Austerity - it always has been austere for some.

My father was a grammar school Head and my mother worked with children with severe special needs. Hence me. After well-paid holiday jobs ( with time-and-a-half, double-time and sleep-over allowances ) in a small children’s home, I became a special needs teacher then a manager - a SENCO - in a large comprehensive school. A true amalgam of the Head and the special needs assistant.

When I was studying ( ahem) for my first degree, on a full grant, enjoying three years of purpose-built student accommodation, all fees paid, I took to holiday work. So I could go on holiday, not to pay off a loan. Unlike mates of mine who worked in shops, diy stores, the first ‘Comet’ selling electrical goods or as postmen and women, I chose another route. I worked almost all of my summer holidays in a children’s home. For children in care. The ones not at home with their mums. Or dads. Or grans.

Before my first day there I’d imagined a big family atmosphere with children being read to in a happy group. Cuddles. Treats. It was the great heat wave of 1976, during the long summer holidays when an exotic ‘bottle brush’ flowered in our garden for the first time. And tender conservatory plants thrived outside.

But for those in care: their lives were as parched as the yellow straw which ate up the lawn.

Individually the children, wiry, thin-legged specks, liked to talk to me and ask questions. ( An attempt at ‘What’s it like in the real world?’ perhaps.) On first acquaintance one girl was ever so slightly impertinent, pushing boundaries but, having sussed me out, the cheek was never repeated. The rest: a brother and sister, a slightly handicapped junior school-aged girl, Leroy, and Maura - who looked like Leroy - and another quieter lad, used to ask me, very politely, if they could have a biscuit or a piece of fruit. Or why was it so hot? Occasionally the group of seven children - it was a very small home for children in care - would go to the park. Once I went with them. They ran around, were well-behaved and were all ready by the big clock face as it struck 8pm. Back ‘home’ for a drink and bedtime.

Ready in pyjamas there was no sitting in a circle to be read to. There were rules. Time for brushing teeth and dirty clothes in baskets. Time for lights-out.

Time for ‘hands’ before meal-times. Time for grace and giving thanks. Time for breakfast. Time for clearing the table. Time for washing up. Time for making a bed or stripping a sheet. Time for watching TV or playing in the garden (with what?). But no time for being read to. For me that long, hot summer of ‘76 was spent watching dislocated, unstimulated children getting used to being bored.

Not many fights or arguments broke out. But there was nothing to do. Menus had to be recorded. Incidents had to be written up. A diary of sorts showed ‘not much happened’, really. Day after long, long day.

Leroy, boney and full of smiles, came and sat with me in the holy of holies - the office - and I began to teach him to read. His concentration was reasonable but short-lived. There was always a knock at the door. And whispering.

‘What’s Leroy doing in there with aunty Nina?’

The following summer, just before the end of their school term, I turned up again. I don’t remember a great embrace. No hostility either. Just dead eyes. I went to the children’s school sports day. My kids were not competing. Standing under a blazing afternoon sun I was asked by a Head of Year who I was. Her response was:

‘Well you’re dealing with the bottom of the barrel. The ones who’ll never amount to anything.’ 

Not... 

‘ And how are you finding the work?’ 

or

‘They’ll be pleased you’ve come to see them at their sports day’. 

No. I was being told society had already labelled the children in care, in my care. They had been written off. I was dumbstruck. While the Head of Year spoke the sun wasn’t the only thing in my eyes.

Devastated and angry I decided to do something about it. Teach children in care. Teach special needs. Teach the ones who would amount to nothing. The unwanted. 

And my PGCE teaching course began. Just at the time of the Warnock Report.

The Warnock Report (1978)

Special Educational Needs

Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People.

The report referred to pupils in special schools who should be included in mainstream education. But their reality was they were only fit to be taught in bottom sets. Unless I did something about it. Hoorah. I did! I managed a very successful teaching and support team for twenty years; small group work, appropriate provision, specialist programs.

But, in my final year of teaching, when Osborne’s austerity budget took hold, the great unwashed were dumped on me by busier, more important teachers. Along with their ‘unteachables’ I was given an unsuitable curriculum and an insufficiency of desks and pens. While the unwanted and I rubbed along in my too-small classroom the Heads of English and Maths made no provision for them; it was I who was teaching them after all. And with ‘the rabble’ out of their hair they could concentrate on getting grades A-C for their much better sets. That was 2010.

What had changed since 1976? What was different from Warnock and her recommendations that 20% of school-aged pupils might, at some time, have special needs which required education that was ‘additional to or different from’ usual classroom arrangements?

Nothing.

In 2010 children who weren’t high flyers were pushed aside. And since Cameron and Osborne sat on the front benches in the House of Commons children in need have had fewer social workers, school budgets have been squeezed and the world has become an uncharitable place for those ‘who’ll never amount to anything.’

Money is far more important than ethos, education acts or provision, it seems. And last night it was announced that the current Tory government is going to do something about school behaviour. Ten years after the austerity budget took hold. Forty years since the integration of children with special needs into mainstream became law. Integrated into what? 

Integrated into badly behaved bottom sets who will not ‘amount to anything’.

Is it any wonder children in care have the lowest academic achievements across England’s schools? With or without learning difficulties to be living in care surely counts as a special need? Don't they require more attention, not less? The need is there. But not the provision. But our new Tory government knows all about how to tackle behaviour. Finally there is money for school exclusions. Why not money to provide for children whose lives have been disrupted or who have other, additional needs? Why not more for provision at nursery age? Why not more for extra reading groups at junior school? Why do I get the feeling that certain groups of students are still being written off? 

What’s wrong with a group of children being read to? And proper provision? Help where it’s needed?...
Money...
That's what. For too long it's been an austere world for some. It's so much cheaper to label them and write them off.

Still.