Vulnerable children in schools

In the year in which it becomes a requirement for each school to have a Designated Teacher responsible for promoting the welfare of its most vulnerable children in local authority care, I was horrified to read Mike Kent’s unashamed account of his own unacceptable treatment of children in his care.

These children have no clear idea of appropriate empathic or cooperative behaviour and, when exposed to stress at school which they are unable to regulate, it doesn’t need an educational psychologist to know which route they are most likely to take.  Further physical assault or terrifying threat will not address their needs.  Mr Kent may see compliant children in his presence, but does he see the results of his ‘management by fear’ when they leave his ‘care’?

The challenge for teachers is recognising why these children are behaving in this way.  Is it because they have received no consistent nurture or boundaries from their parents and carers?  Or has their early development already been impaired by exposure to an aggressive, threatening or unloving environment?  The most vulnerable children in our schools (those whose early development has been impaired) are already relating to the world with a brain very differently assembled from those who have experienced a healthy attachment process and no overwhelming trauma.

It is clear from Mr Kent’s ill-informed views that our future training of Designated Teachers and other education professionals will need to focus even more strongly on understanding why the children they are teaching are behaving “badly” and how to deal with this appropriately.  Perhaps the local authority which employs Mr. Kent as a headteacher will ensure that, at the very least, he receives quality training in Child Protection.

Looked after children climbing the education mountain

Recent DCSF figures have shown improvements in exam results for looked after children.  But just as the mountain seems scaleable, so results for non-looked after children have surged ahead, leaving the percieved gap just as wide as ever.

In 2004 a government survey of 1000 schools showed that the main problem for schools in helping looked after children to benefit from education was the unmanageable behaviour of the children. And the vast majority of the teachers surveyed recognised the origins of the behaviour in the traumatic experiences these children have lived through, but felt they did not know how to address the problems in school.

In 2008 Akamas conducted an impact evaluation of online training we provide to anyone working with vulnerable and traumatised children. This provided clear evidence that the right training delivered to the right people does make a difference to the way people work, and that makes a difference to the outcomes for children.

Just one example we discovered was a young person behaving in ways that severely disrupted school life two or three times a day and they were on the verge of exclusion. When those working most closely with the child changed the way they worked these incidents became much less severe and dropped in frequency to one or two a fortnight. The young person also became more able to manage their own behaviour, and this made for more positive outcomes during the school day.

In my view, the key to this success is that the new knowledge is not just held by one person, but is shared by as many as possible who form the network around the child.  Designated teachers have a vital role in this and training will become a key element in enabling them to manage their new responsibilities successfully.