The fairy tale of school care...
Andrew, Mr Snaith, as he was known to the students, marched quickly down the large hallway. Cold coffee cup in one hand and a confiscated pair of obscenely large gold hoops pincered tight in his other. He'd been loudly informed they were real gold, and her Da' would kill him if he lost them. He was desperate to get them locked away in his office, the responsibility of confiscation was far too big in his eyes. As he hustled, he passed a few students from his year group, nice kids, on their way to registration. But as he scanned them subconsciously checking for uniform infractions, he noticed Sara's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. She reminded him of a classic painting, one with ageing varnish, her colours faded. He wondered what was wrong, thinking she hadn’t quite seemed herself for a few weeks, and as he glanced back at them, he noted her posture seemed a little resigned.
Moving into his office, he wondered about the counselling referral list, each year group got three spots each term, maybe Sara should be on it? He chuckled to himself, imagining the referral form. Why would this student benefit from therapy? Answer: She's lost her colours. “Data, check the data”, he reminded himself “and stop being so fanciful”. He has 4 minutes before the absence calls all get forwarded to his office. He opened up the student management software whilst leaning behind to flick on the kettle, already desperate for another hit of caffeine. Sara... Sara... Sara Bailey, he noticed that in the last few months, her assessment scores had dropped about 5% across all subjects, and she'd had a few lates here and there, which was unlike her. 5% wasn't enough to be flagged or even noticed by each subject teacher, but a drop across all subjects seemed off. No safeguarding concerns, no special educational needs, no social services involvement, was he seeing something that wasn't there? He looked down the list of referrals for counselling, all 3 on the list had some sort of other support already, and one of them wasn't even in school to attend sessions. He was doing it; he was adding Sara to the list. The phone rang, and he sighed, picking up the receiver and opening the registers on his screen. As he scooted his chair into concentrate, one large, possibly real, gold hoop fell to the floor.
The reality of school care...
Those working in schools know that the end of this story is more like a fairy tale, referrals usually go in order: suicidal, self-harming, other risk behaviours, abuse and neglect, behavioural issues and then maybe cases like Sara's, but there is rarely space.
Year groups, on average, range from 150 to 300 students in the UK, with up to 400+ in inner-city schools. For a year team juggling numerous responsibilities, from students wearing the right coloured socks, determining who was smoking in the year 10 toilets, investigating the rumours about a couple who may be having underage sex, answering teachers’ complaints about student behaviour, listening to parents calls about why that detention wasn’t justified, and assessing signs of abuse while writing reports for the next child protection conference, all means that smalls signs often do go unnoticed. Staff who are usually underpaid and under-resourced do an amazing job, and trusting their gut instinct is often invaluable, but we also need a structural change so that schools have the staff, resources and head space to do this crucial work.
If you work in this area, first of all, put the kettle on, you deserve that cup of tea, but also please share your thoughts, do you find it this hard to give each student time, and to allocate the right resources to them?