Send in the City: School Refusal It’s Political Not Parental

By Jen Smith

‘A boot stamping on a human face forever’ suddenly came to me whilst trying to get one of my children into school yesterday. Ultimately, it was a fifty per cent success. One went in kicking and screaming and one didn’t go in at all.

The boot imagery might come from Orwell’s dystopian nightmare of 1984, but in this exact moment, it was perfect. Here was the future and here is the oppression.

School refusal is political. Schools are underfunded by local authorities and local authorities by central government.

The curriculum is savage. It’s targets driven. Results driven. Children are swept along, drowning in a tide where it is everyone for themselves.

There is no money for additional support. Teaching assistants are cut. Send provision in Bristol has been legally fought for from Bristol City Council through judicial review.

How teachers don’t go home and smoke crack I have no idea. The responsibility of getting some thirty children all at varying levels with additional needs, strengths and weaknesses with no school funding must be the stuff of nightmares.

Yesterday, my Year 3 dyslexic daughter screamed, fought, begged and was ultimately dragged into school kicking and screaming. I don’t blame her teacher. I don’t blame the school. But this is the disgusting mess that government has made of education in England.

This morning, I left my Year 7 child sitting outside of his shiny academy with the deputy head and a SendCo. He wouldn’t go in. He was terrified. The deputy head proffered many apologies to me about their Send failure during the last three weeks. But here was are yet again with an education in tatters and a child who desperately needed that EHCP back in 2016 but was turned down by Bristol City Council.

Bristol parents are fighting for better Send funding and provision in Bristol, but it has come at a price. Vulnerable children in this city are its casualties. That boot has stamped on their face forever.

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