Schools are not child-ready for at least a third of children. We need to put in place positive nurturing programmes and visits by professionals to boost school support so they can meet the needs of the very young children who come through their doors.

Last year I was sitting in a local library whilst my son sat a GCSE maths exam. The librarian, who was in her late 30s or early 40s, asked why I was there. When I told her, she said ‘I am so glad I wasn’t born nowadays. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.’ She told me that she had failed her maths GCSE, and that she had retaken it and had failed again. ‘I just can’t do maths’ she said. However, at the time this wasn’t an insurmountable barrier. She got other qualifications and developed an interest in English literature. She got a place at university to study librarianship, successfully obtained her degree and now works as a librarian. All without GCSE maths. Had she been a teenager now, that opportunity would most likely not have been open to her. Requiring everyone to pass GCSE Maths in order to progress limits some young people and causes intense distress. There is no way that everyone will ever pass. The exams are not designed that way. The only real way to raise standards for all is to create systems which empower young people to succeed in many different ways. Some of which will not involve a pass in GCSE maths. It can never be the case that everyone passes and those who fail need a future to look forward to as well.

What a strange thing we do to our young people in this culture and time. We make them spend several years learning things which they often have no interest in, which they have not chosen and which they will in many cases never use again. We tell them that these things are vitally important. Then we sit them in rows and make them write about the things they can remember for an intense few hours. We compare what they have written down with everyone else of the same age, and then we rank them. We make them wait a couple of months and then we tell some that they are the successes, and others that they are the failures. We encourage them to hang their self-worth on how they performed. Newspapers publish pictures of the delighted, whilst the disappointed hide their heads in shame. We tell them that these results will determine the rest of their lives – and then we set up systems that make this true. We provide fewer opportunities for those who did not succeed. Those who did well can take their pick of courses, whilst those who did not are made to take the same tests again and again, just to hammer it home. We make sure that young people spend the majority of their adolescence focused on exams and pressure. Every summer, they sit in rows and try to remember. Each year, they’re told that their whole future rests on this. Many of them inevitably cave in under the pressure. They become anxious and depressed. They show signs of burnout by the age of 16. They lose their spark, and just go through the motions. Some of them retreat altogether. Then we pathologise them, say that they need mental health treatment or to become more resilient. We send them for therapy or give them medication. We say that they are the problem, whilst the system carries on unchanged. What if instead we stopped to think about what we are doing to our young people? Adolescence is a time of opportunity and vulnerability. It’s a one-off stage of life. What if we asked ourselves, should our young people really spend these years on a conveyor belt of high stakes exams? Imagine we allowed ourselves to look beyond this time and place, and to see just how strange this really is. What would we offer our young people then?

‘Schools have always had rules, we just did what we were told and got on with it. Why can’t this generation do the same?’ Some people say that schools are the same as they ever were, whilst parents and young people have ‘got worse’. Worse behaviour, more parental complaints, less likely to turn up to school. They ask what’s wrong with this generation, that they can’t just get on with it like previous generations. We all did things we didn’t like at school, they say. That’s just part of the deal. School isn’t the same as it ever was. Not for a lot of children. There has been a deliberate shift in some schools towards high control behaviour policies which were unheard of when I was at school. Policies like detention (or two) for having a scented lip balm in your bag, and a day in isolation (usually called Reset or Reflection or another euphemism) for three minor issues. This shift is ideological. These approaches started in the United States where they were called ‘no excuses’ or ‘zero tolerance’. Schools argued that they were giving the most deprived kids their best chance for success. As far as I can see this started in the UK at Michaela School, who got exceptional exams results, wrote two books about their approach and had the ear of the previous government. The ideas have spread in UK secondary schools, particularly through some multi academy trusts such as Astrea. As this was happening in the UK, there was growing disquiet in the US about no excuses school culture, particularly because the US ‘no excuses’ schools typically had a majority of Black and Latino students with White teachers. After the murder of George Floyd many were deeply uncomfortable with Black children being taught that the only route to success was to do exactly what their White teachers told them without question - even down to how to move their eyes. The schools listened, changed their approach and became less controlling. In the UK the racial dynamics are different. Whilst these schools are usually in deprived areas, the pupils are often (not always) majority White. This means that the same rationale has not been used to discredit the approach and it has continued to spread, particularly through academisation. An academy trust will take over all the schools in an area and will bring in high control strategies across the board, leaving parents with no choice at all. So no, the children and their parents aren’t wrong and they aren’t making it up. Call it ‘no excuses’ or ‘high expectations’ or whatever else you like. Some schools are high control environments, often for staff as well as students. It’s something quite different to what most of us experienced when we were at school, and that is intentional. Many schools have changed, without most of us even noticing. What was once exceptional is becoming more of a norm. What’s the evidence? Joanne Golann’s book Scripting the Moves is an in-depth evidence based analysis (and examination of the racial dynamics) of No Excuses schooling in the US. amzn.eu/d/0aVyvJ5P Michaela Schools behaviour policy. Check out the consequences for having a scented lip balm in your bag under ‘Contraband’. michaela.education/wp-conten… Astrea Academy staff speak out about the effect of their approach on them and pupils. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gq…

Make Better Choices (with @_MissingTheMark) It’s a common feature of the primary school classroom. The behaviour chart on the wall, with children’s names on pegs. Children are moved from the sun to the clouds, or from green to red if their behaviour isn’t what is required by their teacher. The language usually goes from celebratory ‘Star Student!’ to condemnatory ‘Poor Choices’ or ‘No Playtime’. It's in public. The whole class can see who is doing well and who is struggling. The internet is full of versions of these charts to buy, and the advertising copy is all perky positivity. ‘Keep Your Students on Track!’ or ‘Help Your Class Make Good Choices!’. They look so cheerful in their bright colours, so harmless. Who could object? And they work! Children want to stay on the green zone because it feels so bad when they are moved. Until you talk to the parent of a child who struggles. They’ll tell you about the way in which everyone in their class knows who is on the raincloud, and that no matter how hard their child tries, they just can’t keep still all day. They’ll tell you how their child is known as the ‘bad’ one, and the other children don’t want to play with them. They’ll tell you of developmentally inappropriate expectations, and of the way in which these charts put all the blame on the children. They’ll tell you of the way in which the chart takes no account of the way that their child is dealing with friendship difficulties and family illness, and instead frame their actions as a ‘poor choice’. The behaviour charts stop us asking whether perhaps the way in which we require children to sit and listen at school isn’t a natural way for young humans to learn. They stop us seeing their behaviour as communication or feedback. It’s reduced to something to control. These charts use public shaming to foster compliance. They use fear and anxiety – even the children who are always on the Sun lie awake at night, scared that one day they will fall from grace, and everyone will know. That’s how they work. Children ‘behave’ because they are scared of the consequences if they don’t. It’s Children’s Mental Health week. Perhaps as a psychologist you might expect me to be using it to call for better funding for CAMHS, for a counsellor in every school. Perhaps you think I might be calling for more therapists to be trained and more wellbeing hubs. Instead, I’m calling for a mass take down of behaviour charts. Psychologists will never have the same impact on mental health as changing the way we treat our children. We could have a psychologist on every street corner, but their job is to intervene when things have gone wrong. Far more efficient is to change the environment which is making children distressed. Think of it like lung cancer. We could have the best oncologists in the world, but all they can do is treat people who are already ill. To reduce levels of lung cancer, we needed a smoking ban. We’re using shame and anxiety to control children’s behaviour, thinly disguised in bright colours and ‘Ready to Learn!’. It should be no surprise that many of them are unhappy and anxious. In fact, perhaps we should be more surprised if they weren’t. It’s in the very air that they breathe and we, the adults, are putting it there. They’re breathing it in like smoke.