Teachers do not adhere to Statemented 1 to 1 support, do not believe in sub-levels, make APP assessments up....How much of what parents are told by schools about teaching is a box ticking exercise?

[Regards]

Following on from this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/1859219-Im-a-teacher-and-happy-to-answer-any-questions

and this:
community.tes.co.uk/tes_primary/f/36/t/381051.aspx?pi2132219857=1

I realised I was incredibly gullible when my DC first started school. What exactly should we believe concerning what the teachers tell us, how much is a PR job to cover up the ugly truth?

Interesting, wellthen. Dd1 goes to special school. 113 children with complex SN. challenging behavior. no one, but no one, would dream of referring to any of them as retards, in or out of ear shot. also, on a forum, your audience includes parents of children with SN. It matters.

Yes I personally think disablist language is more than just venting, it betrays the prejudice of user if used intentionally in a derogatory manner.

^the user.

Again regards all you are getting is a snap shot from various schools. The only thing you can do is visit the actual school, ask questions and decide which one is right.

Most teachers do the very best they can to teach, inspire and assess their pupils. Sadly some don't.

I wouldnt personally use retard but the teachers who do are just venting.

Really,I mean Really!! So it would be ok for a teacher to call a racist name (which would mean that they would be, you know, a racist) as long as it is not to their face?

Can you really not see what is wrong with this?

The thought of some teacher, referring to my child as a retard, makes me feel sick with worry, and shows that that teacher isn't fit to educate any child.

Whe you've been spat at, had things thrown at you, called a stupid bitch and told to fuck off, all the while knowing that in an hours time you will accept that child back into your classroom with open arms and smile because that child desperately needs to be loved an accepted then I'm sorry but I think I deserve a few minutes of muttering 'you little gobshite' to myself before I am ready to accept that child back.

I did actually say that I would not use the word and yet I have been attacked. Julie I consider your post a personal attack and its really upset me. I am simply trying to stand up for my colleagues who day in day out do their very best for your child. I love my children. Sometimes I dont like them very much but I love them. How people work through their emotions after work is up to them.

I have nothing else to say. I feel demonised. The majority of posts on MN about teachers demonise us and make us out to be nothing short of abusers. That is not an exageration. I am geuninely sorry if I've upset anyone, as I've said I do not use racist or disabledist language and am personally very against it. I pull up my friends, family and colleagues if they use it. But I do not see why I should stand by and see teachers talked about as if they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to make children and parents unhappy.

Remember not all posters on TES are teachers or even work with children ...they get as many trolls as MN trying to controversial

'When you've been spat at, had things thrown at you, called a stupid bitch and told to fuck off, all the while knowing that in an hours time you will accept that child back into your classroom with open arms and smile because that child desperately needs to be loved an accepted then I'm sorry but I think I deserve a few minutes of muttering 'you little gobshite' to myself before I am ready to accept that child back.'

wellthen if that is the situation in your school then I think that your problem is with senior management rather than a child who clearly isn't coping.

this is just way too generalised. if you don't trust the judgement of YOUR child's teacher then it is that teacher and school that needs to be addressed. the idea that it's actually some profession wide conspiracy that all teachers are either willing participants in or forced to conform is ridiculous.

if a plumber bodged the repair on your sink and blagged about why instead of being honest and straightforward would you conclude all plumbers were.....?

there's no real quantitative way of assessing education - it is ALL qualitative really, it all requires opinion, consideration, interpretation etc. even later when marking exams against mark schemes. that is just reality.

so either you trust the professional whose opinion is being consulted or you don't. if you don't then you need to yourself gather evidence to back up your assessment of them and make a complaint.

as for the idea that any child would want an adult permanently glued to their side and never interacting with any other child for fear of diluting the funding entitlements of the child's support - it's ridiculous and harmful. 1:1 support is a lot more creative and varied than being like an armed guard.

i appreciate it may be easier to assess quantitatively in some subject/skills areas btw - but in general when it comes to levels and needs etc it is a considered and informed opinion coming from observing that child for hours on a daily basis over a wide range of tasks, situations etc. you can point to things that highlight aspects of your conclusion and you can answer questions about it etc but you can't download the whole contents of your brain of the zillion interactions and events and pieces of work and observations and ra ra ra that inform it. teachers and children are not robots.

Wellthe I'm sorry you feel like that. That was not the intention of this post. I was more concerned with the Education System as it stands, systemic faults and the way teachers deal with them.

Too much of the, "..trying to stand up for my colleagues" when there are faults in the system that are glossed over, when the system is 'played' to the detriment of some children (which the threads I quoted indicates) perpetuates inequalities.

What I would like to see is genuine transparency, honesty and integrity. I'm beginning to think for a teacher to fulfil my expectation may take a very brave teacher. It looks like many would feel that this would be professional suicide. I hope this is not the case.

swallowed For a professional to be truly professional there needs to be honesty, transparency and integrity. This includes admitting assessments are not fail-safe, as your post suggests,

"there's no real quantitative way of assessing education - it is ALL qualitative really, it all requires opinion, consideration, interpretation etc. even later when marking exams against mark schemes. that is just reality."

Professionalism would also include genuine, respectful, consultation with parents, since they hold a lot of information about their child. This should be a priority above protecting the profession, in order to be truly professional. Is it?

Parent involvement does not stop at raising money for the PTA or volunteering or supporting homework. They will, justifiably, see cause for criticism sometimes, since no -one is perfect.

so if teachers don't confirm your beliefs about then they're just covering for the conspiracy?

it seems your mind is very much made up and fixed to these beliefs. there is no room in such a mind set for real discussion regards.

i'm an ex teacher and will happily criticise a ton of things about the culture of some the schools i worked at, the characteristics that were all too common amongst a number of teachers and things about schools that are utterly shit. i'm in no way an apologist or defender against criticism.

yet i'm still saying that if you have a problem with specific teachers they are your problem, it is not the whole profession playing false and deliberately failing young people.

If schools and LAs 'close ranks' against parents getting 'proof' can be difficult. There is not a free market of State Schools. Just being able to select a different school is fallacy.

.

yes parental involvement and consultation is part of being a professional and many of the professionals on here have acknowledged that and said that is part of what they do in making assessments. so are they anomalies? liars?

do we take it that you, in your personal experience, have dealt with teachers who did not consult you and were not honest and transparent? the reality is that your views are about you and your experiences so if you refuse to share them it is really hard to move forward and talk about those in the context of the wider picture to discover if they reflect general trends or are indeed anomalies that other professionals would agree are unacceptable.

Very well put swallowed and wellthen. I know how you feel. Been there, done that.
Why is ok for me ( and the rest of the class) to be verbally and physically abused? Far too often this child is 'not coping' due to reasons that are nothing to do with school. Problems that school can have no impact on. Cannot change or fix. School can put every kind of support and intervention in place and still that child will ' not cope'.
What then?

incidentally i was a secondary school teacher rather than primary as i believe most on here work in. i presume you are talking about primary education? if so believe me you have bigger worries to come with secondary where your child will see 5 or 6 teachers day very few of whom will have had it communicated to them what the statement is or requires. down south i found excellent sen information provision, when i moved back to middle england it was appalling. no info on registers, registers often not even available till well into september, impossible to find out detailed information on children's needs and frequently piss poor learner support staff who were more hindrance than help in the classroom.

Hmm not exactly reassuring swallowed.

nope. not at all. sorry.

but you see that i'm not afraid to criticise? i just think you have to be specific to have meaningful conversations and find stuff out. what is it you think they're really up to? do you think it's about money and finding ways to not have to give the support needed or to use the support for other purposes than intended? do you think they pretend children are doing better or worse than they actually are and to what end?

what is it you think is really the issue?

sugar can you give examples of what you've seen re: squeezing, distortion, contortion? as in what you saw, what the agenda was and what was gained by who from it?

btw i think it's possible to criticise the system without denigrating teachers as a whole.

the system is essentially at breaking point imo. it was designed for much, much simpler more homogenous needs and goals. the needs and expectations and goals have changed exponentially without much change to the resources, facilities and capacity of the system. more and more gets loaded on and obviously the back breaks at some point.

Its difficult to criticise the system without involving teachers as they make up the system.

I don't want to comment on my individual circumstances here as they may out me / my child. If you read the MN thread there are plenty of aspects to the SEN system that raise huge concerns with me. I hope the new legislation goes some way to encourage more transparency.

no teachers don't 'make up' the system.

teachers, like everyone else, are restricted by the system. believe me if teachers made up the system it would likely look much, much different.

one of the reasons teaching is stressful is because it falls into the most stressful kind of jobs criteria which is: having a huge amount of responsibility with very little control.

everything comes top down - be it government policies, smt, funding restrictions/cuts/etc and the teacher is just the frontline having to adjust to and keep functioning on the front line without any control or say over the mechanisms behind her.