Nicky Heppenstall⁷🇪🇺 🇺🇦

she/her, wife, mum, bereaved mum, photographer, lover of cats, drinker of tea. Co-founder Remember My Baby

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

"A child’s needs must come first — not a school’s targets. And if a student is reluctant to go to school, it’s a sign of a greater problem. Perhaps we need to rethink the role of schools: increasingly, they are becoming more rigid in focus — more vocational and less creative. Throwing cash unthinkingly at this is neither going to help the anxious children nor regain the confidence of parents.

“The problem is that they aren’t listening to us, and don’t seem able to learn anything from what we’re trying to tell them,” says Ellie’s mother, Nancy. “Education should be the key to unlocking the world and a passport to freedom. By that measure, more and more of our children are becoming prisoners.”"

https://t.co/QmfjOp2BrO

[Joe Lycett @joelycett]

Joe Lycett vs Sewage is tonight at 9pm on @Channel4 starring @GaryLineker, @DeborahMeaden, @1phildaniels, @marksilcox and a special appearance from @jonsopel in my bathtub.

[Nicky Heppenstall⁷🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @Not2earlyNicky]

@Peter_Conradi The idea of bringing in a school uniform in France will NOT “erase inequalities between families and create the conditions for respect”. It does not do this in the UK, it never has, and it never will.

[judith Elderkin @judith_elderkin]

@naomicfisher If you work in a school, where the leadership and management have presided over the development of a “ toxic” situation for either staff or children, you must take advice from your trade union. Doing nothing implies acceptance, even if you are fearful.

[Doctors of the World @DOTW_UK]

PETITION 🔴 We're asking government to STOP creating more patients.

Our mobile clinic in Wethersfield sees people who've been through so much and should not be there, as per the Home Office's own guidance.

🚑 Our doctors provide medical care and advocate for all in the UK.

[The Psychologist @psychmag]

What *not* to say if someone reveals that they are autistic to you…

Dr Luke Beardon @sheffieldluke with an extract from his new @sheldonpress book, ‘What Works for Autistic Adults’.

RT for your chance to win a copy!

https://t.co/mTFJkDtVXZ

[Emily♡ @ItsEmilyKaty]

Absolutely love this. Thank you to Hannah’s 12 year old daughter for making this wonderful graphic with the #NotASchoolSkiver hashtag. Please tell her she is wonderful!!! 💖

[Tamsyn @ 💖💀VelvetVolcano💀💖 @VelvetVolcano]

I was #NotASchoolSkiver I was (at the time) undiagnosed autistic, chronically ill and in a lot of pain all of the time, depressed and extremely anxious while also being bullied... it was a terrible experience all round

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Today I heard from a parent that their son was terribly upset when he got covid, because it would ruin his 100% attendance record. At the end of the year, those with 100% get book tokens & certificates in assembly. She mentioned it in passing, she obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just how school worked, and last year her son had got the award.

Here’s why policies like that should stop.

What’s the problem, you might think, with rewarding those who turn up day after day? Surely it’s just a nice little treat to recognise their commitment? And book tokens! How worthy. What’s the problem with free books for kids who take school seriously enough to make it in every day?

As with all reward systems, however, we don’t think enough about those who don’t get the reward and the effect on them.

Who are these kids? Well, it’s the children with serious illness - the mum then went on to tell me that one girl in his class has leukaemia, for example. Or the disabled child. Or the child with overwhelming anxiety. Or the child who became homeless with their mum due to domestic violence and has to go to the shelter in the night, and then doesn’t make it to school the next day. Or even the child whose dad died and who had a day off to attend the funeral.

It’s the kids who find school most difficult and who have the most challenges who struggle to attend.

What happens to them when everyone else goes up to get their book tokens? They sit in assembly watching, and they are punished. They are punished because the absence of a reward acts as a punishment for them. It’s a public punishment too, everyone knows that they didn’t make the grade. No free books for them. Tough.

Whenever there are rewards, the flip side is punishment. When we reward one person, the others are punished by the absence. When we reward someone one year, and then not the next, that again the absence acts as a punishment. It makes them feel bad.

Of course, we know this. We know that children feel bad when they don’t get something and others do. This is in fact pretty well how rewards are meant to work. They are meant to motivate. The idea is that children will try harder to get the reward.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that 100% attendance isn’t about trying harder. It’s largely about luck, particularly at primary school. Luck not to get ill, luck to have a stable family, luck to be the kind of person who doesn’t find school overwhelmingly stressful. Luck to be the sort of person for whom life is a bit easier, in fact.

Rewards for 100% attendance reward the lucky, and by doing so punish the unlucky. The lucky feel good and the unlucky feel bad. And that has other consequences. Because making those who find school attendance hard feel bad is very unlikely to make them more able to attend. They are already struggling, and now they’re being punished for it.

It contributes to anxiety, because children are aware of the consequences of not getting 100%, and some of them will become really anxious about it. For others, it will contribute to their anger and their feelings that they aren’t valued as much as others.

So yes, the proud children up the front of assembly can’t see a problem, and their parents think it’s ‘just a nice gesture’, but it’s so easy to ignore the effect on the least advantaged. We celebrate the winners and the losers are invisible, shamed into silence. The winners assume that the losers deserved to lose - they say that they worked hard for their awards, and the losers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and so why should they get book tokens?

This happens again and again in our education system, and that’s why I keep on banging this drum. Every intervention should be evaluated for its impact on losers as well as winners. It’s not enough to pretend they could all be winners if they just tried hard enough.

Sometimes people tell me that the attendance awards helped them learn that everyone is good at different things, because whilst they didn’t get attendance awards, they did well at other things and got awards for music or creative writing. Which is nice for them, but again, let’s think about the losers. For it’s not true that in a school context everyone is good at something. It’s not true that everyone gets awards somewhere. Some children learn that they aren’t good at anything. Not even turning up.

These reward systems come up often when I talk to young people who are disillusioned and burnt out by school. The significance of book tokens goes beyond the money. That’s why it doesn’t work when parents say they’ll buy the book tokens instead, to try and lessen the pain of not getting the reward. Those book tokens, awarded in public in assembly, signify approval, status, validation - and to those who don’t get them, they signify the opposite

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Spoiler alert, those parents are correct. It's not essential to attend school every day. Children can learn and succeed in many ways and school is not essential for this. It's one way to learn, and it doesn't suit everyone.

[Keep Our NHS Public @keepnhspublic]

With you there Holly

[Keep Our NHS Public @keepnhspublic]

🚨 The NHS model has not failed the population; it is governments that has failed the NHS

📣 A message to all politicians:
Back our call for a People's NHS!

🖊️ Sign our petition: https://t.co/6u1ZzHlXX2

[NHS Million @NHSMillion]

The NHS is by no means perfect, but no one in the UK has ever been declared bankrupt because of medical bills.

Yet.

We must never take our NHS for granted - please RT if you agree.

[NHS Million @NHSMillion]

Image found via @davesumnersmith - thanks for posting 💙

[Mr Benn @thebowlerhatman]

My New Year Ted Talk is about to begin...

[Dr Andrew Meyerson @AndrewMeyerson]

Dear 🇬🇧,

I'm an A&E doctor making about £17.50/hr. I see ads like this every day luring us to NZ. If we can't afford to live + pay our £100k student debt + absurd fees, we'll be forced to leave. No pay restoration = no doctors = unsafe staffing. It's that simple.

#DoctorsStrike

[Keep Our NHS Public @keepnhspublic]

We stand with all NHS workers that have been forced to take strike action by the Government

Please support @TheBMA picket lines over the next few days

Solidarity to all #JuniorDoctors taking industrial action today ✊

[Mind @MindCharity]

This time of year is difficult for many of us. If you’re struggling and you need to talk to someone, these phone lines are open on Christmas day.

Please share this post, so it reaches the people who really need to see it today 💙