To think too much is expected of teachers these days

One of the things that brought this to my notice was the provision for special needs children in some schools in the US. Someone I know with a child with cerebral palsy told me that physiotherapy was actually provided in the school for her child. (I know this isn't the general rule) It brought to my mind a whole other sort of educational provision where services were provided to properly care for the whole child and teachers were free to teach. It would be much more expensive but would be so much better for children.

Half the kids today can't even feed themselves when they start school let alone spell when they leave.

Hmmm!

I was a secondary teacher who hardly ever had a lunch break and was in the school building for 11 or 12 hours a day. No matter how much I did, I could never have given every one of the 200-300 children I taught individual attention. It's not just treating the job as a vocation or going on a tick box course - what is needed is money!

Not only that Yammy but there are some superficially high-achieving schools, who don't hide from parents that they don't have good special needs facilities. They actively encourage parents to send special needs children to other schools, which means that these schools have an unbalanced intake and find it even more difficult to cope with inadequate funding. Parents don't want to send their children to schools with a high number of special needs children, so some schools end up being "sink" schools.

Nanna58

Why on earth should it be unreasonable to expect teachers to know about Special Needs - I did, it was my job to know!! Did plenty that wasn’t too; supplying breakfast , clean underwear and sometimes just plain love:

It's not unreasonable. However, it is unreasonable to expect teachers to be familiar with every single syndrome which has been identified and, furthermore, to have specific strategies to deal with every single syndrome, in addition to dealing with all the other individuals in the class - in the case of secondary teachers this is likely to be 200-300 pupils.

Not only that, but teachers have to keep their subject knowledge up-to-date, in addition to current trends in methodology (ie how to teach specific content) and all the legal requirements such as safeguarding issues.

How many hours/days a year do you reckon they need to do that?

Nanna58

Why on earth should it be unreasonable to expect teachers to know about Special Needs - I did, it was my job to know!! Did plenty that wasn’t too; supplying breakfast , clean underwear and sometimes just plain love:

It's not unreasonable. However, it is unreasonable to expect teachers to be familiar with every single syndrome which has been identified and, furthermore, to have specific strategies to deal with every single syndrome, in addition to dealing with all the other individuals in the class - in the case of secondary teachers this is likely to be 200-300 pupils.

Not only that, but teachers have to keep their subject knowledge up-to-date, in addition to current trends in methodology (ie how to teach specific content) and all the legal requirements such as safeguarding issues.

How many hours/days a year do you reckon they need to do that?

Having worked in both special needs schools and mainstream I can see the drawbacks of both if underfunded and the staff are not trained properly. In the 80's when I worked in special schools the staff understood the children's needs and were qualified to help them but the children were isolated from their peers they would have to interact with for the rest of their lives and could not always fit into society when they left school. They learned bad habits from each other.
Once I was back in the mainstream I could see the drawbacks and difficulties of teaching children with special needs in the ordinary classroom, not enough trained specialised help and the majority of the class missed out due to the amount of time that had to be given to the few.
So many governments have tried to put this right. Ask any teacher and they will have different views on how this should be approached. The one big issue is funding and specialised training for either teachers or other classroom specialists. No one can know enough to cover everything.

Tough love? No thank you! Many of us were hit with a ruler even for minor offences in the 50's. I was 4 when it happened to me.
Teachers are trained to understand special needs and emotional problems but can't spend much of their time dealing with this. They also don't resort to violence to cope with a class.

I think every child in school is special and deserving of support. Be it the child whose dog has just died, the child whose father is fighting in Iraq, the child who refuses to eat the school lunches, and all the other little requirements that pop up as you say trisher. Everything needs to be fitted into the day.
As a teacher I never took a lunch break, I never left the building before 7 pm. I wanted to help the children in a pastoral role as much as in an educational one. That could my child and I would want the teacher with the best experience of the whole pupil to be the one to respond. If it meant missing my swim, then so be it.
I have no idea if this value added is possible at secondary level, I have no idea if it works with more than 20 in a class, but fortunately we were able to crack it as near as possible.
I'm also guessing it helped that we were able to go beyond what was required in the curriculum by selecting the good bits and ditching the bad.
"Just doing your job" is a good description, treating it as a vocation goes one step beyond.

Nanna58

Why on earth should it be unreasonable to expect teachers to know about Special Needs - I did, it was my job to know!! Did plenty that wasn’t too; supplying breakfast , clean underwear and sometimes just plain love:

Teachers do know about special needs obviously. The issue is that the strategies for helping SEN children often require resources which are not forthcoming.

Why on earth should it be unreasonable to expect teachers to know about Special Needs - I did, it was my job to know!! Did plenty that wasn’t too; supplying breakfast , clean underwear and sometimes just plain love:

I grew up with 3 lads ( not related to me) who were all dyslexic.
All 3 were disruptive in class.
All 3 went onto be criminals. This is reflected now in our prison population.
BTW EllanVannin this same teacher had a name for the cane and slipper. He would make you say thank you after he hit you with either.
His other sadistic pleasure..... if you were in the corridor with your face against the wall he would crack his knuckles down the back of your head.
These experiences left me with a very bitter attitude towards teachers. But I have known ( in my adult years) some very nice ones ?

In my line of work and many others, we have a main function but has to be complemented by others
1. Skills to do our job
2. Know about the industry we are on
3. Know which new tools and techniques to do our jobs better
4. Keep our education up to date to match the times and market

Same with teachers, they are no exception to this rule

I guess the definition of "doing your job" has also changed with the decades

EllanVannin

Yes,*MerylStreep*, at least in the 50's I left school able to spell and string a sentence together. Half the kids today can't even feed themselves when they start school let alone spell when they leave.
Perhaps tough love was the way to go in the 50's !

What utter rot!

I'm afraid you've been like the teacher who marks a perfectly correct statement as wrong.

Urmstongran

A small correction:

The Labour Government under Tony Blair established academies through the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which amended the section of the Education Act 1996 relating to City Technology Colleges. They were first announced in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000.

Labour.
Not Conservative.

The academies created during the Blair government were totally different from the ones which have been created since 2010. Gove piggy backed on Blair's legislation to create schools with completely different aims.

I agree trisher mainstreaming has indeed been done on the cheap. Teachers seem to be expected to do 101 things they certainly didn't have to do when I was at school. I think your suggestion is a good one.

Yes,*MerylStreep*, at least in the 50's I left school able to spell and string a sentence together. Half the kids today can't even feed themselves when they start school let alone spell when they leave.
Perhaps tough love was the way to go in the 50's !

A small correction:

The Labour Government under Tony Blair established academies through the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which amended the section of the Education Act 1996 relating to City Technology Colleges. They were first announced in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000.

Labour.
Not Conservative.

I had a learning disability that truly didnt let me grasp some concepts

Because the teachers were not minimally educated, theh justified my bad grades with "I was lazy and wanted to give them a hard time
If I only put more effort, I would do better"

If only a teacher would have suggested the possibility of a learning disability and please get that explored further with an specialist, what a difference it would have made

Instead, I became the girl who would get frustrated and difficult for no reason

As I said on a different post I am a retired homelessness officer. When I was working I undertook many duties that were not part of my job description, if you like I could provide a list. I think you will find that, contrary to what the press would have you believe, many local government workers do far more than what they should only do as part of the job description. The same applies to teachers who, I know, will go 'above and beyond'. We thought it was just common decency.

Ah, the wonderful world of 50s education. My teacher hit me round the head so hard that my glasses went flying. Why, because I just couldn’t grasp maths.
That teacher went to prison ( later) for assault on a child.

Looking back I can see now all the children that were ‘on the spectrum’ Violence was used on these children.

EllanVannin

There was none of this in the 40's/ 50's what's happened, what's gone wrong with the world ?
In the " leaner " years I had a brilliant education in both primary and secondary school which I'm sure many others will vouch for and the majority left school with jobs to go to.

What constitutes a 'brilliant' education?

I think that the attitude that education is (or should be) simply about fitting people for jobs is Gradgrindian and denies the majority a chance to appreciate life outside of work with an understanding of culture. Schools should not be machines churning out factory fodder or universities creators of a managerial class.

With regard to the OP, yes, I think that unless teachers are expected to have superpowers (in which case pay them super wages) they should be employed to teach, and social workers, psychologists, counsellors and so on should be the ones to fulfil these roles. The welfare state should ensure that children go to school fed, rested and able to learn, so that teachers can get on with what they are trained to do.

Unfortunately, there is so little provision of services for mental health issues, special needs of various types and such patchy help to alleviate poverty that too many children fall through the gaps unless teachers catch them.

Yes. Teachers are expected to be social workers, policemen and then teachers. They don’t get paid enough for what they have to do these days. Then there’s the parents...

Part of the problem is that the curriculum is so rigid and Academies are out to make money. Tories have a great deal to answer for.....especially Mr Gove!