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New Junior School Class Loses Teaching Assistant

My daughter has just begun Junior School, and she is happy and excited in her lovely new uniform.  On Friday us parents were invited to a meet the teacher session which was overall very positive.  Unfortunately we also found out that my daughters class has absolutely no teaching assistant support at all.  Last term we were told that due to cuts we were only to have a TA once or twice a week.  Now nothing.  The other classes in her year are more in need.

The teacher asked if anyone would like to volunteer to read with children, or help them with handwriting, or show them an interesting new skill etc.  I am the class representative, and I am asking the other parents if there is anything they can do to help.  Which feels positive and supportive.

At the same time I am angry and upset because I think our children will now be in a class which has to be very tightly controlled, the emphasis will have to be on rules, boundaries and discipline because how else can one teacher manage thirty 7 – 8 year olds?

My daughter was 6 two weeks ago.  She is one of the youngest in her class and school exhausts her.  She is clever and sociable and so she is coping well, but I worry that she is showing signs of stress.  She’s only seven!  She is angry and withdrawn some afternoons after school.

I think this is a good opportunity for schools and parents to bond, and to show mutual support.  I really love our schools, I don’t want to feel angry like this.  I hope I can do something to help.

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Our school can’t afford swimming lessons

A few years ago the school community did an amazing thing.  They raised enough money to fix the little swimming pool and provide weekly lessons for the children.

Sadly, that pool closed last year because there isn’t enough money to fix it.  The local public swimming pools are full, so our kids can’t go there.

The school can’t afford to bus the kids out to the pools that do have capacity.

We are talking about what to do about this, because some children can’t swim, and they are not having access to a pool outside of school to learn.

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TA support is being cut due to cuts.

My daughter is just finishing Infant school and has been brilliantly supported by a fantastic team of teachers and teaching assistants. The children in her class with SEN have had a fantastic designated TA and the class has had one for the mornings. My son is about to start the same school and while he will have a teacher and assistant in reception, due to cuts in Yr 1 and 2 they are now moving to have 2 assistants over 3 classes. I worry about the impact this will have on the support children get. I also worry that the previously well resourced nurture groups and extra support groups that my daughter and her friends have benefited from will no longer be funded. I know that one of the specialist reading support TAs who previously worked with children in small groups, will now be in reception as that is where full time roles are. This seems a waste of her training and a loss to children who need help.

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No money for basic communication

Parents at our school had been very happy at the recently introduced text alert system. It was a neat way of receiving messages from school, directly from the teacher or about events happening at school. Great! No more problems such as missing crucial information because your 4/5/6 year old had somehow lost the letter. Information flowed quickly and directly. It was more inclusive than using email or facebook, as most people have a mobile phone on them most of the time, but not everyone uses social media or email all the time.

Fast forward six months later and the school discovered that the texting system is not something they can afford. Text information flow has stopped immediately, and we are back to the ‘dark ages’ of letters and posters. Oh and did I tell you that at the same school use of paper, pens or the photocopier have been rationed for a while now? What kind of world do we live in? This is preposterous.

Well

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Stressed at School

For half an afternoon a week, I used to volunteer at daughter’s infant school. Whilst, I know that my daughter’s infant school is/was an “outstanding school” with dedicated, brilliant, hard-working teachers, I was nonetheless shocked to enter the classrooms and see how chaotic a room of 30 five-year olds was. Spending time, week after week in the classroom, I came to the realisation that there were simply too many children in that classroom. Thirty, five-year-old children in one classroom struggled to sit still for the time enough time required for the teacher to talk. Teaching was regularly interrupted, understandably by children needing water, the toilet or simply wanting to share their thoughts about the subject being discussed.  Many of the children seemed bored by the lengthy times spent having to sit on the carpet or at their desk, being talked at and their attention clearly waivered. With such large classrooms the learning seemed often to occur by rote with little time for questions or exploration of the subject.  It seemed to me the ‘real learning’ for most of the children occurred when teaching support staff, who took small groups out of the classroom in groups of 4 and 5 to concentrate on a specific area usually reading or maths. I myself, helped children with their reading and maths in small groups of up four which worked well. The environment was intense, noisy and physically cramped and I often came home feeling slightly overwhelmed, thinking it was a miracle, that the children learnt anything.

I was therefore horrified to hear that in my daughters very well-respected junior school, the class size would now be 32 in an even smaller classroom. When I investigated further, I found that class sizes of 32 are standard across the city. As parents we have come to accept this as a norm but from my experience, it is clear to me that this it is not a healthy environment for children or their learning or for the teachers.

 My daughter is now 8 and (like many I’m sure) she continues to be a very lively, boisterous thing. At home she never stops moving and/or singing. She ‘gets’ what needs to happen at school so complies, but when I pick her up from school, I can see that it has been a struggle to sit still, to hold it together, to stop talking, to concentrate and to try and learn. Being at school for her clearly requires lots of effort and it means when we get home she can often be quite emotional with lots of mixed up feelings. I can see she finds school stressful and I am certain it doesn’t have to be this way.

 I consider our family lucky. Her teachers are brilliant, the school is one of the best locally and very highly regarded. I still have lots of contact with the school and I can see everyone at school she encounters tries their hardest to to do their best by her. However, there is no getting away from the fact, I feel that her class is too big with too many children with different, competing and at times complex needs.  The fact that 2/3 of schools locally have had to reduce school support staff really worries me. I know that, it is these staff that have historically supported teachers to ensure learning can happen for all the children. The fact that my daughter learns anything is a testament to the hard work of her teachers and the support staff. If our school were to lose any more support staff, I am certain my daughter’s learning would grind to a complete halt.

Finally, I wish school could be more of a joyous experience for my daughter. I wish it could be an experience filled with a sense of wonder, pleasure and discovery, rather than an experience she simply must endure. It makes me sad for her and for the children of her time and I worry that collectively as parents we are allowing the government of the day to fail them.

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EHCP MADNESS!

My youngest boy was diagnosed with Autism in Feb of this year.  He is average in attainment but struggles massively with understanding social situations and regulating behaviour and emotions appropriately.  This creates a massive barrier to learning for him and puts him at a significant disadvantage to his peers.  Since his diagnosis, I have been fighting to get him an EHCP so he can get the extra help he needs to be successful and happy at school.  It’s been an absolute nightmare and the result is that I am now going to tribunal to get my son the support he needs.  School and the LA have not been able to support me whatsoever because of these cuts and it’s just disgusting.  My little boy deserves an equal opportunity to an education just like any other neuro typical child – he is a bright special boy and could just be an AMAZING adult, just like so many autistic people.  We are currently putting further and unnecessary obstacles in his path due to the austerity that this government is inflicting on our society’s most vulnerable people.  I refuse to sit back and watch my little boy’s mental health and well being, as well as his future, deplete in this way.  I will NOT have it and will NOT rest until my boy is supported appropriately….quite possibly at the risk of my own sanity as the stress of this fight is just so overwhelming for parents, carers and all the families of SEN children.  It’s not right, just or acceptable and this current government should be ashamed of this disgraceful, discriminatory behaviour.

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More teaching hours, less planning time, less marking time

I am a teacher in a Sixth Form College. Over the last few years, the number of full time teaching hours per week has increased from 21 to nearly 26 hours. Out of a 30-hour College week, this means many staff working from 8.40 to 4.10pm with only lunch breaks, which are inevitably taken up with preparing lessons, moving resources etc.

The increase in hours is directly attributable to the huge cuts in Post-16 education. The increase in hours means as teachers we now have to do nearly all our planning and marking out of school time. The marking load in Post-16 is huge, as you can imagine A Level students write long essays! The end outcomes of these cuts result in one or more of these:

a) Teachers make short cuts in marking and planning, resulting in less well prepared lessons and less formal feedback for the students

b) Teachers work for 3+hours per night outside of College

c) Teachers work part-time hours and plan/mark on their ‘days off’

d) Teachers leave the profession

With rising mental health problems in teenagers, we need more time to nurture these students, not less. In my neediest GCSE retake classes with students with all sorts of SEN issues, there is hardly ever a teaching assistant. Students who are making transitions from PRUs back into mainstream education are expected to cope with the demands of independent BTEC learning with no in-class support, as there is no money to provide this support.

Teachers are leaving in droves, and never because of the teaching.

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Spread Too Thin

I am a qualified teacher but have worked as a Teaching Assistant for the past three years in a mainstream primary. The biggest impact I have felt is the effect of cuts on the children’s experience and learning support. We no longer have specialist music or MFL provision, and the school counsellor, who used to come weekly to our school has had to go too. We are thin on the ground on MDSA’s and any illness or absence impacts hugely on how we are able to support children.   We have access to a field we share with another school, which we cannot use regularly at lunchtimes simply because we don’t have enough staff to spread the children across multiple locations at break.
Our school is unique (it seems) in that it has not had to make any cuts to in-class support staff this year, but this has come at a price.  And our leadership team has made it clear they are doing all they can to prevent that from happening, but cannot sustain this long-term. We have a mixed-ability intake with a high level of SEND, and extra funding for this support is sparse and hard to get. The journey families and schools go on to get the minimal amount of extra funding is convoluted and often unfruitful – assessments are denied, support services such as CAMHS and BHISS are grossly understaffed and underfunded, and even getting the professional advice required can take weeks if not months.
As a result, any existing TA support is driven to high-need children, with the vast majority of kids with ‘regular levels of difficulty’ often having to fend for themselves. Teachers and support staff often go beyond the remit of their jobs and contracted hours to meet children’s needs, and we are eternally juggling who gets the support and who doesn’t. It is often a heartbreaking exercise of sharing insufficient provision, knowing that you will simply not be able to help everyone who needs it.

Resources are limited to the bare minimum now. Apart from the narrowing of the UKS2 curriculum due to the results-driven syllabus, there is the element of lack of funds to provide the students with enrichment experiences, art and science equipment, topic resources and musical instruments.

It cannot go on.

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Squeezed budgets are driving experienced teachers out of the classroom

Cuts are forcing teachers out of the classroom: sparking a reliance on expensive consultants for expertise and endless rounds of recruitment.

We often hear of the teacher recruitment crisis, but that’s putting the cart before the horse. The real issue is retention. Until that’s been addressed, what’s the point of recruiting, only for teachers to leave? Squeezed budgets are leading to the loss of support staff – from teaching assistants to admin support – and swelling class sizes. This is adding to an already punishing workload, putting even more pressure on teachers who are already struggling to cope.

I’ve been concerned about the loss of experience from the classroom, and schools are increasingly shunning experience by advertising jobs specifically for newly or recently qualified staff, or for teachers on the main pay scale only. Some are saving money by ‘encouraging’ – in some cases by unethical means – experienced teachers to leave.  Obviously schools then have to mitigate the loss of accrued knowledge and expertise, perhaps by turning to expensive ‘consultants’ or adding to the ranks of ‘advisors’. It’s also a false economy in the sense that in the current climate recently qualified teachers are more likely to leave teaching altogether, meaning another expensive recruitment process.

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Hidden scandal of the erosion of SEND services

What follows is a personal story, but I am writing it is an illustration of what is happening in SEND services across the land. Last September I retired after 32 years of being a teacher, mostly in Local Authority SEND support services and special facilities. I took early retirement at 55 because I couldn’t tolerate the stress of working twice the number of contracted hours that I was supposed to work, due to absurd workload, and the stress of feeling that I was failing vulnerable children and their families.

This workload increase, and reduced provision for children, was caused by covering the work of other people whose posts had been “deleted” in response to government cuts (the loss of the Revenue Support Grant and the real terms diminution of the High Needs Block which LAs receive to pay for SEND services, special schools and EHCPs).

To make it worse, most LAs SEND support services have been marketised: schools have to pay for them – but from nothing!  With schools having ever reducing budgets they stop purchasing LA services, then more cuts are made to services, and teachers workloads increase, and the services to children and parents decline; and then the remaining services are deemed to be of little help by schools and parents, because they don’t have enough staff to do a good job any more.

This is happening across the land  – SEND services evaporating everywhere – and on the whole only the parents of children effected and the teachers in those services really know the size of the cuts and the size of workload the remaining teachers face.