All students need additional support at some point in their academic journeys. One of the reasons is because teachers and lecturers do not have the time to give everyone as much 1:1 support as they need to reach their full potential due to large class sizes and ever increasing workloads which has a knock on effect to learners. The education system is broken and the government can’t retain enough teachers and lecturers to meet the country’s needs due to stress, being overworked, underpaid, underappreciated and reduced morale.
***Below is a reflection of my own personal experiences within the education sector, the challenges I and other’s faced and ongoing issues affecting learners***
Politics of Education
30 students per class is the expectation and standard so institutions can receive funding to continue running programmes. Education is a business, so the more bums on seats there are, the more profit made. The Scottish Government has made it so that students can apply for courses even though they’re not suitable which means the gaps in their education need to be filled with 1:1 time that educators don’t have. If the gaps aren’t filled, students become disillusioned with education because they’re struggling – they’re more likely to drop out/fail and never return to learning because they don’t believe they’re capable.
This business model pushes teachers and lecturers harder and harder to teach more, develop new units and provide more novel courses to get more learners in classrooms every year in order to secure more funding. Most of teachers’ and lecturers’ time is spent doing admin work behind the scenes where they regularly receive attainment reports from their institution which breakdown learner demographics including age, gender, pass rate, fail rate, attendance and progression routes.
Students are being told at school to apply for various courses at college because they’re deemed ‘easy’ (Social Science seems to be one of those subjects, which is incredibly academic, requires lots of reading and understanding complex terminology and concepts) which they’re not interested in. Students accepted onto courses that they have no interest in or are too advanced for them results in dropped attendance, higher failure rate, requiring more than 3 attempts to pass assessments etc. which has an impact on the teacher/lecturer because they’re told they can’t fail students.
The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has been established in Scotland since 2010, where continual reviews show that it’s not good enough. The SQA was supposed to have been scrapped for a new system after following an OECD review, yet we’re still waiting with no progress updates. I graduated with my Sociology degree in 2016, with my dissertation showing how the CfE is failing young people, and the lack of education and training programmes has contributed to high levels of NEETs. There exists a postcode lottery for all students in Scotland whereby the school dictates what subjects should be of focus (usually based on league tables) which places academic subjects as priority as they’re necessary for entry into university.
Vocation Vs. Academia
If you have a child who is more interested in vocational studies, they will face severe challenges at school because it hasn’t been designed for them. And it’s similar for academic students attending a school that focuses on vocational subjects for entry into Colleges. I left school in 2005 because I had undiagnosed SpLDs, received no support and was struggling. I wasn’t interested in university, I wanted to get an engineering apprenticeship as I loved physics, practical tasks and taking things apart and putting them back together. I I can still hear my Maths teacher ridiculing my prelim result in front of the entire class and being told:
“you’ll never amount to anything.”
To date nothing has changed since my school days – I’m still hearing students experiences that are the same as mine 25 years later; and it’s gotten worse as charities that were filling in the gaps that schools and colleges couldn’t provide with pre-apprenticeship and employability programmes had their funding reduced so much by the Scottish Government that they had to fold. You can read it and my other published research here.
When I was still teaching in classrooms, every year I would have on average 150 – 200 students per year, where each class would have at least 2 forms of assessment = 400x 2000-5000 word essays/reports to read, mark and provide feedback. On top of that, regular homework and prep. Around 10-33% of each class would have additional support needs due to various barriers to learning, such as mental health, SpLDs, neurodivergency and chronic illness. A lot of students return to education as they get older who have lost a lot of confidence in their abilities because of traumatic schooling experiences due to undiagnosed learning difficulties/differences or teaching style not suitable for the type of learner they are. Every student, even if they didn’t have disabilities still required 1:1 support to build up their confidence and be willing to push themselves further to do well in their studies.
Pressures of Teaching
It’s the role of educators to refer students for screening when issues arise – but that in itself is problematic because a lot of educators aren’t aware of what to look out for, explain away issues with something else or don’t think they’ve got the time to deal with it. It doesn’t help either that various colleges don’t follow the SQA teaching guidance of teaching units taking 18 weeks to complete. I would have to teach 18 weeks of content in 10 weeks, with 2 weeks used for mop-up: assessment week then remediation/resits. Every unit is a crash course, only covering necessary teaching materials and no opportunity for fun activities, field trips or learning skills necessary for the world of work, and further study (academic writing, referencing, team work, peer reviewing etc).
To be a teacher/lecturer you need to complete a masters equivalent in education, specialised in Primary, Secondary or Tertiary which requires academic reading, writing essays and observations to show you know how to provide content to suit all learners you’ll teach. However, there is no set mandatory curriculum that covers disabilities. If educators do know about how to support learners with complex needs it’s because they’ve paid for their own training, engaged with regular CPD and been thorough with their reflective practice. Not many educators can get the time to do CPD given their ever increasing workloads and responsibilities. It creates missed opportunities to see issues that would lead to a diagnosis, allowing students access to further help, support and additional funding.
It’s down to the students to take charge of their learning to fill in the gaps. How many students can effectively independently study? Not many, because it’s a skill that needs to be developed over time with guidance.
I started teaching in 2016 when I was a postgraduate student. That year saw a countrywide restructure, and there was a mass exodus of lecturers who were burnt out, stressed and struggling to cope, resulting in long term absences and everyone else working more to cover classes.
After 4 years of being pushed to my limits, I walked away from teaching and said I’d never go back after that – my health was more important. If you’re not well, how can you be providing the best student experience?
My partner was a Telford College student where he trained for 4 years as a Stonemason, winning awards and working on Scotland’s most historic structures. Edinburgh College closed their stonemasonry programme 2 years ago, leaving only 1 other college in Scotland able to train stonemasons. It is left to small businesses to spend £10,000s per year to train apprentices which isn’t financially viable; and large businesses, including Historic Scotland who only fund training in short, CPD courses on specific aspects of masonry without the wider teaching of the craft. At least it’s encouraged my partner to look into creating a stonemasonry guild of small business owners to come together to train apprentices and share the dying knowledge of the craft before it’s lost forever.
I’ve worked across many different schools, colleges and universities across the country and it’s the same everywhere. I helped provide lots of CPD training sessions for teachers and lecturers when I was an EIS Learning Rep in training, all focused on mental health awareness, adverse childhood experiences, mindfulness and how to incorporate it into classes. It was really disheartening to hear so many people resistant to incorporating what the Scottish Government states all institutions must imbed into their curriculum as part of the CfE. Frequently I heard:
“I don’t have time”
“Why’s it my job?”
“The parents should be doing this, not me.”
All we asked for was at least 5-10mins every day to give students the safe environment they need to talk about how they’re feeling, if there’s things they’re struggling with, and develop coping strategies to regulate their central nervous system and develop emotional intelligence. A simple idea was to have a ‘suggestion box’ style disclosure for students to confidentially report various issues to foster a trusting environment and build up from there with practical exercises.
It’s an opportunity to see if there’s safeguarding concerns; at best you’re providing a nurturing environment that encourages personal growth, stability and resilience.
There’s so much more that goes on within education that affects staff that then impacts students. Educators are stretched so thin they can’t handle having another thing added to their long list of jobs that never stops (it increases every semester, every year).
Wellbeing Benefits of Specialised Support
If you can provide your kids with additional support from an outside, specialist source, you’ll set them up for a much more positive outlook to lifelong learning and reach their full potential. Having support from someone who isn’t tired, stressed and demotivated means you’ll be getting the best standard of support, and alleviating some of the pressure for teachers/lecturers which overall is a good thing for the class/institution as a whole.
Another reason to seek out 1:1 support and tuition is to have access to ongoing assistive technology training that will help students with barriers to learning. At present the training provided by SAAS is very short (1-2 hours) and completed online which is a barrier in itself as most students prefer face to face contact to use their technology. Some institutions may have drop in sessions that need to be booked, are in noisy environments and are time constrained so it can be overwhelming, confusing and difficult to remember.
Most importantly, having an outside, independent person who can support you means you have a safe, trusted person to discuss problems in an advocacy capacity. Most parents know the struggles of getting students assessed for a range of disabilities and the reluctance to implement reasonable adjustments in a timely manner which takes a toll on the whole family.
Emotional support to validate concerns goes a long way as 1:1 support requires a whole person approach because there are so many elements that comes together to either support or deny positive student experiences. I’m happy to meet with anyone interested in 1:1 support for a free consultation to see what services and tools would be helpful, and I can make recommendations for other support networks in the area. You can access further information on the range of support I offer in the ‘Services’ and ‘Pricing’ tabs which you can access at the top of the page, or by clicking ‘next’ down below.
Funding Support and How to Set Up
If you are struggling to fund 1:1 support, there is support available at colleges who will use agencies to supply you with a support worker who all have varying qualifications and experience – you’re free to choose someone like myself who meets your expectations and qualified to manage any specific/complex issues, and can provide support in a format that suits you best (online/face to face/hybrid). However, you can receive the funding directly from SAAS once at HNC level and above, by stating you will hire me (or another specialist support worker you know of) on a self employed basis. All that’s required is to forward SAAS my monthly invoices to receive the money after completing a simple Support Worker Registration form that I can provide you. Student support can be arranged at a much quicker pace when you arrange the support yourself as it can take a number of weeks and sometimes months when going through agencies.
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