control (eg home environment).

There is often not even a TA to support so we can diffuse/de-escalate a sitiation and if we are 'proactive' (ie call SLT when we can tell a child is 'bubbling'), the response is inconsistent or we are told everything is 'fine' until it isn't 5 mins later.

My OP is written to get engagement on a public forum. And it has. And lots of people (mostly teachers) thanked me for saying it.

im not really sure how you think I’ve gone back on what I said? I’ve said exactly the same thing. Gove created the overdiagnosis crisis by making children’s learning his vanity project and refusing to back down when it clearly didn’t work.

ai is here. People use it. It improves writing and makes ideas more understandable for others. You’re very angry for no good reason. I do think it is this simple. Gove made it worse and it needs changing. It harms kids.

Oh you think I’m just referring to neurodiversity. I am not. I’m talking about semh diagnoses too

He didn't get to interfere in the Scottish system. It gives an insight of what might have been if he and his disciples hadn't messed with things. In short; calmer, pupil centred and staff not looking burnt out.

“Gove created the overdiagnosis crisis”

Do you really think that saying ‘overdiagnosis’ is different to saying ‘children are being diagnosed with autism and adhd who don’t have it’?

You are still assuming that the rise in diagnoses has a causal link with the Gove reforms. You have shown no evidence for this and ignored other much more significant societal changes.

It also ignores the problems of the shift to highly child centred which too often resulted in low expectations of WC and black children by a largely white MC profession.

If your point is the Gove curriculum is too bloated and far too prescriptive and inflexible - I’d agree with you. I also have direct experience of the Gove/Cummings utter conviction of their own rightness on every subject and reluctance to take on ideas which contradict their own thinking (although unlike Cummings, Gove was always polite and considerate in interactions and would take on board small changes etc).

However its just silly to pretend one size fits all in the mental health context any more than it does in the overall education of children.

I can’t comment on Scotland because I’ve never been there or taught there. I imagine Govey inspired them? Isn’t he Scottish? Idk can someone Scottish tell me what they think?

Look up the increase in cahms numbers. If it was just Covid why is it still going up now? What explanation would you offer as an alternative other than iPads. Which definitely has a role but doesn’t answer the questions about the curriculum

There’s a similar increase in mental health problems in adults, but they don’t go to school.

100% I totally hate him too - along with Tony Blair who said everyone should go to university… So we are now left with a broken system with students going on the study worthless degrees that do not give them better, if indeed any, job prospects but saddled with £100 debt which most will never pay off …
Like you say others could correct it … but noone has the guts to admit it’s failed …

@Piggywaspushed I think because life worked for [Gove] , he believes in meritocracy pretty uncritically

I agree I think he absolutely believes this but also suffers from the conviction that what worked for him just needs to be repeated for everyone else. I see it a lot in politicians who would once have been labelled “working class made good” (or more accurately lower middle made good) who cannot see that what worked for them also failed others.

I didn’t mention covid. What does that have to do with my point?

Is there? Or is it just really shit right now, and we’re using soma - sorry, antidepressants and antipsychotics- because we all feel hopeless and like there’s nothing we can do about it?

“Govey” inspired what exactly? I made quite a number of points, perhaps you should use the tool to structure your responses as well as the OP.

I agree with my esteemed colleague Noblegiraffe. Gove’s blinkered approach absolutely harmed the curriculum, making it far too prescriptive and pretty dull to teach as well as learn. Can I remind everyone of his henchman - Nick Gibb - who’s equally dogmatic (and longer) tenure at the DofE seems to have been forgotten here? BUT screens and to a lesser extent COVID are hugely important in the change in children, creating a perfect storm in classrooms of tedious work and massive inattentiveness. I’d add 2 generations of gentle parenting into the mix as well - we see children at 12 and 13 years old whose parents always back their child against the school, those same parents are distraught when their child reaches 15 and “I can’t do anything with him/her”.

But you claim that for children it’s entirely because of Gove’s education reforms.

I only have free Mumsnet so I can’t look at your posts.
i know nothing about the Scottish curriculum but i imagine they looked at what England were doing and used a few ideas.

no youre right i cant say its entirely Gove because nothing is entirely anyone’s fault but i can certainly blame a lot of school issues on him

This is my point as well. I have an extremely anxious but very bright 6 year old and the state system would break her atm. But private schools often aren’t the best for a kid like this, either. So we had to find one that was right for her. Otherwise it’s HE.