Changing Schools: Meeting the challenges of a broken system

In short …

• Our education system is broken as teachers leave the profession in droves and more kids are not coping with schooling.
• The reasons for this are multiple: some of them are societal (kids play less and are on screens more), and some of them are policy-driven (the government has pushed formalised learning onto kids earlier and become overly focused on standardised testing).
• The solutions are also multiple but, in a nutshell, teachers and school leaders need much more support and more flexibility to adapt the curriculum to the diverse range of students in their classroom, not the other way around. And we need to shift the focus from testing to building relationships – for kids, parents and teachers.

A few weeks ago, I posted this on

I am a country government-educated woman and I am still grateful that I left school with a curious mind and a serious love of learning. I wish that for my grandchildren.

It concerns me though that teachers are leaving the profession in droves, exhausted and burnt out. Parents are struggling with children who are experiencing ‘school can’t’ and many students are failing basic literacy and numeracy at higher rates than ever before. Essentially, these are signs that the education system is broken and needs fixing.

A few weeks ago, I posted this message on Facebook:

My heart aches for all those teachers who are leaving the profession due to the massive increase in stress. Overloaded curriculums, excessive testing, time-consuming accountability tasks, teaching out of your expertise, implementing new fads that have a questionable chance of succeeding and lack of support for challenging students often steal valuable time to prepare, to refill their cup and even to nurture healthy relationships.

I celebrate and thank every teacher who has taught or is still teaching. You matter.

You can see the original post and comments here. And I will be sharing some comments from that post (and others I have shared recently) throughout this blog.

So, what has changed for teachers?

I left the classroom in 1998 and these things were not happening. Of course, there were always some students who would struggle in mainstream schooling and some teachers who found it difficult. The number of children now being homeschooled is yet another sign that mainstream schooling is unable to meet the needs of more students than ever.

Unfortunately, we have politicians making educational decisions rather than the real experts — education is a political football. The evidence is there to see and recommendations are overwhelmingly in favour of learning and development through play for early learners, yet it is ignored!!!

Many things have changed.

1. Firstly, there has been a massive increase in testing and assessment.

NAPLAN was introduced in 2008 as a supposed innovation to improve standards. Interestingly, standards have continued to drop over time rather than improve since NAPLAN arrived. The focus on preparing students for this standardised test has stolen valuable time for teachers to build relationships with students and teaching time. It also created the My School site which basically set up competition between schools. That really cannot be seen as a positive thing because every school community is a unique community. Competition between schools was not part of the intention behind NAPLAN. Given that some schools prepare students over a couple of years for this test and others, as it is recommended, give some sample tests just before, it is a statistically invalid test. And yet millions of dollars are spent on this that could be far better spent providing the extra support that teachers need to do their job.

2. The push down of formalised learning has created more anxiety and distress because you cannot force learning while the skills required for that learning are still developing.

We now have significant research that shows that most boys are cognitively behind girls at the age of five and yet the assumption is that one size fits all when it comes to expectations around curriculum. When little boys struggle to meet the needs of the curriculum a year younger than they used to, is it any wonder they start to learn to dislike school, and learning of any kind, and find it very stressful? Then of course boys are punished at much higher rates than girls, partly because of the old cultural norm that boys are tough. Indeed, they are more vulnerable than girls on many levels and when their self-worth is challenged by continual failure, are we surprised they are reluctant to engage? The stress they feel often comes out in externalised behaviour, which they are then punished even more for. When a child is full of cortisol, which is the stress hormone, one of the best ways to release it is through movement and play. Counterintuitively, so many boys are punished by losing recess, as folks in my community commented:

From folks in my social media community:

And yet the first ‘punishment’ the schools go for is a lunch or recess detention!

And still the first thing that goes when children “misbehave” is recess or lunch time…

But they take away their recess for not finishing their work.

Obviously, this will increase the level of cortisol and decrease their capacity to create dopamine which is what is needed for learning. The research has been really strong about this for a very long time and yet this practice continues. We need to do more to help our boys cope.

3. The overcrowded curriculum, and the increased requirements for accountability, often through excessive testing, means teachers have less time to be able to create opportunities for social cohesion in classrooms, through fun, the arts and through one-on-one connection time.

The safer a child feels with their teacher within the classroom, the better they will behave, the harder they will persevere with learning and the more likely they will be to collaborate with the teacher to improve their skills when making choices. Relational safety takes time to build and it’s very hard for teachers to focus on this when they are exhausted and time poor.

Some schools still favour behaviourist policies. Punishment does not teach — it just creates more tension and resentment and damages the relationship. Shame-based behaviour management policies also don’t teach and indeed can cause long-term damage that can impact adult mental health.

Shame is when kids’ names are written in red on the board, or they have to wear a white tag around their neck during recess and lunch or when the whole class is kept in at break time because of the behaviour of one or two fellow classmates. These are outdated and ineffective techniques and yet they are still happening.

There are some excellent people out there running professional learning for schools that focus on student and teacher wellbeing, and also on the power of cooperative learning, of restorative justice and of upskilling students who have problematic behaviour. Helen Street from Positive Schools, Adam Voigt from Real Schools, Meg Durham from Open Mind Education, Emma Gentle (who has some great resources, especially for graduating teachers) and Bernii Godwin of Godwin Consulting are just a few who are passionate and committed about changing the outdated ways of behaviour management that still exist in many schools. Behaviourism has been shown to be ineffective much of the time as it does not upskill students to make better choices. It just creates angrier and more stressed students even more incapable of making regulated and calmer choices!

4. The decline in play in childhood is a really significant contributor to the decreased social and emotional competence of children in our classrooms.

When there was a significant shift around removing dangerous play equipment like seesaws, long monkey bars and large metal slides, there was a decline the freedom for children to play, with other children without the close supervision of grown-ups. I have been writing about this for a very long time; that our children are meant to be playing with other children, of all ages, all genders with freedom that allows lots of movement, autonomy and choice. It is even better in an environment with potential risk. The less children play, the more problems they have when they turn up into our classrooms.

Early childhood educators have been telling me for a very long time that today’s students as five-year-olds have less oral vocabulary, poorer gross and fine motor skills, poorer self-regulation and often an inability to initiate and sustain play. All of these things will impact their capacity to cope with and manage their schooling. 

So essentially, they are turning up less capable, less competent and less resilient into a schooling system that has pushed the expectations around formalised learning far higher!

This puts enormous pressure on teachers too, who have all these other demands on them which I’ve outlined earlier.

Now would be a good time to shift the start of formalised learning back to the age of six not five! We have known for a long time about the potential harm of starting formalised learning earlier. The initial benefits tend to disappear, and many children can struggle for lots of reasons.  This excellent analysis from researcher Peter Gray explores this in depth.

Another comment from Facebook:

When we integrate play into the children’s daily learning/education, we give them many learning experiences and lifelong skills that set them up early. Children need movement, to engage with others, learn to mix, follow rules , socialise, make decisions, lead by example, to belong in a group and problem solve. These skills are not learnt in a classroom system that only suits a few who are interested in history, etc,.  Children learn best when we allow them to explore a range of experiences that foster a sense of belonging, to have a go without feeling like a failure or pressured to believe they aren’t good enough to fit into our world without coming in the top 10% in a classroom. Play is more important than ticking boxes that many children don’t fit in!!!

5. The impact of the digital world has had a huge influence on today’s children.

Many children are struggling with poor attachment from busy parents —many who are struggling to survive in our challenging times — and they have spent many more hours than is beneficial on handheld screens. The displacement effect is huge. There has been an over 60% increase in myopia (short-sightedness) over the last 10 years. That is not just the fault of small screens, it is the lack of time spent outside where eyeballs are able to be strengthened by different visual stimuli. Many children are wired for instant stimulation and sadly many of their games and activities for early childhood involve rewards which increase the need for instant approval or praise! Many teachers tell me that student’s concentration windows have narrowed and that makes it even harder to cover the curriculum which has expanded. Heck, we know that as adults most of us are less able to focus and read long-form text than we used to be, thanks to our digital world, so it’s unsurprising our kids are being impacted too.

6. More inclusive environments of children with additional challenges.

This has been a really good and important shift for so many of our children over time. However, when we include children with developmental vulnerabilities, neurodivergence or kids who have experienced trauma, our teachers need more support to be able to meet the unique needs of all their students. Everywhere I go I hear of impossible classroom environments with up to 10 or 20 students needing support, with one education assistant (EA). Obviously this is completely untenable and impossible for any one teacher to be able to do well, especially when many have Individual Education Plans.

I dream that one day I will wake up and NAPLAN will be gone and instead millions of dollars will be invested in putting allied health professionals and extra teaching assistants in every school that needs this support.

Last week I was chatting to an assistant principal of a public school in New South Wales who informed me that their budget had been reduced by 2.5% and that meant they have had to lose staff and increase class sizes. I hope you can appreciate how challenging this is in our schools and it is not the fault of school leadership or the teacher in that now crowded classroom. It is a political decision made without genuine consultation with the people who are in our schools!

Another comment from Facebook:

At my son’s school, the principal’s genius answer to my son’s behaviour problems was to take away recess, lunch and any/all physical education classes to instead sit quietly in the admin office or play by himself away from every student knowing full well that he had recently been diagnosed with ASD and ADHD. The principal yelled at, lied to, changed procedures around, shamed, humiliated and singled out my son on every possible occasion.

What needs to change?

1. Every school is a unique community and one-size-fits-all never works. The freedom to adapt the National Curriculum to suit a school and its particular challenges needs to be encouraged for every school leader.
2. Every teacher needs to be respected and given the flexibility to adapt the curriculum requirements to suit the students they are teaching, to help those students learn and be engaged.
3. This one is from a comment on my post: Listen to and address the time-consuming additional tasks that teachers are now being asked to do so that they can have more time to prepare and plan lessons that meet the needs of all of their students. Admin tasks need to be done by someone else. Teachers today are drowning in paperwork, our Govt loves paperwork!!! Today very sadly it’s all about corralling children to fit into chosen boxes in order to give them a tick!!! Many children today struggle in a classroom they don’t belong in that causes greater anxiety, stress and little interest and frustration for both the student and the teacher, the Systems are broken and [we] need new Systems that Support the Teachers and the Children’s Education.
4. More needs to be done to better support boys’ learning in both early primary and middle school. The statistics show boys are struggling and fewer boys are succeeding and fewer are going to university.
5. Schools that have a high level of behavioural problems need a specialised behaviour team who can work with the students to improve their capacity to feel safer and to cope better in classroom environments.
   

   Teachers need to teach not just to be managing difficult behaviours.

6. More neuro-affirming and up-to-date education and professional learning for teachers around neuro divergence. We need approaches that do more than just push Applied Behaviour Analysis as the way to support neurodivergent children in our classrooms.
7. Primary schools need to celebrate the importance of play and sometimes that means taking the time to teach games that encourage inclusion because many students lack these skills.
8. Increase time for recess and lunch, rather than cutting them back, and never withhold these as punishment because it is so often our kids who are struggling who need to move and play.
9. The culture of the school is definitely the product of school leadership first. Principals often need to be managers as well as leaders, which can make it difficult to be exceptional. Changing a previously ineffective culture is very difficult but not impossible.
10. Giving teachers an opportunity to be heard, rather than silencing them, would be really helpful. When there are genuine concerns within a school environment that harm is occurring, there needs to be a discreet process for taking this to a higher authority, without the risk of job loss.
11. There are many schools that are doing really well with high levels of social cohesion, positive parental engagement, happy staff with low turnover and happy kids. We need to study these schools to see what they are doing so that it can be replicated. These schools often prioritise the arts, play and fun activities and have a genuine school policy that focuses on wellbeing for staff and students.
12. Change needs to be gradual and with consultation with classroom teachers on all levels. Rather than bringing in massive change, a really effective way to start is using ‘the solution focus.’ This technique starts by addressing what is working within a school environment and to expand that, rather than look at everything that is not working, see that as a problem and focus on fixing that. It is a deceptively powerful way of creating change. Collaboration with classroom teachers through feedback and consultation would save so much stress.

Parents, you have a role to play in improving schooling.

Please respect your teacher’s time and don’t send emails over trivial things. Keep conversations at school pick up and drop off respectful and be mindful of what you share in online groups. Please speak well of the school and support teachers as much as you can. Do not do your child’s homework. Remember that there are often up to 30 students in a class, not just your son or daughter. Be grateful and be positive – many teachers are parents too, and you never know what’s happening for them. Offer to help in anyway, and work with them to address concerns. You are both on the same side of the fence after all.

There is so much more that I could explore in this blog, but I have covered a lot.

I’m very grateful for the voices of teachers that I have included from one of my Facebook posts. School is about so much more than learning and passing tests. We shape future generations by the way we interact in those five days a week.

Exceptional teachers change lives for the better because they offer hope and compassion, regardless of a student’s academic capability. Every career pathway depends on teachers and so many lives can be enriched from positive teachers.

What is a teacher?

When I’ve worked with teachers, I often ask them to remember how truly exceptional they are and encourage them to reframe their job to remember this:

 

 

 

Image credits:

Main image – © By halfpoint/Depositphotos.com

Bottom image – © By monkeybusiness/Depositphotos.com