I worked in schools for a long time, teaching or helping teachers and leaders so I knew, and regretted, the failure of many schools and teachers to cater for all kids. Many young people thrived in schools, most did o.k. and some just didn’t fit.
The balance shifted over time. I started teaching in London in the early 70’s and many of the kids I encountered found the mismatch between school and the rest of their world impossible to reconcile. School was pretty much an irrelevance and they got out as soon as they could.
Things improved through the late 70’s and eighties. The curriculum became more relevant and the exam structure was organised to cater for almost all young people. Things were a long way from perfect; many teachers bought the lie that intelligence was fixed and had too low an expectation of what their students could achieve. Others though felt a reasonable aspiration was that all students should be encouraged to achieve as highly as they could in a system that had no upper or lower boundaries. There was high variability, high achievement, high levels of inclusion and a general consensus that teaching should engage the interest of young people and that learning was not the same thing as teaching – child-centered learning made a huge difference but was equated by Conservative Secretaries of State with satanism.
Even with the improvements of the early 80’s still some children didn’t fit; they were awkward and different, perhaps because of what they had already experienced at home or in school, perhaps just because they were outliers. In a factory they’d be put on the reject pile or sold as seconds (“slight flaw in stitching”). Generally they were put on the reject pile at school too, pathologised and often removed from lessons to spend increasing amounts of time in exclusion rooms, called things like ‘remedy’, ‘time out’ or ‘learning support’ centres or sent home or to another school. All of that still happens or course….except in some academies where the ‘problem’ is tackled at source though some illegal QA when pupils are recruited……
In 1990, Kenneth Baker and Margaret Thatcher chipped in with the National Curriculum since it was apparently absolutely vital that every child studied the same things across the country. I won’t dwell on the irony of current Conservative policies bringing ‘freedom’ to academies, ‘free’ schools and UTCs to teach what they like. In the early 80’s Local Authority advisers were ordered by good old Ken Baker into primary schools to make sure the statutory percentage of each subject was being delivered each week…maybe that’s what they mean by Local Authority bureaucracy. Anyway the national curriculum and the levels and testing machine unsurprisingly alienated and disenfranchised even more kids. Today things are probably worse than those dire days in the 70’s. The straightjacket approach to young people – ‘think this, believe this, do this, learn this’ (think the ‘Prevent Strategy’ without the dobbing in of strange kids with strange ideas) is producing some remarkable results, particularly for young people in the following groups : Young offenders; looked after children; LGBT; BAME; children with a Disability; Homeless Youth; Young People in gangs and Unemployed young people.
Key Statistics
- One in Four (26%) young people in the UK experience suicidal thoughts;
- ChildLine (UK) has revealed that it held 34,517 counselling sessions in 2013/14 with children who talked about suicide – a 116 percent increase since 2010/11;
- Among teenagers, rates of depression and anxiety have increased by 70% in the past 25 years, particularly since the mid 1980’s;
- The number of children and young people who have presented to A&E with a psychiatric condition have more than doubled since 2009. (8,358 in 10/11; 17,278 in 13/14);
- 55% of children who have been bullied later developed depression as adults;
- 45% of children and young people under the age of 18 detained under s.136 were taken to police custody in 2012/13.
Stats from Young Minds: http://www.youngminds.org.uk
I guess this is what ‘Rabbit in Headlights’ Morgan means by standards of achievement. Her recent NUT appearance was scary for what it revealed about her understanding of the impact of government policies. She highlighted the large proportion of negative messages on the NUT web-site as saying something about union attitudes and seemed not to understand that there might be some kind of link to her policies. She seemed to think she was being inspirational and conciliatory:
“There isn’t another government just around the corner, to be frank,” she told delegates in Birmingham. “Teaching unions have a choice – spend the next four years doing battle with us and doing down the profession they represent in the process, or stepping up, seizing the opportunities and promise offered by the white paper and helping us to shape the future of the education system.”
The best hope for kids is that teachers and unions opt for the four year battle and, in doing so ‘do down’ the profession she represents, so fingers crossed.
It’s not just school that some of us find difficult. Those who don’t fit at school, are different, can’t cope, reject or just don’t achieve, don’t always just leave school and start to thrive. Ordinary life (a job, a home, a family, ‘Match of the Day’ and the rest) is too much for some of us because of what we are or what we’ve been through. Rough sleepers, small groups drinking cider or lager in parks, people hiding in their bed-sits, having panic attacks at work, hiding from bailiffs, ‘wasting’ GPs’ time with another imagined illness, taking prescribed or illicit drugs, living in abusive relationships, crying again, smashing a glass in the pub, waking at mid-day wondering where these cuts and bruises came from…… could have been us….could still be us if something goes wrong in our life.
We’re pack animals so it’s hard to value difference whether it’s colour, creed or lifestyle but we should do it and it should start in our schools. Ironically public schools often get this right and focus on the whole child while what we can (just) still call state schools are pressured to concentrate on assessment, labeling and exam ‘results’. I can understand why teachers are disenchanted and resigning or just tunneling furiously. Rigour, that favourite word of government when screwing up educational reform, leads to rigor mortis and leaves no room for, indeed will not tolerate, difference. We need to get back to valuing young people for what and who they are not for the number of ‘good’ grades they do or don’t or just plain won’t represent. Hot house plants don’t thrive when they leave the hot-house!
