To think too much is expected of teachers these days

Just a small point, but please please please do not name school support staff as ‘non-teachers’. I was a school business manager for over 20 years and fought hard for the support staff to be given their own status. As I used to say, you wouldn’t call nurses ‘non- doctors’.

Good point, Soro. Many schools acknowledge the great responsibility of a bursar or SBM and give them a place on the senior management team. They have to have a say in all matters educational to spend the money in the right areas.

LovelyLady - children with additional needs are not included so that other children can be 'kind' to them. They are included so that they are accepted on equal terms.

I do not understand how having 4 adults in a room can be wrong - as an ex-teacher it was lovely to have some extra help so that I could give individual attention to the children who were having problems.

LovelyLady

Pammiel, yes I agree that was in our time. Now it’s a different generation and the Specialist Schools try to address the individuals specific need to get them back to mainstream school. No mainstream child should be held back by an intrusion of support staff who are there to support a needy children.
I went to see my grandchildren’s class as it was parents/grandparents morning.
What a shock - class of 18 pupils.
4 adults were there supporting the children. What a confusing organisation.
I totally agree children must be in mainstream education but not to the detriment of others. Yes it teaches children to be caring and understand but it’s holding the mainstream children back. I want to be kind but it’s not helping our children.
Times have changed but not for the better.

My son has high functioning autism and had a full time teaching assistant at school, so clearly there was one more adult ( at least) in the classroom. Amazingly enough when there was something like a quiz in class there was a huge amount of competition to have him on a team. He was always the first one chosen. Why? Because he knew so much general knowledge; his thought processes were odd, he is eccentric but, boy, does he know some facts. He was far and away beyond some of the kids in the class. You know, the 'normal' ones. No 'holding back' others by him.

Thank you Soroptimum for pointing out TAs are not non teachers. We are often degree educated but choose a support role. I’ve just finished work today. I’ve been teaching and supporting!

When I started primary teaching in 1984 I had years of classes with 30 plus pupils and no additional support in class. There was no additional support input in the first two years of primary and no nursery provision. I would, however, say those years were easier for me than recent years. My pupils, in the earlier years, had a good grounding in the basics plus an hour a, day if structured play. Record keeping was far less as was planning. Nowadays teachers are inundated with paperwork, assessments, meetings, curriculum development, etc. Even with additional support in class and support from additional support teachers I feel the lot of a teacher today is much harder. Many excellent teachers I knew left while others who knew all the jargon were promoted!

Given the size of many of today's schools - AND the classes - it's quite ridiculous that today's teachers should be expected to be 'observant' as to every single need of all the kids that they come into contact with.

When schools - and classes - were smaller, it might have been possible .............................. but with classes of 30+ and schools of 1,500-2,000 pupils, it's FAR too much to ask of teachers.

Jane Judge, I can assure you that the children I was referring to were not disabled, mentally or physically. And obviously I'm not in a position to make any judgment about their family circumstances or their emotional well being.

I have re read the thread and I don't know where I have said you were using 'judgement' but even if we start on a very basic point some children will starting school very soon after their 4th birthday and because of how underfunded early intervention is now they may have additional needs anyway, so you have no idea do you of their short-long term outcomes?

Trisher, those other staff you refer to are called - teaching assistants! They're already doing all these things and many teach also. Any teacher who doesn't know about special needs and especially those of the children they teach, should be ashamed to call themselves a teacher. Sadly, many just leave the education of such children to unqualified people (teaching assistants) even though the teacher is meant to be responsible for them as a member of their class.

As an ex teacher I would say that too much as always been expected of teachers !

Kryptonite

Trisher, those other staff you refer to are called - teaching assistants! They're already doing all these things and many teach also. Any teacher who doesn't know about special needs and especially those of the children they teach, should be ashamed to call themselves a teacher. Sadly, many just leave the education of such children to unqualified people (teaching assistants) even though the teacher is meant to be responsible for them as a member of their class.

You misunderstood my post completely. Teaching assistants do (or used to do so many have gone) a valuable job in schools, but they have not the expertise, training or experience to deal with the problems now seen in many schools. There are professionals, speech therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, counsellors etc who would bring their skills into schools and help children who need such assistance. Even if a teacher knows about special needs, providing tailored assistance to every child is difficult and sometimes impossible. There may be a few teachers who fail to do their best for such children but they are few, and if a child has special needs they are required to keep records and assess their progress.

It makes me laugh when I read about the education system of yesteryear being so much better than today. One of my uncles left school being unable to read or write but it pretty much went unnoticed as long as he kept quiet which he did; looking back he was definitely on the spectrum. My aunt is dyslexic so avoided school whenever she could because she was made to feel stupid. Another uncle can read but stringing a sentence together on paper is difficult...yes, undiagnosed dyslexia. My mother, bright, able to read and write well achieved very little at school because she was off so often caring for her sick mother. Nobody ever chased her for attendance at all. It was just accepted that she couldn't be there. The uncles were fantastic engineers but everything they learned was after they left school!
Skip forward 20 years and my very bright sister struggled with writing. Mum moved her to a private school and she blossomed. Turns out she was left handed but the school she was at before wouldn't let her write with her left hand. I was always labelled as lazy, messy and melancholic in school. Actually, it is now looking like I had ADHD to go with my dyspraxia and being in a busy classroom was very distracting for me. I was lambasted by the teachers for my sins which I never seemed to be able to help committing. I suspect today's teachers would have recognised the depression and withdrawal as a sign that something was not right at home. I actually went into teaching not out of a desire to educate per se, but to make sure that the children I was teaching were not just branded as trouble makers, lazy, or stupid but to help them where I could so they didn't lose their self esteem along the way.
Teachers are capable of dealing with mental health issues, giving sex education, etc., they just need the back up along with smaller classes. At the moment, we are stretching them to their limits and then wondering why they are leaving in droves.

Icanhandthemback what an excellent post. The prisons have been full for years of people whose needs were unrecognised and were simply failed by the square peg education system.

I can't be the only person bemused by all the references to our parents talking to us about sex, relationships, contraception and periods can I? I don't know ANYONE who was spoken to by their parents about s-e-x- and relationships. I started my periods and was frightened to tell my Mum as I felt like I was in trouble (she had never mentioned it) and it was something to be kept quiet. She certainly never spoke to me about anything else and neither did my Dad.

I used to work for a well known supermarket and we were told to fill in customers details for them if they seemed like they didn't want to and they wanted a home delivery as a lot of people couldn't read or write very well! My friends Mum worked for the adult literacy service at our local college too helping people learn to read. I had totally forgotten this until you post icanhandthemback.

Yes am laughing as well at the idea that parents on the whole used to provide adequate sex education.

No, from my experience from working in a school, it has always been a part of their job. My old Aunt was a primary school teacher years ago and welfare was part of what she did, it was hand in hand with teaching the children.

* Teachers are capable of dealing with mental health issues, giving sex education, etc., they just need the back up along with smaller classes. At the moment, we are stretching them to their limits and then wondering why they are leaving in droves*

Absolutely right Icanhandthemback

Re the sex ed. My mother told me about periods but definitely not sex. My friend at school was a farmers daughter and she gave me some information!!

It’s changes in society that has made teachers job more difficult,
more single parent families, more deprivation, more assertive parents, more indisciplined pupils, all together with shrinking budgets.
I enjoyed school one teacher with a class of 35 or so teachers were respected, pupils mostly well behaved. Looking back there were some with mild learning difficulties but no special provision was made. Almost everyone got jobs at 16 according to their exam results, the norm then was to train on the job and get extra qualifications on the career ladder.
Some of course make no progress and remained in unskilled work, where the main qualification is to “turn up on time” sadly not always achievable.

Yes those children with learning difficulties were just left in the corner of those classrooms, as were those with safeguarding issues.

The reasons why I was happy to retire - I loved teaching, but there was too much else - and not enough time!

My mother gave me some sex education when my periods started. Don't go near the boys ? That was it.

To be fair I wish someone had given me that advice

YES,YES,YES!

My daughter is a teacher and there is so much she has to deal with that she has never been trained to do. So much of the pastoral care needs a qualified professional.

And don't get me started on the workload. She often works seven days a week, 10 hours a day through all half terms and holidays. She cares about her students and never gives other than her very best. Students can email her out of hours and often it is not just homework they have questions about. Especially during lockdown.

She says she still enjoys her job which is amazing considering the pressure she is under.