„Das Schlimmste, was es je gab“: Lehrer kritisieren die Krise in Englands Schulen | Schulen

I’ve been a teacher for 14 years.

When I started, you would have about 10 kids in a year group on the SEND register, now it’s about 70.

Yes, funding in schools isn’t great. But you also can’t ignore that we’ve seen an explosion in diagnoses. One of the things we’ve seen is a massive rise in private assessments where pretty much every one who has one is told they have some kind of need. And, unfortunately, what we’re also seeing is a lot of kids who really need support missing out on it because too much attention is going towards very demanding parents who are insisting on disproportionate support for the very minor – and questionable – needs of their children.

> The number of children and young people entitled to government support in the form of education, health and care plans [EHCPs] is due to double to 1 million within a decade

Given that a lot of this is blamed on the fallout from covid, it’ll be very interesting to see what happens over the decade. Is it just a single generation that’s going to have far more issues, and then things returning back to something like the pre-covid levels, or is this a fundamental shift that won’t reverse? Because if so, that’s going to require a completely rethink of our education system – having over 10% of kids with EHCPs sounds completely unworkable.

I guess we’ll see in a few years when the first post-covid kids start school.

The over diagnosis is wild

Too many companies are making too much money out of assessments and consultancy

Too many schools present their results internally “excluding SEND and EHCPs”

Too many parents push for a diagnosis for any under attainment or behaviour issues

The children who genuinely need extra support are being missed because of this culture

The elephant in the room is – beyond a certain point – a mental health issue makes employment impossible, which makes traditional schooling pointless.

Friend has two autistic kids that, while highly intelligent, are so single minded you can’t really get them to do anything new. So, people that won’t follow instructions – what job could they get? If the parents can’t – or won’t – put in the hours, what’s any teacher going to achieve?

The country needs to make the hard choices that some people won’t benefit from school and actually hurt the education of those that might benefit.

We’re never going to have 1:1 care so maybe some of these children should have facilities that are more about keeping them safe and happy than actually trying to teach, or even fix. 

If someone had no arms, we wouldn’t focus on piano lessons.

I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, this is not a school crisis, it’s a parenting crisis.

I worked in secondary schools for a decade and recently left – **this was a problem before COVID** – it’s a lack of discipline, accountability and empathy from parents.

Not all parents of course, but what it’s boiling down to is shit parents who can’t face the failure of their kid being a fucking nightmare, so has to push for SEND support.

It devastated me how much time I spent fighting fires, because a lad with undiagnosed ADHD was squaring up to his teacher or a child with undiagnosed ASD locked themselves in the toilet for hours at a time causing huge safeguarding issues, whilst children with diagnosed SEND had to wait their turn.

And by undiagnosed, I mean they didn’t have either neurodivergence, but their dickhead parents would do nothing on their side but push it on us to “get him an EHCP” as if they just give them out to anyone on the spot.

Schools have always been able to ‘pick and choose’ their students to some extent.

When I first started teaching 17 years ago our school had the SEN kids from affluent areas sent to us en masse. They didn’t want them to ruin their league tables.

Now we have the academy system. So those schools are more empowered than ever to shape a bubble of success at the expense of everyone around them. Also while dragging salaries higher than the prime minister for the executive heads.

My school has had an explosion in numbers. In our case, it certainly isn’t over diagnosis. Some are non-verbal, and there are none that I’d say aren’t actually SEND. They have BIG needs and there are loads of them and every year coming up has more. I don’t know how we’ll manage. A lot falls on our teaching assistants , but they get bitten and head butted, so I don’t know how we’ll keep them.

Kudos to the Guardian for interviewing someone who is willing to address one of the more uncomfortable factors – a large part of the crisis is a result of pushy middle class parents trying to get their kids an extra leg-up through added exam time and support.

Kids in private schools are diagnosed with conditions requiring such support at a hugely increased rate compared to children in state schools – when statistics regarding deprivation and learning difficulties would suggest the trend should be the complete opposite.

Middle class professionals know how to get the results they want out of the educational and health care systems, and have figured out that there is a range of basically unfalsifiable diagnoses available, which you can get for any kid with enough of an effort.

It isn’t helped when the SEND teams are totally incompetent, busy-bodies who thought that they could carve out a little fiefdom for themselves instead of working.

Shitty FOMO families who feel entitled to some labels, and shittier bureaucrats running it. As always, the genuine needy lose.

I went to a SEND school because of ADHD and booting off all the time at school. Was a massive struggle to get me there, but saved my education frankly, though looking back I’m not sure I needed it that much, but obviously I’m being flippant, it’s just that my career requires no qualifications.

Now I’d be utterly fucked, having to fight it out, quite literally, in mainstream and likely being booted out permanently by Year 8. I cannot imagine how bad it must be for kids these days, and given ADHD and the like is likely hereditary, it is putting me off having kids.

I grew up in the early 00’s and there was next to no diagnosis or help in my particular school and local area (I appreciate the UK varies per district let alone country). 

There’s no denying that there were kids at my school who needed additional help and ultimately failed, on the flip side I do now think we are veering into additional needs almost becoming trendy and as such we are seeing over diagnosis. 

However my question is what happens to SEND kids when they enter the work place? Do employers make adjustments or are they just left to it – I work for a very small company so it’s not something I’ve ever encountered.