school rules gone mad

Have things changed that much in classrooms over the last year, since I was in one teaching reading?

Are you a teacher, Kate?

apostrophe apology

It is very unfortunate that kids are noisy and that your grandson's problem means he found school noise difficult to deal with. He is lucky that you were on hand to teach him at home. The thing is, I don't think school's can be blamed for kids being noisy and, however hard a school or a government tries to set up inclusive practices, there will always be some kids who simply cannot manage in the school system. While that is regrettable, I think it is one of those things we just have to accept. In an educational utopia, kids like your grandson would have a private tutor away from whatever makes them cringe.

Er.....I knew you'd retired from teaching because you said you had. I quote from your post of 13.38 "I gave up teaching a long time ago." Also if you had been in school recently you would have been more au fait of the current demands placed on teaching staff and the bureaucratic nightmare they have to plough through.

As for explaining yourself to me, I neither asked you to nor expected it. How you tick is entirely your business.

Sorry dj your first sentence was about giving injections and I just assumed this was what you meant for teachers.

How do you know I haven't, katek? I do not see why I should have to explain everything to you. When do you think I retired?
It's only for the past year that I have been teaching my grandson at home. I went into the primary school before then. Things haven't changed that drastically over a year.
Of course his parents asked, thatbags. They had meetings with the nurture group. Non-contact time does not always work in secondary schools because that is the time when autistic kids need help to socialise, instead of being left to walk around the playground on their own, having to listen to hundreds of noisy kids shouting and cringing at the noise. They knew who his TA was supposed to be, but three TAs in one class does not mean you have your own TA to help all the time. It also does not mean you have a TA to help if there are more than three kids who need help.

Trisher, I did not say that regular non-contact time should be given up to giving regular injections. I said if a kid has a hypo, which is hopefully not regular.

Given the length of time since you retired Jen, perhaps you should avail yourself of some contact time to see what life is like at the chalk face today.

Did your grandson's parents ask who his TA was at secondary school?

X posts also Trisher. Agree totally.

Anya, have you lived with anyone with type 1 diabetes? If so, you will understand what I meant.

The problem is, gracesgran, that the government has decided that it wants inclusive schools but without paying more. Diabetes is not statemented. If it was it would get extra money.
Schools these days seem to be run on the fewest number of teachers with a greater number of teaching assistants. Any problems in a class and the teaching assistant usually gets sent out with the problem child. However, at least there are teaching assistants, which there were not when I was teaching.
When my grandson was in school, he had a 1-1 teaching assistant. When he went to secondary school, that TA was shared out. He had no idea who his TA was, even though the school was paid for him to have a 1-1.

Our local comp does not have facilities, or perhaps did not have facilitites for children with special or complex needs.
So my children went to a school with no children in wheelchairs, fewer children with autism [or maybe none, I cant quite remember] etc. Personally I think that was detrimental to themselves and even the parents such as myself.

That was in reply to DJ post, particularly the pearl that 'diabetes is great in theory'!

Thanks, KateK. I gave up teaching a long time ago. I do not need refresher courses. My son is a head of music, his wife is a language teacher, my other son's partner is a trained teacher working as a teaching assistant, even one of my granddaughters is starting a PGCE. I can get as much classroom experience as I need. I have three nephews and neices who are teachers, one of whom is a head in a school specifically for autistic kids.

You have to decide Jen or rather the government does. Do you want separate schooling for children with any additional need or do you want to include as many as is realistic within the same schooling as their friends and neighbours.

If the first, you need to pay for it. If the second, you need to pay for it. You (the government) cannot just assume it is another five minutes teachers can take out of the already full working week to hold up an underfunded education system.

It is. Bags. Dd1 and Dil are faculty heads and, as such, have a set number of non teaching periods to do admin work involved in managing a department and to prepare their own material. This time is gradually being eroded with attendance at external meetings, 'please take' covers, pupil meetings etc. Before having Dgs my Dil was averaging 70 hours per week often with no lunch.

And as for teachers who refuse tasks rethinking their vocation Jen, I can assure you that it is only the dedicated ones who are prepared to stick it out. They are allowed to say no.

I think maybe a few days in a school would prove a real eye opener for you.

X posts, trisher. Well said.

I think everyone is agreed that the ideal is that schools employ enough members of staff to deal with whatever medical/health requirements might crop up. I think it is unreasonable to expect teachers to take on this role except in emergencies. I very much doubt if many teachers would point blank refuse to help a child in an emergency but that is not the issue here. The issue is dealing with an ongoing health problem in the best way possible for all concerned.

Oh dj, non-contact time is supposed to be just that, time without children to prepare lessons, write reports, mark work, plan and review policies and get through the endless paperwork now required of the teaching profession. Of course in practice it seldom works out like that, but to think that an exception to this should be the regular requirements of one child opens the door to all sorts of things. This child needs an injection, that child needs more reading help, once you start the non-contact idea disappears totally. Teachers even with non-contact time spend weekends catching up on the work they didn't get done because there was an 'emergency' and they had to help out. Even the most dedicated struggle. Yes special needs children should be in ordinary schools but with the proper staff to support them, not the cheap option of loading it all onto the class teacher.

Of course non-contact time is for preparation and marking etc. But if a diabetic child has a hypo, and there is a member of staff who is not in charge of a class and refuses to help, that would just be sad. Like I said, she should reconsider whether she should be in a school.

He did have hypos in the afternoon as well, bags, just not as often. As I said, they are not predictable. It got better when the kids were older because they could see what was happening and help to divert it. They would ask for one of his special sweets and he would take one himself. Glucose tablets work quite quickly.

Diabetes is great in theory. It's just the practice that's the problem.
My mother was a nurse, and never understood about carbohydrates in meals until after she started having to give herself injections.

I don't think anyone is arguing that schools shouldn't be as inclusive as possible. The problem is that some of them simply don't have the funds to make themselves as inclusive as they would like. As gracesgran says, as far as we can tell, the school in question seems only to be asking for a bit of patience while they sort things out.