So....
Many moons ago, you had statements and you could have many statemented students in one group. Expectations at secondary might have been lower (e.g certificate of achievement or St. Martin's rather than a GCSE) but there was also emphasis on key and core skills.
You had a gifted and talented cohort.
You had Section 11 for English as an additional language.
You had Beacon schools and schools with specialist subjects.
You had positive and negative residuals you had to defend and year 9 SATs that set expectations for GCSE. You had setting.
You also had Special Schools and in some schools Bases (e.g. for ASC where students could nip in and out of mainstream).
Now you have EHCPs that are gate kept, like golddust and are not always followed/upheld.
Many Special Schools closed, CAHMs is not fit for purpose, pathways are full/taking forever and PRUs are full.
Primary schools are Watch and Wait/Quality Teaching First.
Secondary is all Adaptive teaching. Teach to the top. Scaffold down.
Little setting as creates sink sets and mixed ability is supposedly more inclusive. Nurture groups gone as allegedly do not stretch enough. Gifted/talented gone, instead it is interventions after school and extra curricular/electives.
Work experience being replaced by workshops and visits.
LSAs doing interventions separately but "general" support in class, not allowed to sit with more challenging students anymore within the classroom itself.
Adaptive teaching is what was once known as Differentiation. By task or by outcome. Primary it used to be different table colours and tasks. Secondary it was often finished this, do more of that.
The gap now in a mixed ability class would shock most of you. You have a lesson they are all meant to follow as part of levelling up when you have some who can write three sides and some can barely write three lines. The amount of undiagnosed and diagnosed SEN has rocketed.
Biggest driver is often ADHD and unmedicated ADHD which causes the most disruption. Some ASC are dysregulated by the constant low level disruptions, others with sensory overload by the noise of fidgets, blutac given to soothe is often flung around, teachers are asked to make more allowances for those who cannot self-regulate and those in the middle - neither high nor low academically - sit there thinking what is the point of them/are they invisible.
Job is to protect all children's learning but we have neither the money nor the tools nor the space nor the support as we are being asked to provide for such differences in need within one group in one setting - with the mantra if you get it right for SEND you are getting it right for everyone. But it is one size fits all, throw the glue all over them all at the same time and see how much sticks. You are told to chunk, told to scaffold but not dumb down, emphasis on challenging them.
It is an impossible task right now.
Nurturing groups worked.
Separate wings/bases worked.
LSAs sitting alongside students worked.
But we keep being told facilitate do not enable, don't have them rely on you, promote independence.
Some of the kids your heart bleeds for.
Because they are docile/quiet, perceived to be "good" and having their lessons sabotaged on a daily basis. This is NT and ND kids to be clear.
And they see others not being held to the same standards behaviour wise or they'd be exited within minutes without inbuilt extra chances. They neither get treated for high flying nor forest school/time out for struggling. And the mantra is that ALL kids' education is important. Yet it often feels like Animal Farm and not just because some pupils are feral/act like they are in a zoo (again NT, not just what we used to label EBD) "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."
It is happening all over the country in schools down your street - some pupils choose to misbehave, others cannot cope or access the curriculum, others are surviving/trying to grey rock/block out the sounds, others are bystanders rather than upstanders.
It is painful and why so many teachers are leaving, changing careers or retiring earlier than planned. Because you can work tirelessly but are more often than not banging your head against the wall with the added salt of parents not backing you. Any critics please do train, do it yourself, you'll find - just like homeschooling in COVID showed - that it is a lot more challenging than you'd like to believe.