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.

@keiratwiceknightly Nick Gibb also said "No child will be left behind (as a result of lockdown)".

Slow clap.

It's a problem when we have politicians in charge of education whose only experience of "education" was being a pupil at a posh school. How about getting somebody who has been a teacher?

Staff not burnt out? You have seriously got to be joking. Staff in Scotland are literally in their knees. The school system is completely collapsing from within and no one is in a great place. Violence, assaults, disruption, you name it it’s happening across the whole sector. Pupil centred? We wish it was.

Also, isn’t it ridiculous that 6 year old children are expected to be able to use perfect handwriting and punctuation now otherwise their skills are only ‘emerging’ ??! A mum on here was worried about this the other week.

When my older children were little, most of them received their pen licenses in year 3.

Thank you for sharing this.

I got 9 A/A* at GCSE and 4 A at A level in late 90's. I look at my year 5 daughters homework and think 'what on earth'. And her 11+ questions are similar to hardest on the 1% club. She is bright but still struggles occasionally, and has lost her confidence at times, calling herself 'stupid', and if she is finding it hard, it must be impossible for some of her class. I feel that the expectations are too high, and if they don't meet them they can feel like they are failing, which damages their confidence.

So, essentially it’s what the Gove curriculum (and the Welsh curriculum influenced by it) forces you to teach for writing? Pretty much all those things are either mentioned in the paperwork or have been suggested to me on courses for both KS3 and 4.

I’d actually really like the teachers on this thread to answer what they are doing in terms of the open consultation to make these points to the education secretary, i.e.

1. that none of her “proposals” address the proven harm being caused to this specific subset of children (academically able autistic children) by the education system, who make up the vast majority of children who develop such severe mental health problems because the state school environment with 30 children per class and constant disruptive behaviour means that they often cannot access education at all, in breach of the legal requirement to provide all children with an education;

2. that there are NO state schools (mainstream or SEN) that meet these children’s needs so they are forced into environments that have been proven to cause them significant harm with lifelong effects on their life outcomes and health, and on what basis she thinks it is acceptable to continue to refuse to set up ANY appropriate schools for them and pretend these children don’t exist.

There is not a SINGLE mainstream state school in the entire country as far as I am aware (based on consulting SEN lawyers and advocates and the NAS and searching the schools databases) for academically gifted autistic children.

Quite happy to take the tax money from this one that survived though (although only just). Just apparently it is unreasonable for me to expect the state to use some of it to provide a school my children can attend without being subjected to an environment that everyone agrees is harmful to them. Let alone actually learn to their potential.

Given how the state school system has trashed the mental health of my bright, kind, engaged, creative autistic children before they’ve even reached an age in double figures I am terrified for what is to come for them in teenage years if they continue to be forced into an environment that makes them so distressed where they learn nothing anyway. What a stupid waste of life chances and talent and childhood and probably future tax revenues, as well.

I would like to know: Are any teachers actually speaking up for these children in the “consultation” process and lobbying for appropriate schools for them to be established finally?

Or are you all quite happy to see them shoved out of classrooms into “support hubs” with the precise children that make school impossible for them already because those children are disruptive and violent, where they will receive little subject-specialist teaching at all and have their disabilities highlighted to everyone and feel punished for being autistic, and have their academic needs entirely ignored?

That's a shame as he used to speak mostly highy of you in Cabinet Meetings.

When did this shift start? I left teaching in 2012 but remember in my last job being told I couldn't use GCSE papers from a few years prior as exam prep "because that's A-level standard now" so it feels like we must have gone backwards and then forwards again.

Absolutely appalling. I feel so sorry for the teachers and am so sorry to hear how it is for you. I don’t know how teachers cope. Their hands seem to be tied to implement appropriate consequences if the parents will not and protect the children who DO want to learn.

My son’s wonderful teacher - the best he has ever had - quit his job this term. And this idiotic “Education Secretary” seems intent on making everything worse.

I do think education, certainly at primary level, needs to change. And I have very academic children.

I also think there a risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Phonics isn't a bad thing. In my kids school it was about 20 minutes a day, that's fine.
Knowing your times tables isn't a bad thing, 20 minutes a day. That's fine, there's still plenty of time in the day for everything else.

Fronted adverbials, yeah, not so fine!

I also believe having a national curriculum is great and holding teachers to some standards is important. Education before the national curriculum was fairly haphazard and varied tremendously.

Teachers can’t say what they think because they’ll be bullied out. I am incredibly outspoken. Do you think my ex head liked being told he’d sold out to the Tory man and was harming 6 year olds by making them miss play time to catch up on phonics?
i don’t teach anymore. That’s why I can speak freely now

Sorry, what?

You think Scotland bases its education system on what England does or doesn't do?

You realise we have ALWAYS have a separate system from England, just like a separate legal system etc.

Someone is in need of an education!

Your point about Gove causing an over diagnosis is nonsense! Scotland has a child centred approach to education and a focus on additional needs …..and yet we actually have a higher rate of kids in school with an autism diagnosis.

You’ve just made my argument for me. British education is shit. Even the ones teaching it don’t know useful things.
blame Gove. He took politics out of primary

And have you replied to the consultation? Will you make the points in my post or do you not care about the children I am referring to?

Here is some of the research on it, again:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

I can definitely reply but I don’t think - as I’ve described before - I would be very popular or they would want to hear it

So because your (clearly very able) child did ok there’s no issue? How self centred can an opinion get?

Not counting the fact that a seemingly academically able child still struggled without the 121 personalised input of a tutor...

I also agree that entirely the wrong people are being appointed as Head Teachers, in many cases. Incompetent, arrogant, not very intelligent people who seem to actively dislike children and view schools as their “little kingdom”, trying to withhold information from parents and bully staff into keeping quiet and avoid any oversight.

OFSTED needs replacing with a proper regulator that will take legal action and remove qualifications, issue personal and organisational fines and prosecute Head Teachers and LAs that break the law, like would happen in any other profession (law, medicine, finance). It’s absurd that currently the parents rather than the regulator have to enforce the law and each case of unlawful behaviour is treated in isolation rather than the clear systemic issue that it is (evidenced by the fact that 98% of SEN tribunals are won by parents). The Education Secretary’s proposed solution? Remove the right for parents to take cases to tribunal! That’ll fix it. 🙄😡

This behaviour continues because there are no consequences and therefore it is actually in the financial interests of schools and LAs to continue breaking the law on purpose, the welfare and education of children be damned.

We need to end the triple lock and use the money to double the education budget, set up appropriate schools for different children’s needs and put a proper regulator in place that prosecutes and strikes off staff from SLTs and LAs for all unlawful behaviour. With appropriate funding there will be no excuse not to comply. Teachers also need far more protection for whistleblowing.

How children are being treated in this country is a disgrace and there is no hope of future prosperity or rising living standards unless this changes.

Of course they won’t want to hear it. But everyone needs to speak up otherwise they will railroad through their proposals that will make everything even worse for children and claim that the lack of response indicates support.

Every teacher who cares about children at all should be responding to this consultation and pointing out how catastrophic for children these proposals would be if implemented and how they do not address any of the problems in schools at all and are simply unworkable and demonstrate an astonishingly lack of understanding of the problems that need fixing.

Please do reply, for the sake of my children and thousands like them.

If you want change you have to do something. Not whine on mumsnet. Responding to the consultation is the very minimum you should be doing if you really feel that strongly.

Again:

“School distress and the school attendance crisis: a story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need

In 94.3% of cases, school attendance problems were underpinned by significant emotional distress, with often harrowing accounts of this distress provided by parents.

While not a story of exclusivity relating solely to autism, School Distress is a story dominated by complex neurodivergence and a seemingly systemic failure to meet the needs of these children and young people (CYP). Given the disproportionate number of disabled CYP impacted, we ask whether the United Kingdom is upholding its responsibility to ensure the "right to an education" for all CYP (Human Rights Act 1998).”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37810599/

92.1% of CYP currently experiencing School Distress were neurodivergent (ND) and 83.4% were autistic.

Absolutely appalling and deliberate, systemic disability discrimination that the Government, LAs and schools are fully aware of and refuse to acknowledge.

Tbf until I whined on Mumsnet I didn’t even know about this consultation.
thank you for the encouragement. Whining on Mumsnet really did make change if it’s pointed teachers who agree with me to a place where they can talk about this.

No…you’ve proved yourself wrong. You’ve said the rigid , traditional education system introduced by Gove, has led to some children being unable to cope with the pressure of school leading to an over-diagnosis of SEN.

The Scottish system, which has been around for more than a decade now- is child needs focused. So the opposite of the Gove system if you like….yet more kids in Scotland have a diagnosis!

So it isn’t school that’s causes this is it?

Your hypothesis was completely wrong. Also, there’s no such thing as a ‘British’ education. All countries have different systems….and yet the outcome for kids is still the same. So there’s no need to try and hang everything in one man is there?

I actually said to a mental health crisis that has lead to an overdiagnosis. What’s the mental health of Scotland’s children like?