Blog terminology: This blog post references to two terminologies used in the education setting: ‘pastoral care’ which here, encompasses all mental health and well-being support in schools, and ‘SEND’ which is the current acronym referring to support for students with learning disabilities, or are neurodivergent with varying support needs. I acknowledge that many disability activists, including myself, dislike the term ‘SEND’: I am using it to ensure strict relevance, association and understanding to disability in an educational setting.
It’s no secret that the UK education system puts a serious toll on many students mental health and well-being. Whether it be social cliques, grade expectations, lack of funding or the consistent misunderstanding of a range of disabilities: its been apparent for many years that the system is flawed and needs immediate change.
In light of this, I’ve highlighted some of the key issues that I think are limiting support in schools and what I propose could be an answer. Of course, none of these are easy changes and educational institutes are bound by a number of higher rules, financial barriers and staff capabilities, so by no means am I considering this a simple fix.
Out of a number of barriers, my top three that I am highlighting today are: Funding, teaching method and discipline.
Funding in Education
Many schools have experienced difficulty in maintaining efficient education standards for their students due to the fluctuations in funding and the implications previous funding cuts have caused. 2023 in the UK saw the incredibly concerned ‘RAAC’ crisis: RAAC, short for ‘Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete’ is used as a cheaper alternative to standard concrete when building roofs, floors and walls. RAAC has a shorter life than standard concrete and a greater risk of collapse, becoming 25% weaker when exposed to water.
RAAC has been identified as a concern since 1994, but it wasn’t until 2017 did the government launch an inspection into use of materials in school buildings. In 2021, a government pledge attempted to rectify the issue by claiming to rebuild 500 schools over the next decade, however this failed to predict the risk of RAAC and its subsequent crisis over the next two years, despite warnings from the 90s. In 2023, 234 schools were impacted by the risk of RAAC collapse, with students returning to online study, experiencing complete school closures or delayed term start dates. The National Audit Office stated that this impact could have been avoided if there had been sufficient funding into school buildings. Which, despite advice from the Department of Education, there evidently was not.
Thus, with 2020-2021 requiring UK students to learn virtually, reducing chance for social development and in-person interactions, many students had to return to this stage again in 2023, undoubtedly having impacts on educational success, social learning and overall well-being.
Not only is poor infrastructure impacting student development and well-being, but so is the ability for schools to have increased accessibility, SEND trained staff and general pastoral care. Having researched into key limitations to these developments, two main areas appear to be: staff shortages and school budgets.
In the face of insufficient pay to meet affordability and poor workloads, 2024 has understandably seen a huge drop in teacher availability, with pastoral care and SEND positions seemingly being the most affected. In a horrible form of Catch 22, teachers are leaving their jobs due to behaviour considered to be associated with a lack of pastoral care and SEND support, and as a result, we don’t have enough staff to fill the pastoral care and SEND roles that are needed, thus limiting the support a school can provide.
The 2023 Ofsted report noted an increasingly high demand for SEND support and mental health services, stating the need for such is severely straining the limited resources and tight budget within schools. As such, schools are forced to prioritise between numerous key developments and are unable to provide the necessary support systems that are crucial to student well-being, mental health support and accessibility needs.
So how can we shift this? There isn’t a straightforward answer.
Ideally, schools need better funding, with a higher allocated budget, that puts student well-being in the forefront of its consideration. There is certainly a debate into private and public-school support compared to state, but it would likely take another blog to delve into this side of things. Campaigns need to emphasise the priority mental health and SEND support should have in schools when allocating spend – which could be achieved by educational boards setting a required spend or percentage of budget allocation towards these two key areas. Support is often lacking in favour of other educational areas that are considered more important, using this as the excuse when providing insufficient aid or initiative to mental health support.
Method of Learning
The constant joke as I shifted into my GCSE and then A-Level years was that school exams were simply “memory games”. Providing you had a good memory and decent timekeeping, you could ace a test after swallowing a textbook, regardless of if you had paid attention in class, engaged in the lesson or had any interest in the subject at all.
This then leaves students who would flourish in lesson spaces and when application of the subject was demonstrated, yet struggled with remembering all of the information, and subsequently fall down in examinations. Certainly for a lot of neurodivergent students they became accustomed to the phrase “their grades do not reflect their abilities”. While some school exams offer a percentage of coursework to try and ‘balance out’ this occurrence, there is still a greater focus on timed, closed book exams and thus acing the coursework is unlikely to see production of a grade that reflects a student’s ability.
In some schools (predominantly private), students are often subject to various PSHE workshops on ‘individual learning’ and discovering the learning and revision style that works for you. But this doesn’t cover most schools and if they do, at least in my opinion, the lessons rarely allow for any moulding of these approaches. Many continue to teach in memory rota fashion just to complete the lesson. Furthermore, teachers may group or label students as ‘poor performers’ because they could not match the learning style, have low attendance for a variety of reasons, or struggle to maintain focus, pushing down their motivation and reducing the chances of feeling welcome within that educational space.
There are absolutely those exceptional teachers that go above and beyond their duties to ensure the intake of information reflects multiple learning styles, but then there we have the issue that we are asking teachers to put more into their work than what they are being paid for.
There are lots of initiatives in the UK that aim to deliver workshops in schools about independent learning strategies and ‘strategies for success’, such as Learning Performance and Inner Drive. These are useful in demonstrating the variety of information processing and retaining of information and there certainly is value in pushing for more schools to engage in these programmes. (It is important to note additionally, that offering workshops on learning styles is unlikely going to solve every student’s struggle at school.)
Teachers need to be aware of the range of student differences, experiences and barriers to learning and actively provide support where possible to all students, with no assumptions or judgement. Schools need to engage with the students about lesson styles. Creating focus groups that encompass all students opinions and perspectives and chances to deliver feedback knowing their voice will genuinely be heard, will give teachers an awareness of how their classes are being received, and give students the confidence that their voices are being heard.
Discipline
If I could choose my biggest dislike of school interventions, it would by far be isolation.
For those less familiar with the term, isolation refers to being removed from a classroom and put into an empty room alone. This method is considered to be a response to ‘challenging behaviour’, but it’s pretty much a way for teachers to continue teaching lessons without actually addressing the issue.
According to an inquiry made by MIND[1], a vast number of young people reported that they were being isolated, physically restrained or excluded from school because their mental health conditions were being treated as bad behaviour. In fact, out of the young people they interviewed, 48% of students reported this occurring.
I had a look at the Ofsted guidance for ‘Positive environments where children can flourish’ – last updated in October 2021 for reference – and its guidance was: to recognise that all behaviour is communication, that children’s rights come before any restrictions and intrusive interventions such as restraint and isolation were considered absolutely last case options.
In the past year I have met various students who make jokes about the amount of times they get placed into isolation, something that, for some, has completely taken away their motivation to learn, or thrive within the educational space. Something that was designed to be a last resort discipline measure seems to be dished out for mis-recognised trauma, mental health conditions and neuro-disabilities.
While I’d love to advocate for the total eradication of Isolation in schools, I’m going to be realistic, especially since in the short-term, it can protect teachers and students in the rare case a genuine risk occurs within the classroom. Instead, there needs to be more training to all teachers and school staff, specifically targeting neurodivergent conditions, mental health and the impact of a range of trauma, such as bullying, parental bereavement and financial struggle.
Students and other staff should be able to have the right to challenge a teacher’s decision following a disciplinary action and, much like my suggestions when shaping teaching in schools, students should have every opportunity to provide feedback and speak up for recognition of their disability or mental health struggle, and additionally to be given the confidence to speak up against teachers who have wrongfully disciplined them or their peers.
As I mentioned in at the beginning of this blog: by no means am I considering any of these barriers to be easily fixed. But they can get thoughts rolling and encourage students to be more aware of how they can advocate for better recognition of mental heath conditions within their school environment. The battle surrounding mental health advocacy and government funding has been a long standing issue, but if more schools begin to combine forces and publicise how important funding into well-being and disability support is, we can slowly see a shift into a more positive educational atmosphere.
A summary of suggestions to advocate for mental health recognition in schools:
Public advocacy to make the general population aware of how funding issues are impacting support systems.
Student forums that genuinely see student ideas and advice shape the school.
Workshops to encourage recognition into multiple learning techniques.
Better and more frequent teacher training in mental health, trauma and neurodivergent conditions.
A system to challenge disciplinary actions and call out teachers when isolation, physical restraint or exclusion is inappropriately used: perhaps mimicking a court case.
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