When I was at school everybody knew that the school was there to help. Some students got it and worked insolvable, some didn ' t, and played, some figured it out in time and when they stopped playing, the school was still there to help them.
Among the students there are always the stars, they never seem to do a stroke of work but pick up all of the laurels. There are others, not so gifted but, who through pure solid work, get themselves into the star clot
The rest of us are after all in the middle, not brilliant, not shocking, not perfect but all flawed with individuality. We roll along through school confusion what it is all for. Sometimes we " Get it " early, initial objectivity turns into application and we start to work up through the academic levels.
Sometimes we don ' t get it until much next on but at all times, at all levels, the experienced teaching staff were there ready to help us to achieve our potential in the time that we gave them.
Some of us don ' t stable get it by the time we ok school but the designers of our education system know this and, through further education institutes and vocational training colleges, they have made sure that those who didn ' t get it at school still have the support available so when they do get it they can still get the GCSE ' s or professional training that will allow them to find the job that suits them.
Today it appears that students who fail are no longer allowed to stay in mainstream education. There is a whole support structure that is designed to take failing students and, assuring them that failure is not their fault, they diagnose them with a bewildering array of conditions that never used to exist. Having achieved an almost medical diagnosis for a student ' s failure, that diagnosis becomes a label and having created that label, it is hung around the unfortunate student ' s neck for the rest of their lives,
Children love being labelled " Special, " the word was coined because it makes them feel important and it gives them an excuse for not trying too hard at anything, they don ' t have to because they are special.
The labelling of students in this way denies the possibility that it may just take more time for them to " Get it. "
The students so labelled can find themselves side - lined from mainstream education at an early age in a " Special " School where there is no educational expectation other than attendance.
Even if these students do subsequently " Get it " they can do nothing about the diagnosis that has placed them in an educational environment where failure is an expectation that has been sanctioned by the use of labels to normalise it.
Why has our education system changed from one that actively seeks to provide the best opportunity for each individual to one that actively seeks to identify and exclude any student that is not up to scratch?
In the past the business of teaching was driven by teachers, who knew about children and knew about teaching.
Today their control, as in most public services, has been taken away by a generation of administrators whose interest in students stops at the numbers of GCSE ' s that each one can achieve.
Today the teaching budget of a school depends on the results of its students so the emphasis has switched from education to the achievement of targets that have been set for schools by their funding authorities.
To increase the proportion of students achieving high numbers of GCSE ' s schools are now actively looking for reasons to label their failing students as " Special " so that they do not have to be included in the statistics they generate when they apply for funding.
By labelling students " Special " their GCSE results are not included in a schools assessment for funding.
Labelling the less able students as " Special " improves the overall performance of the school.
We have arrived at a point where it appears that each student, instead of being helped to achieve the best they are capable of, is now assessed on their ability to produce results that will favourably influence the schools application for funding. Those who do not make the cut are excluded from mainstream education and are saddled with their particular " Special " label for the rest of their lives.
It is difficult to believe that a system we all grew up to trust and respect has been so tainted by administrative targets that it can no longer achieve the purpose for which it was created.
Our education system is not the only public service to be so tainted.
This month it was revealed that over 450, 000 children in the UK may have been misdiagnosed as " Special. "
Nearly Half a million children have been mislabelled as " Special " in order to make performance targets easier to achieve.
In the US this figure exceeds 1, 000, 000.
Is this admission going to return to those children their right to an education? Is it going to stop more of our less able children being side - lined in the same way?
