UK schools

[Jade]

Has anyone else got school age children in the uk education system, and have you noticed how weird schools have gone in just the last term alone? And I mean weird in a dystopian, totalitarian, 1984 kind of way. 

At my daughters high school, there’s been extra cctv monitoring installed. More locks on doors so kids cant move from one corridor to another without a teacher swiping them through. Mock lockdown procedures whereby kids hide under desks practising incase there’s a dangerous situation arise or a potential terrorist threat. Toilet facilities are restricted to a 15 minute window during lesson time, and a maximum of 3 pupils can use the toilet during this time. They’re even locked at lesson changeover to stop students using them. 

Then there’s this children’s wellbeing and schools bill proposal that quite frankly scares the shit out of me. 

I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on what is going on here? 

[Sarah]

Hi Jade, my daughter is in Year 6 and in the second week of the term we had a message from the Headteacher advising there has been disinformation circulating nationally suggesting that extremist groups are targeting school communities. He said this was communicated to all Headteachers from the Local Authority (I’m in the East Midlands, I don’t know if this went out nationwide or just here). I haven’t heard anything myself and I haven’t been able to find anything (but I’m not on social media so perhaps I’ve missed it).  At the end of September we had another message from the Headteacher telling us they had carried out a planned lockdown drill. I’ve never known them to do a lockdown drill before, or if they have I’ve never been informed. As horrible as it may sound I’m now fully expecting something to happen in a UK school, my mind automatically went to ‘oh they must be planning something’ – I really hope I’m wrong.

We visited four secondary schools in Sept/Oct before applying for next year. The layout of two of them felt just like a prison, they were completely lifeless; the corridors were covered in posters for mental health, safe spaces, LGBTQ+, etc. No displays of the children’s work (there was in the classrooms but nothing in the corridors), the children looked thoroughly miserable, most of the teachers looked like they’d rather be anywhere else and there was no creativity in the curriculum they offered at all. One of them had just implemented a new toilet policy where all the toilets bar 20 are locked up, children can only use them during lunch and break (20 toilets in a school of over 1200), you have to have a doctors note to be able to use the toilet during lessons. Girls on their period have to write it in their diary and show it to each teacher in each lesson to be able to go to to the toilet during lessons! Absolutely no chance my daughter is going to either of those schools. Unfortunately one of those is our catchment area and the other is the next closest to us. I haven’t applied for either and I told my husband if we do get offered one of those then I’ll be homeschooling. My daughter hated them.

The other two were far better in terms of creativity, facilities and layout. The children in both seemed genuinely happier and the teachers were friendly and enthusiastic. One of those, our second choice, was covered in CCTV, everyone has a pass to swipe in and out of every outside door to each building and one of the children was telling us that they are very strict on everyone having their lanyards with their pass every day, there are serious consequences if they don’t. The other one, which is our first choice, did have CCTV but seemed a lot more relaxed and open.

The childrens well-being and schools bill is terrifying but, I hate to say, not unexpected. I think there will be some, probably many actually, who work in education who think all these measures are genuinely necessary and they’re there to protect the children. They believe they are doing the right thing because they don’t see the reality behind it. In my mind it all comes down to creating a perception of fear in order to gain complete control.

[Jade]

Hi Sarah. Thanks for the reply.

I’m in West Midlands/Staffordshire. It does seem like there’s a bit of a theme in all the schools. This is ranging from high school down to nursery. I’ve got 5 children, 1 in year 8, then yrs 3 and reception, 2 in nursery. Nursery told me they had been told they couldn’t ask a child if they were a boy or a girl 🙄 the headmaster at the primary school suddenly implemented a strict uniform policy in September, school crested jumpers/shirts (not polo)/ties etc. But then strangely, he worded it in the newsletter to suggest that it had always been this way – and it never has. There were queue’s of parents waiting on the playground to lynch him because he’d waited until the day of the new school year to relay this message, after everyone had already bought uniforms. He’s always been very relaxed and there’s a definite change in the way he acts with parents and kids now. It’s quite bizarre.  

But definitely the biggest change is my eldest daughters high school. Its a Catholic school. It’s very dated, it looks like something out of grange hill in the 90s. Yet since September, there’s a new ‘safety’ camera system installed, the entrance has a had big gates and metal fences erected so no one can get ‘unauthorised access’, there’s locks between all corridors on doors – there’s obviously been a lot of money thrown at it when there’s none available for other renovations to the school. Then the ridiculous toilet policy. My daughter actually got locked in the toilet by a staff member, it took15 minutes before another member of staff went looking for her. The CCTV conveniently didn’t pick up which staff member locked her in. Strange that. The only fortunate thing is that they are not mixed gender toilets (yet), as I’ve heard of local schools that have implemented this. Its simply humiliating for young girls to have to endure this when they are on their period. 

I’d not heard anything about extremist groups targeting schools. We were told via email that the planned lockdown practises were ‘standard health and safety procedure’ and would be used ‘when there is a threat to the safety of pupils or staff’. My favourite example of a threat they gave was ‘a potentially dangerous animal on school grounds’. Like they were expecting a tiger or big foot to hop the fences. I mean, it’s so obvious a ruse that it just takes the piss. It also stated that details of the event must not be discussed or circulated on social media as this may spread false information or spread panic… Because making kids hide under desks, locking the doors and turning the lights off won’t create panic, but talking about it might.  

Then there’s these new interim reports, assessing children’s academic performance which fair enough, its school you’d expect that. But there’s bits on the report about how many ‘positivity points’ they’ve earned for behaviour and effort, as well as the negative points, detentions etc. Kids are also scored on attendance, records with below 90% attendance (19 school days absent) are deemed unacceptable. Personally, I think the idea behind it is actually a lot more sinister than what it appears on surface level. 

I agree with you that some teachers and parents naively believe this is in the interests of safety. I’m not quite sure how much it takes to manipulate people into believing this tripe, but clearly many do. I think there’s also many more who don’t agree with it, but let it slide because they are not yet aware of the wider implications of it all. For example, the wellbeing and schools bill, I saw something about it being used to tackle child neglect by giving the local authority more powers to intervene in situations where they think a child is at risk of harm. But then that made me think about the seemingly trivial uniform policies. What if sending your child in in the wrong shirt for example, constitutes an instance of neglect? Then what if your child’s interim report scores low on positivity points and attendance is below recommendations. Would you then be seen as an unfit parent? And what measures would the LA be allowed to take against you under the new legislation bought in via the schools bill? 

Honestly I find it very disturbing. Clearly this isn’t about the wellbeing and safety of children and I’ve seen a lot (some of it on iconic) about what dreadful things these people in authority do to children- especially those in care. I just hope people start to wake up and challenge what’s happening in the schools before things take a sinister turn. Its incredibly frustrating. Parent’s are blindly handing over their parental rights to the state – and I dread to think what the plan is if they gain full control over them. 

[JD]

Nurseries – my godchildren’s nursery last year had security fencing installed. I thought this was OK but then – 6ft fencing with spikes on? Is that normal? Sign of the times? It is scary…

As for schools, seems like nothing has changed. I remember a girl who ended up with kidney disease because she wasn’t allowed to go to the toilet. Prior to this, the Doctor/GP at the time had the girl and her parents see a physio to learn “holding it in” exercises pushing against a table with her legs crossed. Poor girl was only 5 at the time and it happened all the way through primary until she ended up with UTIs and CKD Stage 2 at age 11. That is medical and institutional violence plain and simple. And this was 10 years ago.

As for curriculum, what they teach in history (follow the narrative!) and geography (climate change) is certainly monitored, shall we say

[Author]

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