The current funding model is letting our children down

Issue of the week Inclusion in schools

“GETTING it right for every child.” That’s the Scottish Government’s mantra on education – but we are a group of parents who are here to tell them that they are massively failing children, parents and teachers, certainly in one East Lothian school.

Many people will be aware of the Scottish primary school teacher’s letter which went viral, and outlined the difficulties faced by teaching staff, thanks to the Scottish Government’s refusal to fund its policy on inclusion.

That letter highlighted the violence faced by teachers in schools, due to a lack of support and finance. But it’s not only the teachers bearing the brunt of such aggressive behaviour, it’s other children, too. Everyone’s safety is being put at risk.

The children’s education is being hugely compromised, as teachers are derailed by having to deal with the more challenging children.

Children who would previously have been in special needs schools are now being placed in mainstream education, but without the additional staffing, support or funding necessary. Teachers are expected to cater for all the various children and all their various needs.

In special needs schools, the ratio of teachers to children is 1:5. In our primary school, each teacher oversees up to 32 children, several of whom may have additional support needs (ASN). Teachers are seeing violent behaviour, swearing, spitting, shouting obscenities, chair-throwing etc, and are expected to stifle this, while the rest of the class looks on.

If you have a policy of inclusion, you must have the infrastructure to support it.

Where are the support teachers, trained in mental health issues and ASN? Where are the onsite counsellors? Where are the playground supervisors? Where is the funding to pay for them?

There are simply not enough teachers in schools. Furthermore, it would appear that schools are not always utilising help which may be offered by community support groups such as Support From The Start and Stepping Out, who can reach out to children and their parents/carers to address the issues (austerity, mental health problems, addiction, etc) that lead to the children feeling frustrated, ignored and angry.

Then their frustration and anger would not snowball into violent behaviour in schools, which is happening on an unprecedented and frankly alarming scale in our particular school – violence directed towards both teachers and other children. These episodes are so frequent, teachers are not even recording them all.

We do not see it as the fault of the teachers. They are performing as best they can in almost impossible circumstances and hostile environments. They themselves are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.

As The Herald and Herald on Sunday have explored recently, 649 teachers between the ages of 21 and 40 dropped off the teaching register in 2018, while 641 left the previous year. One of the reasons must be the increasingly stressful workload with little recompense. This is reaching crisis point.

If the Scottish Government wants to see the policy of inclusion succeed, it must release the funding necessary to pay for more support staff. It’s that simple.

Otherwise, instead of getting it right for every child, every single Scottish child will be sorely let down.

Names and addresses withheld to protect the identities of our children