Why Ofsted should not inspect safeguarding (and who should do it instead) (Feb 2024, Schools Week – by Sir Alan Wood, former Director of Children’s Services for Hackney and creator and chief executive of Hackney Learning Trust)
Reading Ofsted’s assessments of safeguarding in schools’ inspection reports shows that the process they follow is disproportionately focused on policies and procedures. These in themselves do not protect children.
…too little [time] is spent speaking to children and families. Ofsted’s approach is narrow in focus. It fails to cover the experience of the range of children in scope to safeguarding.
…Thankfully, there is already a model for this – one schools are familiar with … The Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) is a statutory multi-agency body. It is led by the three statutory safeguarding partners… They have a statutory “equal and joint” responsibility for safeguarding in their area and access to a significant range of data about children and education. This includes rates of absence, exclusions, social care referrals, the number of children in need, looked-after children, children on a child protection plan, health data (not available to Ofsted)… all the factors which impact on safeguarding and child protection.
Crucially, they know their schools and communities and the challenges they face.
The Who is Losing Learning? report (2024) from the IPPR and The Difference explores the rise in children losing learning through absence, suspension, internal exclusion and many other aspects of an ‘exclusions continuum’.
The Behaviour and Mental Health in Schools report (2023), was based on a year-long inquiry conducted by the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition into mental health and behaviour in schools. It found that:
…whilst it is important for schools to have clear expectations and boundaries in place, punitive approaches to behaviour management are harming children and young people’s mental health. The report calls for a wholescale culture shift in how behaviour is viewed and responded to in schools. This should be accompanied by developing supportive and inclusive school environments.
If pupils avoid school due to anxiety, the system needs to change (Letters from education academics to The Guardian, Feb 2024)
… If so many young people avoid school due to anxiety, like canaries in coalmines they warn that many schools damage mental health – by punishing failure to learn, and enforcing petty rules and detentions, isolation rooms and exclusions. Ofsted bullies teachers, who frequently feel forced to bully students, who, unsurprisingly, often bully peers, in a pyramid of fear and coercive control. [from Prof Priscilla Alderson, Institute of Education, UCL]
More families being ‘forced’ into home education (Nov 2024, BBC)
Dame Rachel de Souza [children’s commissioner for England] said “I think it’s shocking to see how many children have been home educated because I know so many of them are not doing it because they want to… I’m deeply, deeply concerned. I think this is forced home education.”
She added it was often children with special educational needs, children in the poorest areas and children at risk of exclusion who were being taught at home. “They’re becoming electively home educated as a last resort. They’re not getting what they need in school. I don’t think it is a positive choice for many young people.”
‘He lashed out. He was scared’: the fight to save vulnerable UK children from being kicked out of school (Oct 2024, The Observer)
…his mother says that in his second week he turned up one morning “really anxious about getting a detention and already disregulated” – having trouble managing his emotions – after forgetting both his timetable and the toilet pass he needed to go to the loo outside break times in order to manage his incontinence. His mother alerted the school that Sam would need support before going into class. But, two hours later, when she returned to check on him, she could hear a child screaming. It was Sam. “As I went in, he was completely disregulated and surrounded by five adults and he collapsed on the floor. No one had called me,” she said. The school suspended Sam for five days while they formulated a plan to manage his needs – something she was later told was unlawful.
NHS referrals for anxiety in children more than double pre-Covid levels (Aug 2024, The Guardian)
In 2023-24 there were 204,526 new referrals of patients aged 17 or under where the primary cause was anxiety, official figures show. In 2019-20, the year before Covid-19 struck, the total was 98,953. In 2016-17 it was 3,879. Doctors, NHS officials and health leaders said in interviews that the surge in anxiety referrals was “staggering” and “shocking” and laid bare an urgent need to tackle the crisis in children’s mental health.
Primary school pupil suspensions in England double in a decade (Nov 2024, BBC)
Persistent disruptive behaviour is the most common reason given to suspend or exclude a pupil. But in primary schools, nearly 90% of those permanently excluded over the past five years also had special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
Jo’s 10-year-old son Jacob was suspended from his primary school several times, before recently getting permanently excluded for persistent disruptive behaviour. Jacob has an education, health and care plan (EHCP) after an ADHD diagnosis, and is awaiting an autism assessment.
Ms Longfield [former children’s commissioner for England] says a “culture of exclusions” over the last decade has been driven by an “emphasis on academic achievement and grades”.
‘Children are being failed’: why more English parents are home educating (Mar 2024, The Guardian)
“My child had been struggling with the school environment from the start,” Julie said. “She’s autistic, has sensory difficulties, finds noise and lights difficult, but is academically clever. She found it so hard to navigate relationships with peers and her anxiety was so intense she was mostly mute at school.
Sharp increase in pupils suspended or excluded from schools in England (Jul 2024, The Guardian)
Stephen Morgan, the education minister, said: “These shocking figures are a wake-up call about the problems that have grown in our schools in recent years. They put into sharp focus that too many pupils are being held back by their background and that our education system is failing to meet the needs of children with additional needs.
‘It felt like children were droids at toxic school’ (May 2024, BBC)
Kate, not her real name, says she became a teacher to inspire her pupils, but left Ernulf fearing the repercussions of straying from their strict rules – policies the trust says were introduced to address poor student behaviour post-Covid. “It’s just basically: be in line, be silent and just get through your day. Do as you’re told,” she says. “You don’t like it? There’s the door. It’s the Astrea way or the highway. This is absolutely toxic.”
Ofsted head says English schools should not turn away ‘difficult’ pupils (Nov 2024, The Guardian
“First and foremost, schools must meet the needs of all their local children. It really shouldn’t be the case that local children have to fit into the needs of their school,” Oliver told the Confederation of School Trusts (CST) in Birmingham.
‘The Rise of Authoritarian Schools” (Feb 2024, The Lead)
“I have one boy who left [college] in year 7… he was generally a really well-behaved child, but he was being sent to reflection on a daily basis because of fidgeting or looking in a different direction,” says Nurton, adding that he has all the calling cards of ADHD. “But when I met him for the first time, he had got to the point of self-harming, channelling all his negativity and anxiety into cleaning himself, scrubbing his hands to the point where they would bleed.” It took a year, says Nurton, to bring him out of himself and help him realise that his sense of self-worth should not have been aligned to these authoritarian measures.
Autistic pupils in England denied right to education as absenteeism surges, says charity (Mar 2024, The Guardian)
“These numbers prove that England has a broken educational system,” said Jolanta Lasota, the charity’s chief executive. “These children are being forced into absenteeism, which is the start of exclusion. It’s not a choice they’re making: they want to be in school but are being forced to stay away because their mental health needs are not being met.”
Rate of pupils leaving for home education doubles (Feb 2024, Schools Week)
Katie Cox’s autistic daughter started secondary school last September, after being unable to attend primary for two years due to anxiety that developed as she entered key stage 2. “We had a feeling this was going to be a hurdle to overcome, but unfortunately after a few days she was not coping very well at all.” She said her daughter was not given flexibility over her uniform, which she needed because of sensory processing issues, and attempts to create a part-time timetable broke down. Cox said the school showed a “lack of understanding” of her daughter’s needs, and that she felt “forced” to withdraw her, adding that her daughter was now “thriving”.
Mental health is main cause of rising absences in England, say headteachers (Jun 2024, The Guardian)
Last year, the Department for Education (DfE) classed 150,000 children at state schools in England as severely absent – missing more than half their sessions – 150% higher than the 60,000 who were severely absent in 2018-19, before the pandemic.
Inside England’s ultra-disciplined schools (Oct 2024, New Humanist)
[a parent talked of] “morning inspection” where the student body stands in the hall while their pencil cases are checked. …”something schools don’t understand is that it has a massive effect on the ones who like to follow rules because they don’t want to be in trouble.” At first, both children would come home from school exhausted. The older daughter, then in Year 10, “had a breakdown one night, saying she was finding it hard to cope,” says Matthews, but his younger daugher Ella*, who was then in Year 8, “was more quiet around it.” Shortly afterwards, she was found self-harming at school. “We spoke to doctors and CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) who said they didn’t have any immediate concerns, then one day she came home from school and was violently sick.” Ella had taken a serious overdose, and while it had happened on school grounds, says Matthews, teachers “were completely unaware. I can’t imagine that she wasn’t acting strange, but they hadn’t noticed.”
‘Happiness recession’: UK 15-year-olds at bottom of European satisfaction league (Aug 2024, The Guardian)
“Alarm bells are ringing,” said Mark Russell, the chief executive of the Children’s Society. “UK teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-olds recording the lowest life satisfaction on average across 27 European nations.”
Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents (May 2024, The Observer)
…child psychologists and parent groups are warning that the push for full attendance is driving “heavy-handed” crackdowns at some schools, and ignores the issues that often lie behind school refusal, including mental health problems, unmet special educational needs, bereavement or the child being a carer.
Educating Hackney 