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.

SATs are a maths and English test aged 11?

Respond to the consultation to reject the Education Secretary’s catastophic proposed reforms.

Write to MPs demanding that they stop cutting the education budget. Before the recent spike in inflation it was due to be cut by 4% by the end of the Parliament in real-terms. Now, that will be closer to 6-7% unless departmental spending budget allocations are changed. If the Education Secretary’s reforms are passed on top - removing EHCPs from most children who would currently receive them and all of the additional funding that comes with each EHCP to fund the provision set out in it, and instead this is meant to be met by school budgets directly - then you’re looking at somewhere in the region of a 15-20% cut in total school funding, with the same needs to meet.

Demand that MPs set up different schools to meet the different needs of different children rather than shoving them all into mainstream state schools and calling it “inclusivity” and wondering why nobody is learning to their potential. We need academic schools for academically able children, more creative schools for children with creative talents (plus core subjects), schools focusing on more practical work for children who thrive with hands-on work (plus core subjects), schools focused on sports (plus core subjects) for children with sporting talent so that many sports are impossible for anybody without enormous family funding to access, schools that are more sensory and nature focused for children with learning disabilities rather than forcing them to attend mainstream schools with a curriculum that they will never be capable of accessing, schools with much smaller classes and a low-arousal environment for autistic children who cannot attend sustainably with classes of 30+ and need a calm and quiet environment, schools with very strict behaviour rules and appropriately trained staff to deal with violent and disruptive pupils so that the rest of the children (and staff) aren’t subjected to it and prevented from learning/ being safe at school.

There will never be one school set-up or curriculum appropriate for all children because children are not all the same. There’s not even an economic argument for not funding education properly: the long-term costs of not doing so are enormous, as you can tell already from our declining GDP per capita. There will be higher health costs, higher welfare costs, lower tax revenue, higher justice costs etc. if we do not urgently redirect a significant proportion of our public spending from the old to the young. Over 50% of public spending currently is spent on over 65s who are 15% of the population and the wealthiest cohort in society, while many children grow up in poverty and are utterly failed by the education system so also have all doors that might provide a way out to a better life slammed in their faces. It cannot go on if there is to be any hope for future prosperity or rising living standards.

It was appalling wasn’t it?

I learned grammar by proxy by learning foreign languages and then extrapolating the grammar from that back to English with the various differences in structure explained only later by the foreign languages teaching, never in English lessons at school in the UK!

At least there is some academic education now in schools. The teaching methods and environment and structure of it all, and presence of numerous children who have no intention of learning or letting anybody else do so, however, still makes it impossible for many children to attend regularly or learn much.

One of my children was so traumatised by school (in early primary school) that she was off school for 4 months. I had to do my full time job at night and home school her during the day. We covered the school’s curriculum in 1-1.5 hours per day.

They’d be better off having each child in for only 2 hours per day in groups of 10 than groups of 30 for 6 hours and wasting 4 or 5 of those hours, leaving the children miserable and exhausted and totally disengaged.

If you look at the research I have posted a link to several times on the thread, and quoted in my post at 12:28 yesterday (page 13 of the thread) you will see that research has shown 92.1% of those suffering school distress and severe mental health difficulties resulting from school are neurodivergent, with 83.4% being autistic.

The “semh diagnoses” are the effect of the utter failure of the system to provide a suitable school environment for these children. In the vast majority of cases the mental health issues are the symptom of the problem which is the inappropriate school environment. What we need to do is address the cause of the problem i.e. change the school environment itself.

The purpose of school is for children, purportedly, is it not? This is not work/ employment where people must bend to the needs of the employer/ their role. In this case the children are the customer around whom the product/ service should be designed. Schools exist for the purpose of enabling children to learn so it should be obvious that the school system needs to be designed around children, not around what is most convenient for adults and forcing children into an environment that often makes them unable to learn much (i.e. the school is not fulfilling its purpose at all) as well as so miserable they’d meet an “semh” diagnosis threshold: surely there could not possibly be a clearer indication that the system has utterly failed and needs scrapping and redesigning from scratch.

The system as it is designed is clearly not working for a very significant minority of children, if not the majority because of the knock on impacts of that. Therefore, it is obvious that it needs a complete overhaul, not another initiative about how to shoehorn them all, with different abilities, talents and needs, into one environment that doesn’t work for a large proportion of them because that makes it easier for adults and then label this as being “inclusive” and for children’s benefit.

As an adult you get to choose a work environment that suits you where you can be around like-minded people. What on earth made anybody think that shoving all children together all day just because they were born in the same year and making them all do the same like little clones was ever going to work?

I do get that, but certainly for primary school I'd keep everything pen and paper. Consolidate learning the basics. It's so much easier to learn by writing than scrolling. And then introduce tech slowly but not at the expense of using written books etc, so screen use still in moderation in schools.
That said, I am aware that this a somewhat old fashioned view, I know it's not one held by many these days.

Schools should not be solving mental health or other medical problems. EHCPs desperately need reform - many of them aren’t worth the paper they are written on and are nigh on impossible to deliver with multiple EHCPs that are supposed to be delivered in one classroom contradicting each other (multiple children needing to be in the front seat, one child needing movement breaks whilst their neighbour needs uninterrupted quiet). On top of that, the evidence base for many interventions is low quality and expert consensus often outruns evidence.

So despite ever increasing amounts of money being poured into SEN education via EHCPs and specialist school places (which are increasing), outcomes for this cohort are declining.

Schools are also not here to provide bespoke education for anyone. The idea that somehow a lovely special school will be set up solely to meet the needs of quiet academic SEN children - well, many other kids might benefit from that too. The majority of state schools round our way are more than capable of supporting academically capable ADHD and autistic children in mainstream with necessary adaptions. It is clear that from some posters on this thread, that is not the case everywhere -but the answer is not setting up special schools for ever smaller cohorts of children. There is absolutely a case for specialist provision, but I don’t think this is it.

For better or worse, this country has decided that we aren’t going to select on academics for children, and I don’t think there is any desire to go back on that.

This is literally the case for every primary school near here. With the exception of ICT lessons, pretty much everything is done on pencil and paper. In part because getting out the laptops wastes too much time!

@noblegiraffe I see you did answer some comments from the OP after I posted this but you haven’t responded to me. I have seen you for years very active on education threads, so I would be very grateful if you would answer this post when you have time to do so.

Where are children like mine meant to go to school in the state system? SEN specialist schools state they can’t meet their needs as do mainstream schools.

Where am I meant to send them?

I am a lone parent and work full time to provide for them, so home-schooling isn’t an option. When I had to do this for 4 months for my daughter because she became suicidal because of school - aged 5 - I had to care for/ educate her during the day and do my job at night and sleep for 2-3 hours per day which has led to an incurable cardiac condition so I cannot do that again. ETOAS is not an option either as both of them are sociable and want to be with peers (just not 30 of them in a room with shouting all day long and regular violence) and it is their legal right to attend school and have an appropriate education they can access just like children who are not autistic. They cannot do that in any of the schools that the state provides currently. So where should they go?

Do you agree that appropriate schools for children like them should be set up? Research shows that they are very far from alone in their predicament. As children with IQs well into the top 1% who are keen to learn, presumably their legal right to go to school should be upheld? Either they will be provided with an appropriate education without being traumatised further and likely become very productive members of society and high contributors to tax revenue, or the school system can continue deliberately traumatising them until they cannot attend at all and they will probably then become a net beneficiary of the state for life, so even if nobody in the Department for Education/ LA/ working in schools cares about their welfare it is a pretty goddamn stupid thing to do to children like this from a societal perspective.

You write on the education threads here very outspokenly and have done for years so I would be grateful to hear what your proposal would be for my children to be provided with an adequate education per the law; whether you agree with me that the Education Secretary’s proposals completely ignore children like them; and whether you will be making such points in response to the consultation.

I used to teach KS2. For me it was the volume rather than difficulty of the learning that was the killer. Kids either got it pretty much straight away or didn't. Then you had to move on. No time to actually teach the material.

The only decent lesson was streamed maths once per week. You could really get stuck into that whichever of the groups you had.

Schools are causing the mental health problems. They aren’t being asked to “solve” them. They’re being asked not to cause them, to previously happy children.

Yes, as I said in multiple posts the current school system is failing a very significant minority if not the majority of children because those for whom the current state school model would be appropriate can’t learn either because of the disruption from many children who should not be in that environment due to learning disabilities or behaviour problems, or children who simply are not academic and would thrive doing far more practical learning. Most children would benefit from there being a far wider range of schools set up to cater to different children’s needs and talents and learning styles, not just those with disabilities. Schools absolutely should be providing much more of a bespoke education with different learning environments available for different children (with disabilities or not) so that they can all learn to their potential. Surely this is obvious? Schools should be designed for children and what is best for them to learn well because that is the whole purpose of schools. Why would you think it appropriate to pretend that all children are the same and the same learning environment and curriculum will work for them all? Are all of the adults you meet the same, with the same interests, talents and abilities and focus and function well in the same environment?

EHCPs aren’t worth the paper they are written on because schools and LAs do not comply with them and they take YEARS of legal battles to get in place even before the LA decides to them underfund it and the school decides not to comply with it.

There needs to be sufficient funding, there need to be different schools to meet the needs of different children, and a proper regulator like in every other profession that actually enforces the law and prosecutes LAs and schools for unlawful behaviour, levies large fines (both personal and organisational), removal of professional qualifications and bans from working in the sector and — in cases of serious or repeated breaches — prison sentences. Just like in law/ medicine/ finance for similar statutory/ legal breaches. It is even more important that the regulation system and enforcement is robust when the profession involved is responsible for safeguarding of the most vulnerable people in society and is utterly disgusting that deliberate, systemic unlawful behaviour is seen as the norm and accepted and no action is taken. In NO other profession would this be tolerated. Significant penalties need to be put in place coming down on it like a ton of bricks to stamp it out, removing the financial incentives for schools and LAs to behave in this manner.

The problem is not what is written in the law, it is that the law is not complied with and nothing is done about it. We need to fund education properly - it should be the number 1 national priority after defence - and we need to replace OFSTED with an extremely robust regulator that does its job properly rather than leaving it to individual parents to enforce the law through tribunals when the deliberate illegal behaviour is systemic and structural. It would actually be far cheaper to have different schools set up for different children than to have to put in place “support” constantly to try to paper over the fact that mainstream state schools as set up currently are simply not appropriate for a very large number of children. It would also save a lot of money in the long term because our young people would enjoy school, be engaged with learning, thrive and develop their individual talents, i.e. higher growth and productivity, lower health costs, lower welfare costs, lower justice costs, high tax revenue.

The vast majority of state schools are NOT capable of supporting autistic children adequately, as the statistics in the research demonstrate, despite your “round our way” anecdata. Yes - the “support” in place currently is ineffective because it happens too late, and it is low quality because it is largely designed by SENCOs and idiotic LA staff until an EHCP is put in place and they have no idea what they are doing. It is also ineffective because in many cases it is the school environment itself that is the problem. The unchangeable aspects of the current structure (i.e. class sizes of 30, loud and disruptive and violent behaviour tolerated) that make it IMPOSSIBLE for some children like mine to attend regularly. You may think you know better but my children’s neurodevelopmental paediatricians, SALTs, psychiatrists, child therapists and THEIR SCHOOL all agree that no mainstream state school can meet their needs.

You don’t “think there is a case” for setting up a school that children like them can go to, despite the academic research showing that in 83% of cases where there is significant school distress leading to the child becoming to attend this is because the child is autistic and the school environment has caused them to develop severe mental health problems?

We would criticise a developing country for not providing a school for all children, yet you think it’s acceptable for NO SCHOOL THAT THE CHILD CAN ATTEND AT ALL to be provided for some children in the UK? Why is that? It is an internationally recognised human right for all children to be able to access education per the Human Rights Act 1998, as well as being enshrined in law in the UK in the Education Act 1989.

What is your solution then? Children like mine should just not get to go to school at all because they are autistic?

Where are you in the country, @Nepmarthiturn? How many schools do you have nearby? I don't recognise this picture from our local schools: "just not 30 of them in a room with shouting all day long and regular violence"

Schools round here are variable in quality and yes, they aren't perfect, but none of them have that extended level of violence and shouting all the time. Obviously if you're in the highlands of Scotland and it's your local school or bust that's different.

I live in Sussex. In a very “nice” area so it is certainly not a school with a deprived cohort, quite the opposite. There is no enforcement of behaviour policies. Violent children who hit teachers or throw furniture or have regularly punched other pupils are not expelled. Classroom disruption and extremely loud noise is tolerated all day.

I have a very good advocate working on the case. The LA has accepted (per the assessments of the educational psychologist, neurodevelopmental paediatricians, SALTs, OTs, psychiatrists, the child therapist they both see weekly, and their school) that no mainstream state school can meet their needs as they cannot be in a class size of 30 people all day or manage this level of noise, unpredictable behaviour, violence, etc. They need to be in a calm environment otherwise all of their energy is going just on coping with the environment.

One of them has a 1:1, not because they require this academically. Simply because they cannot be in the classroom most of the day but can’t roam unsupervised around the school (still being quite young) so needs a TA to come and sit out on the field with them in summer while they read books or watch while they sit in a tent in the corridor reading a book through most of the school day. Apparently this constitutes a full time education. When they can manage to go in (this deteriorates over every term due to the cumulative impact of the environment, first with me being asked to collect them at lunchtime, then mid-morning, then not able to go at all) the school has them timetabled to be in class for 1.5 hours per day, if everything goes well.

Their educational psychologist reports and EHCPs say they are gifted and talented and require an extended and enriched curriculum and they aren’t even receiving the national curriculum, AND they are getting their mental health trashed to the point where the latest reports from their SALT and therapist state that they are at risk of complete school refusal.

These children are extremely bright. Gifted and talented and desperate to learn. Well behaved. A sponge for information. They feel excluded and “othered” for their disabilities when they are sociable, kind, popular and bright. Yet it is impossible for them to access an education because they cannot be in a class of 30 or deal with the disruption, violence and noise that is allowed to go on. No provision whatsoever is made for them anywhere in the state system. Their school states that no mainstream state school will be appropriate for them for these reasons.

No SEN specialist school for children like them exists anywhere in the country as far as I am aware. The SEN schools also do not specialise to meet specific needs: they take various the children for whom mainstream schools state they can’t meet the needs, so there are none which are for academically able and calm children who just want to learn and have fun with friends in a smaller group where there isn’t terrifying behaviour.

I sent them for a trial at a small local private school with class sizes of 12-15. The transformation was astonishing. They were able to be in class all day, attend all week, come home happy (not meltdowns or anxiety or nightmares), no crying before school. Able to be in class all day, engaged in learning — even as autistic children in a new environment with new people, children who really struggle with change and this was all brand new — no need for a 1:1 (so it would actually be much CHEAPER than sending them to mainstream state school with a 1:1 to watch them read a book outside the classroom alone, feeling excluded and rejected and receiving no teaching whatsoever.

As a lone parent I can’t afford to send them to such a place, though. Perhaps the LA will have to do so now because it hasn’t bothered to provide any school in the state system that they can possibly attend sustainably and now admits this. This has all broken my health and finances (it has cost me tens of thousands of pounds having to fight the LA to get them an EHCP at all despite stacks of medical reports because they aren’t disruptive and mask at school and are meeting baseline academic targets designed for children far less academically able despite extremely poor attendance, so nobody cares). However, I’m sure that many people would moan about the LA funding that despite the only reason it is necessary is because the state has failed to provide an appropriate school for them, and the fact it would be cheaper than paying for them not to get an education now at a state school with an unnecessary 1:1 to supervise them NOT being taught anything all day. And now we have an Education Secretary who seems determined that, even if they finally get sent to a private school where they can learn and thrive and most importantly not have any further mental health breakdowns, she will create more uncertainty and stress and try to REMOVE their EHCPs when they get to secondary age, dump them back into a mainstream state secondary school which they would never be able to attend and leave them out of school entirely.

Having a 5 year old say they want to jump out of the bedroom window and die rather than go back to school, and that they hope they never wake up again, is something I will never, ever forgive. Watching her disintegrate in front of my eyes from the happy child she was before school into a state where she could not even communicate with me and just lay under a blanket on her bed for hours each day, not wanting to play or be read to or watch a film or draw, nothing.

Seeing the impact on both of them when they are happy, kind, lovely children who are desperate to learn is something I will be angry about until the day I die.

I think a few things are being conflated here.
@Nepmarthiturn You state 'The unchangeable aspects of the current structure (i.e. class sizes of 30, loud and disruptive and violent behaviour tolerated) that make it IMPOSSIBLE for some children like mine to attend regularly.' I would suggest that this is not an accurate representation of all state education. My DD attends a statistically average, large state comprehensive school. Yes many class sizes are around 30. There is some loud and disruptive behaviour. However, it is challenged. Violent behaviour does happen, but it is rare and certainly not 'tolerated' You seem to have had very poor experiences for your children, which are even more difficult for your them because if their additional needs. I am genuienely sorry this has been rheir experience. However, it is not a universal experience within state education and no child should be in a setting where violent behaviour is unchallenged.

The need for additional specialist provision for children with ASD/EBSA/anxiety but not learning disabilities or externalising behaviour issues is highlighted. I think that additional provision for this type of need should be resourced. However, this is then extrapolated to a myriad of specialist schools with different 11-16 pathways for diffeeent children . I don't think this is desirable, but even if the majority thought it was how could it ever be logistically practicable or resourced? Unless children were allocated a creative/sport/academic/behaviour control pathway at 11 you would need spare capacity to offer choice. Outside densly pooulated areas there wouldn't be enough young people to justify all these specialist schools. The expense would be enormous. Pragmatically it couldn't work.

Comprehensives can offer different curriculum approaches for 14 to 16 year olds. Post 16 specialism is possible. Young people whose vunerabilities make the mainstream environment unsuitable need specialist support and potentiialy provision. This doesnt mean we need multiple specialist secondary schools.

My child is extremely intelligent and thrives in mainstream private. The classes are streamed, there is no violence and disruption, it’s a very calm teaching experience and the children are happy and confident, and truly passionate about learning.

This sort of schooling needs to be available on the state. We need to start by restoring safety, calm and order to the classroom as a matter of urgency. Respect for fellow pupils, not derision. Inclusion is the very worst mindset for the government to take. Putting disruptive SEN children and violent bullies into mainstream schooling damages the education and wellbeing of every other member of the class.

You state 'The unchangeable aspects of the current structure (i.e. class sizes of 30, loud and disruptive and violent behaviour tolerated) that make it IMPOSSIBLE for some children like mine to attend regularly.' I would suggest that this is not an accurate representation of all state education.

This is 100% my child’s experience of state secondary here in Scotland. Think yourself lucky you can access a calm, safe learning environment for your child.

Thank you. From their trial at such a school, it is exactly what they need.

My daughter said “this is my dream school. If I could go here, Mummy, then I wouldn’t cry every morning. I could be just like everyone else. It is my third favourite place after home and holidays.”

Quite heartbreaking, when it would cost half as much as state mainstream plus a 1:1 which she has currently (which she did not need in a class of 12 calm and well-behaved children in the independent school because she was in class all day, learning, enthusiastically participating in lessons, whereas at state school she has not managed a full week at school in the last 2.5 yrs and even when there manages an hour a day in the classroom and comes home exhausted, distressed and often unable to communicate).

I completely agree. I can’t believe that no one in the government has made this connection particularly as we have a different party in power at the moment. They could blame the conservatives and change it. I think it is really sad that we have only 6 weeks on a topic now. I remember having a whole term to cover a topic but not anymore. It just means everyone is more stressed, stretched and the pressure is too much.

Different pathways like that focus on different skillsets is exactly how state education works in many countries with many more options for young people and their parents to choose from so that they can find the right school for their child, so I’m not sure why you think it would not be feasible. Do you think the current system of “one-size-fits-all” is “desirable” and serving children’s best interests to enable them to learn effectively and develop their individual and different talents, and to develop useful skills that will help them move into good employment/ careers as adults? If not, then it isn’t an appropriate model of schooling, is it, given that these things are the purpose of school?

And, as I have stated, there are no state schools to meet the needs of autistic but academically able children. There are few state schools to meet the needs of academically able children who aren’t autistic. There are not enough specialist state schools to meet the needs of children with significant physical disabilities or learning disabilities. There are not separate schools set up for children with behavioural problems that can provide the right boundaries and support to deal with that while keeping those children from ruining education for everyone else. There are large numbers of children who have various skills that should be developed but who are not very academic and are denied the chance to excel and made to believe they are stupid because they are forced to focus primarily on academic learning which is not and never will be their forté, while their other skills that could lead to successful careers are largely ignored and devalued. As a result, the 30-40% of children for whom the current model of mainstream state schooling might provide a just-about-acceptable education in the absence of all of these other children being forced into their schools cannot learn either.

What’s the argument for doubling down on the idiotic status quo which is causing a mental health crisis in young people, creating a population of young people whom education has failed and don’t have the right skills for the workforce, putting engaged children off learning and making them hate school, and is so miserable that not only are most of the children miserable but so are the school staff?

What’s more, ( even without the extra cost of state 1:1), at one point a group of private schools were suggesting they could take children for the same amount the state pays for them anyway, and they would then make up the rest. But this was turned down.

Now there is a further barrier through VAT, with no allowance for what the state would have been paying for any given child anyway.

@Nepmarthiturn have you asked this school if they could offer your very bright special needs DC bursaries?

I ought to say that prior to my child attending state they were in mainstream. They put up with being beaten up on a near daily basis for being socially awkward admirably really (no consequences for violence here, the bully was just ‘communicating a need’ or some such nonsense) it was the unpredictable screaming outbursts of their classmates which was the final straw. When you have ASD and you are constantly on edge due to various sorts of sensory overloads stretching classmates and flying furniture is impossible to cope with and they flatly refused.

We can just about cope with the expense of the school. The VAT added when you are only using the school due to being unable to access a suitable education for your child in the state sector takes the Mickey though. The change in educational experience is priceless.

very best of luck for future years.

Yup.

I bang on about this on thread after thread after thread. We create unhuman/inhuman, sometimes inhumane systems and wonder why both children and adults cant cope

We then pathologise the 'not coping'.

Needs repeating frequently.

That is appalling! Why would they turn that down?! They are actively sabotaging children through sheer ideology. There’s no other explanation, is there?

There are bursaries but they are often not available until secondary school level, and usually only a small proportion of fees. Also following the VAT on fees most independent schools are (understandably) redirecting a lot of the money they used to use on bursaries to subsidising fees so that they don’t have to pass on the whole fee increase to families with children already at these schools so that children who are already settled there are forced to leave.

It is difficult because I am a lone parent so although I earn well I am hugely penalised by the tax system in terms of having a far lower net income than a household with two parents whose combined income was the same as mine, due to being taxed far more on the same household earnings. And also because neither of my children can do group childcare (after school clubs, holiday clubs) for the same reasons that they can’t cope with state school so as well as paying our mortgage I still have a childcare expense of around £2.5k per month because I have to hire nannies for all wrap around care and school holidays when I’m working (which is a lot because my annual leave comes nowhere close to covering school holidays, another single parent penalty, and private school holidays would be even longer which would be perfect for my children but an additional cost for me).

I have stayed awake many nights running the numbers on this and trying to find a way, as I’d pull them out and put them in an independent school in a heartbeat if I could, but I really can’t afford to pay even say 50% of private school fees for two children, and bursaries generally aren’t even 50%. At secondary school, fees even in the smaller independent schools here are £25-30k per child per year, so I’d need say an extra £30k net income to fund it even if both children had a 50% bursary, which means earning nearly double that amount more before tax.

My worry is also that private school fees have generally been rising 10% per year over the last decade or so (VAT issue aside) and my salary does not, but I am limited now also in terms of career progression and being able to try to increase my earnings further because I have to be local all the time for all the reasons I’ve described with children frequently off school or needing collecting at short notice, medical appointments, endless battles with the LA etc, and the damage that all of this has already done to my health leaving me with a lifelong and incurable cardiac condition. It really feels like we are stuck in an impossible Kafkaesque situation with no way out with these people having made their professional crisis/ funding crisis a crisis for my family and wrecked much of their childhood as well as my health and finances.

This keeps me up at night. I have fought and fought for them and done everything I can, running my health and career into the ground and barely sleeping so I can maintain full time work, give them the support they need, stay up at nights doing all the legal paperwork etc, but it isn’t enough. It is absolutely heartbreaking that I know exactly what they need, it’s crystal clear in all of the reports and from the time they spent in an independent school which proved it, but I cannot give it to them.

Sounds familiar. The poor violent bullies. Who cares about the needs of the child who doesn’t want to be beaten up at school? Why should they be a human shield? And absolutely spot on about the sensory overwhelm for children with ASD: the school environment is already ten times harder for them, there is absolutely no way they will be able to cope in an environment where there is regular violence and verbal abuse and that level of noise and disruption. As an autistic adult I couldn’t do it so how could it be expected of children?

Schools are doing these disturbed and violent children no favours, either. They are presumably like this because there are not appropriate boundaries at home which is all the more reason to ensure there are at school. Rules, consequences. What do they think they will be like as adults if they are taught that this is acceptable? And of course it undermines all of the good parenting done by other parents who enforce boundaries and appropriate behaviour if then their children go to school and witness other children behaving like this with no consequences whatsoever.

I get so angry when I hear this “communicating a need” nonsense. With ASD both me and my children have to live in a world not designed for us and accept that many things will be much harder. Therefore, since they were young I have taught them how to identify and express their emotions and coping mechanisms to process and communicate and manage their emotions in a healthy and appropriate manner. It has always been absolutely clear that it is NOT an excuse for bad behaviour and there have always been consequences and boundaries alongside a lot of scaffolding and understanding and love. The goal should be to give them the tools to manage their difficulties and if children like yours and mine who are coping with ASD on top of school can do it then it is clearly unacceptable for schools to make excuses for children (excluding those with intellectual impairments to the degree that they should not be in a mainstream school anyway so literally have no cognitive control over what they are doing) being violent. It is ridiculous and just demonstrates yet again that they don’t understand even the very basics of brain development in either neurotypical or neurodiverse children.

Well done for getting your children out, they are very fortunate. It is great to hear that they are thriving now. I am so worn down by this battle, having to fight the very “services” like schools whose job it is to help my children thrive, just to try to stop them destroying them entirely. I hope that there will be a light at the end of the tunnel for them eventually and I can have them transferred to a school that they can actually attend before their mental health and education is beyond repair. However, given that there are thousands like them and most won’t have parents able or prepared to fight the system like I have for years now or pay to remove them like you have — paying for their education twice, in effect — no sensible discussion about the school system can take place until these elephants are acknowledged, can it?

I also think a common mistake in these discussions is to polarise the 'violent bully' vs 'compliant child' vs 'vulnerable SEN or ND child' as if they are all different

Many children are both victim and perpetrator, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different reasons. Many SEN children hit out, are violent, are bullies, perhaps to the 'compliant child', perhaps to the 'SEN or ND child'.

All children need a learning environment that is flexible to what that child needs to reduce isolation, reduce violence and aggression and increase social and intellectual achievement.

It needs extra finance to achieve that but above all it needs a huge culture shift away from attainment, performance and grading

People will be uncomfortable with that.

I often think that teachers/ others who can’t seem to comprehend how autistic children experience the school environment due to their sensory issues and language and communication differences should be made to sit in a room all day with people shouting and screaming through loudspeakers all day long; everyone speaking to each other at all being required to use one even if the person you are speaking to is sitting directly next to you. There should also be noises like nails scratching down blackboards, buzzing and whirring sounds played throughout the day through speakers.

There should be various spotlights positioned around the room at awkward angles to shine directly into their eyes no matter where they look. These lights must flicker constantly like strobe lighting.

The temperature should be turned down to -5 but they shouldn’t be allowed to wear a coat, and they should be forced to wear socks filled with sand inside their shoes and clothes lined with sandpaper.

The walls should be covered in psychedelic patterns in neon colours to make them feel sick, and various disgusting smells should be pumped into the room all day like strong odours of B.O. and farts.

Everyone should be required to wear a mask covering their whole face at all times as well so that nobody can read each other’s facial expressions to help them understand what they are trying to communicate over the background noise.

Should they find this unpleasant at any point and ask to have a break from the environment for a few minutes they should be told to stop being so entitled and thinking they are special, quit whinging and just get on with it. Surely, after all, they can just turn down the sensitivity levels of their eyes and ears and sense of smell and nerve endings on demand to suit the environment? Who do they think they are, being so demanding and precious?

Then, at the end of the day they can feed back how they think it went, and it should be announced at that point that they’ll be doing the same for the next four days running. Oh, and next week, and the week after that, and….

And apparently making the superhuman effort required to endure that ^^ every day in order to fit around other people’s preferences simply because there are more of them than you, is not sufficient. You should also tolerate verbal abuse and people hitting you and throwing furniture as well.

Really easy to concentrate and focus on your work in such an environment, I’m sure.