While this is all true, and I agree that it is a big part of it, the lack of actual consequences for the worst behaved kids at schools is why schools are struggling. You used to be able to properly expel children instead you now exclude, and unless its exceptional circumstances you have to take them back if no other school will take them. Even in the event of exceptional circumstances the kid has a legal right to education so the LA has to provide this somewhere, usually in isolation at the same school, which drags resources from elsewhere from a very limited budget.
Going back far enough and we used to have schools for this group of children that they would get transferred to who had the staff ratios and skills to deal with them properly but they mostly got shut or moved private as part of this change.
Once the kids work out that there are no consequences to their action what do you think will happen?
Couple this with kids who do not belong at a standard school because of behavioural and learning disabilities because there are not enough places at specialist schools and/or their parents straight up refuse to have them diagnosed (and the primary school deliberately omitted it from the hand over) and you end up with way too many kids who are next to impossible to manage.
I am talking about kids who you are not allowed to make loud noises in the class room, or boys that are not allowed to sit next to girls because they get grabby, or kids that throw chairs at teachers, or kids that bring knifes to school, or sell drugs. Without the schools that are geared up to handle them, and a robust process to move them to these schools that takes weeks not terms to do this is not going to get better.
Lmaydev@programming.dev 10 months ago
That still mostly comes down to austerity. The services these kids need aren’t available.
tankplanker@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The ability to properly expel happened a few years before Osborne became chancellor, and the schools started shutting around then as well. Osbourne accelerated the process but hes not the initial architect of this problem.
Originally it was sold as every child is entitled to an education, and the very worst kids were not getting one. There have been subsequent judgements against LAs/Gov based around the 98 rights act, particularly A2P1 and there were cases before that as well.
You also had schools booting kids out around exam season just to improve their grade average, but like another over played boogeyman benefit scroungers the actual amount doing this was very low.
So austerity has made it worse, but it is not the cause of this problem.