Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
There's a better understanding of these issues than there was in the past which leads to there being more information and thus more diagnoses.
There's a better understanding of these issues than there was in the past which leads to there being more information and thus more diagnoses.I think it’s valid to ask why so many kids are SEND(?) now. When I was at school it wasn’t a thing, which obviously wasn’t the case it was just not considered. Have we gone too far the other way and now have an education system pumping out kids not ready to play a role in the workforce.
Having said that I’m sure absolutely destroying mental health services in the last decade or so hasn’t helped.
It does concern me a lot to see toddlers and very young children out and about glued to screens and then crying when the screen is removed. Likewise seeing families out to eat and the children have to be prompted to put down devices and eat something.Throw in mobile phones (plus social media) as one of the main reasons for starters. Crazy that there doesn’t seem to be proper recognition of this. I’ve noticed with a fully formed brain (some might argue with that) how my attention span/focus has dropped off, god knows what it’s doing to kids. Frightening
COVID didn't help some of these kids. My youngest niece was flying pre-COVID, top marks etc. Then after COVID couldn't get her back to regular school attendance (100s thousands kids apparently the same). Then she was diagnosed with a form of autism which hasn't helped. The final straw was some charmer spread rumours of having under age sex with her - this led to some vicious bullying (online and direct). teacher reported the sex claim to the police without informing her parents and that led to even more stress for her. Said charmer then turned up at school and held a knife to her face threatening to scar her for life - penalty for that 3 day exclusion as he had issues!! So that was it for school attendance for her plus there were the 2 overdoses she took trying to kill herself during all this- all this before she was 15 years of age.I think it’s valid to ask why so many kids are SEND(?) now. When I was at school it wasn’t a thing, which obviously wasn’t the case it was just not considered. Have we gone too far the other way and now have an education system pumping out kids not ready to play a role in the workforce.
Having said that I’m sure absolutely destroying mental health services in the last decade or so hasn’t helped.
Serendipity, this just popped up, can't tell you anything about this organisation but at face value the situation described is bonkers.It's probably generational, I'd bet their parents have never done a day's work so now they aren't.
Being send isn't an excuse, obviously if somebody is severely disabled they can't work.
I don’t think austerity is necessarily the root cause of changes in pay & benefits, at least not in my sector.
It’s a convenient excuse used by those at the top. The amount of work the companies I have worked for has never dropped as a result of austerity or any other crisis yet they’re constantly referenced as a reason to need to cut staff, stop pay rises, stop bonuses & benefits etc. Not to mention the trend of cutting staff and expecting those remaining to take on the additional workload.
As for benefits think we need to stop obsessing over the minority who have no desire to work and instead concentrate on the large number of people who would love to play a more active role in society. Support for those people is non existent and they never seem to be spoken about when people talk about the need to have less people on benefits.
The modest reforms you speak of planned to take my wife’s PIP. Not ‘modest’ for us I assure you.
Jonathan Haidt has done some good work on this. iPads/iPhones (and so on) are hugely effective pacifiers. They are genuinely terrible for child development!It does concern me a lot to see toddlers and very young children out and about glued to screens and then crying when the screen is removed. Likewise seeing families out to eat and the children have to be prompted to put down devices and eat something.
Generally, we risk over diagnosing and potentially over medicating now.There's a better understanding of these issues than there was in the past which leads to there being more information and thus more diagnoses.
I don't think there is any risk it's happened & happening.Generally, we risk over diagnosing and potentially over medicating now.
I hear a lot of anecdotes that children with behavioural issues are effectively allowed to run riot in the same of empathy.
In terms of income tax the top 1% pay 30% of all income tax generate. Top 10% pay 60%. We discussed before that unless there is a global tax on wealth the richest will just move where they see fit. I think we’re losing 16k millionaires this year highest in the world (after around 10k last year). I added a link yesterday about Norway, also see Hollande and France.
Then you get the case for increased immigration (appeal of illegal immigration) going up because of shortages in the labour force. Then you get the cost to the NHS in dealing with this. It is just going to spiral.11% on incapacity benefits is no longer a minority underclass that can be ignored. The approvals for sickness benefit has surpassed 3,000 per day.
The system entraps people into dependency, below, I’ll link an interesting Twitter thread (same guy has done a documentary with more detail, C4) with a testimony about how there’s no incentive for them to work full time.
It’s ordinary for people to not like it when something is being taken away. The amount of claimants has shot up 200k in the past year, the welfare bill is growing and so is our national debt, and with that, debt repayments is in the region of £110bn. The more this number grows, the less money there is elsewhere for public services and so on.
I’ve not looked into it seriously, but it’s likely that I’d be eligible for PIP but on principle, I wouldn’t apply unless I genuinely needed that safety net.
The welfare state was created as a ‘safety net’ and by definition, temporary.
I think it’s valid to ask why so many kids are SEND(?) now. When I was at school it wasn’t a thing, which obviously wasn’t the case it was just not considered. Have we gone too far the other way and now have an education system pumping out kids not ready to play a role in the workforce.
Having said that I’m sure absolutely destroying mental health services in the last decade or so hasn’t helped.
The tax system ought to be optimised for revenue and the mistake the left often makes is that increasing tax % = more receipts. Labour is finding this lesson the hard way because their non-dom clamp down and private school VAT raids have backfired (3 or 4 x more students left than projected).
Even in the UK, corporation tax receipts increased significantly after George Osborne decreased the rate by 5 or 10%.
The OBR seems to reject the Laffer curve (as do many on here) and multiplier effects of reducing taxation.
As an example, the cost of raising the tax threshold to 20k would probably be offset by increased VAT receipts.
Throw in mobile phones (plus social media) as one of the main reasons for starters. Crazy that there doesn’t seem to be proper recognition of this. I’ve noticed with a fully formed brain (some might argue with that) how my attention span/focus has dropped off, god knows what it’s doing to kids. Frightening
When we were kids we were told we couldn't watch too much TV because it was bad for us - certainly no daytime TV even in school holidays. My niece with autism can spend 8 hours + a day on her mobile looking at all sorts. Can't believe that helps her situation. They've prescribed her sleeping tablets to literally stop her spending all night on her mobile/tablets.I think we’ll look back at the 2010-20s and phones the same way we do now at drunk driving in the 70s. Mental that we ever allowed it.
I occasionally find myself mindlessly scrolling short videos before snapping out of it, it's quite something how easy it is to be drawn into.When we were kids we were told we couldn't watch too much TV because it was bad for us - certainly no daytime TV even in school holidays. My niece with autism can spend 8 hours + a day on her mobile looking at all sorts. Can't believe that helps her situation. They've prescribed her sleeping tablets to literally stop her spending all night on her mobile/tablets.
They are a problem once they find your weak spots - current affairs, music from your youth, certain sports - couple of hours later you realize you've been hadI occasionally find myself mindlessly scrolling short videos before snapping out of it, it's quite something how easy it is to be drawn into.
I occasionally find myself mindlessly scrolling short videos before snapping out of it, it's quite something how easy it is to be drawn into.
If you can draw the laffer curve and identify where any country is on it (backed by a repeatable method) I’ll give you a million pounds.
Oh brother… Politics and economics isn’t a game that can be min-maxed, then copied and pasted across all countries. There isn’t a right or wrong answer and there’ll be time and place when ‘centrist’, ‘right wing’ or ‘left wing’ policies are correct.
The Laffer curve is not an instruction manual of setting a tax % at ‘x’ and this will maximise revenues. Rather, it’s a very general principle that there’s a point at which you get diminishing returns as you jack the tax rate up.
The last time a chancellor cut a tax significantly, tax receipts went up when Osborne lowered corporation tax.
Meanwhile, our tax burden is the heaviest it’s been since WW2, real disposable income has declined and household saving is going up. So this will invariably cannibalise the tax take.
Going back far enough, you extolled the virtues of charging VAT on private schools. The assumption was that it would raise £1.5-1.7bn a year with only 1.3k or so drop outs. It’s about 3 or 4 times this figure which means the tax will almost definitely not raise the expected sums whilst pressuring state schools to absorb more students. ‘Epic fail’.
This is bonkers - but the school willSerendipity, this just popped up, can't tell you anything about this organisation but at face value the situation described is bonkers.
I get that, and that's obviously a good thing. But has the needle gone too far in the other direction? When I was at school in the 80s there was zero pupils with any kind of autism or anything else that required special arrangements.There's a better understanding of these issues than there was in the past which leads to there being more information and thus more diagnoses.
In the last few years I've done tons of tests for autism among other things. Without fail I get a score in the highest bracket. Thought about getting property diagnosed but it seems you can forget it as an adult on the NHS and to go private is a couple of grand. Seems pointless as when you get diagnosed you can't get any treatment anyway!The diagnostic criteria themselves seem ludicrous with most of it being defined as “outside the norm” so but quieter than the norm? That’s a tick. Enjoy your own company more than the norm? That’s a tick. I sat there thinking I could probably classify a good 30-40% of people I’ve met under this criteria. And maybe there are 40% of the population are autistic. But we can’t fund that, so is this helping or hurting the severely autistic to be lumped in with loads of others who are just a bit weird.
Are you sure about the past, weren't they just labelled as unruly children?I get that, and that's obviously a good thing. But has the needle gone too far in the other direction? When I was at school in the 80s there was zero pupils with any kind of autism or anything else that required special arrangements.
Now thats obviously unlikely but could it be equally unlikely that quite so many kids today have issues that genuinely require special arrangements, and if you give that many students individual arrangements are you setting them up to fail later in life because they certainly aren't going to get that treatment when they enter the workforce.
The number of non-verbal kids concerns me. That just wasn't a thing you ever heard of and now it seems to be something every school has to deal with. Not for a minute suggesting kids are putting it on as that would be ridiculous but equally it's not something that could have gone unnoticed in the past so what has caused the change. There has to be some reason for the increase beyond better diagnosis when you're talking about something nobody would have been able to miss in the past.
In the last few years I've done tons of tests for autism among other things. Without fail I get a score in the highest bracket. Thought about getting property diagnosed but it seems you can forget it as an adult on the NHS and to go private is a couple of grand. Seems pointless as when you get diagnosed you can't get any treatment anyway!
I can certainly see things in my school life that would 100% be flagged up if I was at school now but back then you were pretty much ignored and told to crack on. Is that a good thing or not. I've worked all my life and done all those things you're supposed to do as a contributing member of society but the older the get the more I can identify things that I could maybe have been helped with early on that would have made my life easier.
It's all down to where you draw the lines isn't it. Not sure the way we're doing it now is sustainable.
Children aren’t the ‘finished article’ so I saw things like access arrangements and special requirements as things that were necessary for them at the time, but not into adulthood. Autism hasn’t just suddenly appeared, but previously children on the spectrum would have been dismissed as being ‘difficult’ or ‘antisocial’, as one example. The best training I got on teaching anyone with SEND was to work with the student on what worked best for them rather than assuming that for example all dyslexic children have the same needs.I get that, and that's obviously a good thing. But has the needle gone too far in the other direction? When I was at school in the 80s there was zero pupils with any kind of autism or anything else that required special arrangements.
Now thats obviously unlikely but could it be equally unlikely that quite so many kids today have issues that genuinely require special arrangements, and if you give that many students individual arrangements are you setting them up to fail later in life because they certainly aren't going to get that treatment when they enter the workforce.
The number of non-verbal kids concerns me. That just wasn't a thing you ever heard of and now it seems to be something every school has to deal with. Not for a minute suggesting kids are putting it on as that would be ridiculous but equally it's not something that could have gone unnoticed in the past so what has caused the change. There has to be some reason for the increase beyond better diagnosis when you're talking about something nobody would have been able to miss in the past.
In the last few years I've done tons of tests for autism among other things. Without fail I get a score in the highest bracket. Thought about getting property diagnosed but it seems you can forget it as an adult on the NHS and to go private is a couple of grand. Seems pointless as when you get diagnosed you can't get any treatment anyway!
I can certainly see things in my school life that would 100% be flagged up if I was at school now but back then you were pretty much ignored and told to crack on. Is that a good thing or not. I've worked all my life and done all those things you're supposed to do as a contributing member of society but the older the get the more I can identify things that I could maybe have been helped with early on that would have made my life easier.
It's all down to where you draw the lines isn't it. Not sure the way we're doing it now is sustainable.
Children aren’t the ‘finished article’ so I saw things like access arrangements and special requirements as things that were necessary for them at the time, but not into adulthood. Autism hasn’t just suddenly appeared, but previously children on the spectrum would have been dismissed as being ‘difficult’ or ‘antisocial’, as one example. The best training I got on teaching anyone with SEND was to work with the student on what worked best for them rather than assuming that for example all dyslexic children have the same needs.
It’s also important when discussing it to not get drawn into high profile anecdotes or one off cases.
Serendipity, this just popped up, can't tell you anything about this organisation but at face value the situation described is bonkers.
I get that, and that's obviously a good thing. But has the needle gone too far in the other direction? When I was at school in the 80s there was zero pupils with any kind of autism or anything else that required special arrangements.
Now thats obviously unlikely but could it be equally unlikely that quite so many kids today have issues that genuinely require special arrangements, and if you give that many students individual arrangements are you setting them up to fail later in life because they certainly aren't going to get that treatment when they enter the workforce.
The number of non-verbal kids concerns me. That just wasn't a thing you ever heard of and now it seems to be something every school has to deal with. Not for a minute suggesting kids are putting it on as that would be ridiculous but equally it's not something that could have gone unnoticed in the past so what has caused the change. There has to be some reason for the increase beyond better diagnosis when you're talking about something nobody would have been able to miss in the past.
In the last few years I've done tons of tests for autism among other things. Without fail I get a score in the highest bracket. Thought about getting property diagnosed but it seems you can forget it as an adult on the NHS and to go private is a couple of grand. Seems pointless as when you get diagnosed you can't get any treatment anyway!
I can certainly see things in my school life that would 100% be flagged up if I was at school now but back then you were pretty much ignored and told to crack on. Is that a good thing or not. I've worked all my life and done all those things you're supposed to do as a contributing member of society but the older the get the more I can identify things that I could maybe have been helped with early on that would have made my life easier.
It's all down to where you draw the lines isn't it. Not sure the way we're doing it now is sustainable.
That is terrible.My lad had 3 a levels the week his mums mums funeral was
Gotta be worth a small percentage surely
Surely it's best for any kid to work with them to see what works best? Even without send kids learn differently. Obviously with send they will have a wider range of what works for them and how they can learn, remember and focus.Children aren’t the ‘finished article’ so I saw things like access arrangements and special requirements as things that were necessary for them at the time, but not into adulthood. Autism hasn’t just suddenly appeared, but previously children on the spectrum would have been dismissed as being ‘difficult’ or ‘antisocial’, as one example. The best training I got on teaching anyone with SEND was to work with the student on what worked best for them rather than assuming that for example all dyslexic children have the same needs.
It’s also important when discussing it to not get drawn into high profile anecdotes or one off cases.
My point is that in the recent past there was an assumption about what works best for all kids with a given SEND.Surely it's best for any kid to work with them to see what works best? Even without send kids learn differently. Obviously with send they will have a wider range of what works for them and how they can learn, remember and focus.
The traditional school environment doesn't work for all kids.
Are you sure about the past, weren't they just labelled as unruly children?
well yes, I'm not saying autism didn't exist. but, in my school at least, there was one or two 'unruly' children per class. Now from what stats I can find, in the TES, we're now looking at 1 in 5 kids and its rising by about 100K a year, far faster than the rise in the school age population.Children aren’t the ‘finished article’ so I saw things like access arrangements and special requirements as things that were necessary for them at the time, but not into adulthood. Autism hasn’t just suddenly appeared, but previously children on the spectrum would have been dismissed as being ‘difficult’ or ‘antisocial’, as one example. The best training I got on teaching anyone with SEND was to work with the student on what worked best for them rather than assuming that for example all dyslexic children have the same needs.
They can’t now and it will get worse.ultimately how are schools going to cope with this? we hear all the time about underfunding and large class sizes. if we're talking about 1 in 5 kids, and that number rapidly rising, needing some form of special requirements that's a huge pressure on the system. At that level you're getting to the point where you have to look at completely redesigning how education is delivered as its hard to see how the current system is going even cope let alone put kids out at the end who are ready for adult life.
ultimately how are schools going to cope with this? we hear all the time about underfunding and large class sizes. if we're talking about 1 in 5 kids, and that number rapidly rising, needing some form of special requirements that's a huge pressure on the system. At that level you're getting to the point where you have to look at completely redesigning how education is delivered as its hard to see how the current system is going even cope let alone put kids out at the end who are ready for adult life.
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