Toilet training and high anxiety - how schools are changing

 Full Video>>

Michelle Skidmore is the 14th head teacher at Lantern Academy since 2016

Schools across the UK are under unprecedented pressure as they struggle to address a range of social issues unrelated to teaching. A group of schools in the West Midlands town of Telford illustrate the problems. Here, for a growing number of pupils, simply getting to school is an achievement in itself.

It is lunchtime and a handful of pupils at Lantern Academy, a Telford primary school, are playing indoors even though the sun is out. As head teacher Michelle Skidmore approaches, they begin to gather their coats.

“Are you heading out?” she asks. A five-year-old boy responds. It is not clear what he is saying, and Ms Skidmore tries to help. He repeats himself, four times in total, before she figures out that a family member of his has gone to hospital. He runs outside.

“We have a number of children who struggle with basic communication,” says Ms Skidmore. “'Can I go to the toilet? Can I have a drink?’ These are some of the basic sentences we have to teach our children to say.”

The children, whose parents speak English at home and have no learning disabilities, are coming to school unable to communicate. The staff therefore have to teach them Makaton, a basic form of sign language that uses symbols and signs to allow them to express themselves.

Some of the children who cannot talk are not toilet-trained either. At the start of Reception in September, eight of the 27 four-year-olds came to school in nappies. The school has had to develop “intimate care plans” to keep them clean as well as providing potty training.

Classroom

Forty-eight per cent of pupils at Lantern Academy receive free school meals - about double the England average

One mother says her son was late reaching all his milestones, and had no interest in learning to use a potty before going to school.

“He wasn’t ready,” she says. “So when we felt he was, the school really helped with that.”

A child in Year 1 is still not toilet-trained at six years old.

Michelle Skidmore is the 14th head at the school since 2016. The high staff turnover reflects the challenges the school has faced in recent years.

Polling suggests that most people think public services have deteriorated nationally in recent years. This article is the first of three focusing on the town of Telford, which a BBC News analysis has identified as facing particular challenges across its courts, schools and health services. Similar problems to those found in Telford are widespread, however.

Situated in one of the most deprived areas of Telford, Lantern Academy was known as Queenswood Primary when it was run by the local authority, and rated as “Requires Improvement” by Ofsted. It was renamed to give it a fresh start when it joined a local multi-academy trust, the Learning Community Trust, two years ago.

Forty-eight per cent of pupils receive free school meals - about double the England average. But the new ethos that Ms Skidmore has worked hard to create is being severely tested by challenges resulting from the Covid pandemic. “For some people, the role of parenting has changed - 100%,” she says.

Educational experts and teaching unions say the forced closure of schools during the pandemic meant some families lost sight of the value of education. In some cases, they were too busy working to home school their children, or didn’t have the space. When schools reopened, they placed less importance on ensuring their children attended.

In addition, many schools found that parents’ mental health became strained. And this coincided with the closure of services where people with young children could meet, and receive professional support. Some parents today do not know how to play with their children, the school has discovered, so it now runs a weekly class to teach them.

“I keep going back to that competition element - my child’s walking, my child’s no longer in nappies - those milestone moments, they’ve gone now because those parent and toddler groups, where you’d see all that, have gone,” Ms Skidmore says.

Parents at Lantern Academy also sometimes struggle to keep their children healthy. School welfare officers now sometimes accompany them to doctors’ appointments, at the parents’ request, so they can be confident of fully understanding the medical advice.

Children’s mental health has also become an ever greater challenge since the pandemic, and it is the key driver behind the biggest problem faced by all the schools in the trust - attendance.

The trust has 7,000 pupils on its books across 13 schools - five primary, five secondary, two special schools and a pupil referral unit. At any time about 700 pupils, 10% of the total, are being looked after by a team of welfare officers employed to support teachers and families to get through the school year.