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| OPINION |
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Why anxiety among children attending schools is likely to increase
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| Anxiety disorders on the increase |
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Anxiety disorders among school children have surged significantly over the last decade,
with a notable spike during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Globally, the incidence of anxiety in youth between the ages 10-24 increased by roughly 52% between 1990 and 2021.
In the UK, about 1 in 5 children and young people currently experience a mental health disorder.
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While the prevalence of anxiety disorders in the UK is said to have reached a plateau by 2023, there appears to be no
recent data for the period 2023—2026.
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The increase in anxiety is also matched by the increase in school-refusals. In the UK, the number of pupils severely absent
(meaning absent more than 50% of the time) from schools in England rose from 57,081 in Autumn term 2019 to 140,706 in Autumn term 2022.
There has been a corresponding rise in the prevalence of homeschooling. Surveys show that nearly one in three parents report their child
has missed more than a week of school due to fear or anxiety.
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Here I wish to outline my view on why these alarming trends are likely to continue and what Black's Academy can do
for parents and educators to relieve the crisis.
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| Inadequacy of existing explanations |
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While the problem has been identified by the World Health Organisation as a worldwide phenomenon, there has been curiously little
attempt to investigate causes. Research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and the Department for Education
identifies symptoms of the problem rather than causes — for example, attributing school refusal to the rise of anxiety
begs the question — by "school environment" these reports indicate fear of bullying, but do not identify the
cause of that fear.
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Could there be an institutional resistance towards coming to terms with the question: what is the cause of the rising anxiety and
its symptom — school-refusal?
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| Changes in the way children are taught and assessed |
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The function of a school is to teach. The obvious explanation
for these trends is that we have changed the way in which we teach and the changes have had an overall negative
impact on the wellbeing of children.
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| Differentiated instruction and Individualised intervention |
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Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching that has been defined "as a proactive approach that incorporates
inclusive strategies to create tailored, accessible learning that meet the educational needs of all students within the classroom."
[Langelaan et al.] Individualised intervention is instruction that is wholly differentiated and conducted individually either within the classroom
or by being temporarily withdrawn from the classroom.
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| The methodology of "one size fits all" |
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The classroom experience of the average child is the polar opposite of these ideals. It comprises a cohort of students being
taught the same syllabus content willy-nilly, regardless of the differences between students within that cohort. This approach
ensures that those at the bottom of the cohort, who are confronting material presented by "lectures"
whose content is significantly above their comprehension level, experience the emotions that accompany the thought, "I can't do this",
whereas those at the top-end are bored. Both situations are known to lead to demotivation and are causes of anxiety.
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This problem is frequently compounded by approaches to assessment. While the effect of "one size fits all" may be partially
alleviated by judicious uses of streaming and setting, it is not uncommon for schools to apply the same test to all students
within a given year group. This ensures that those students at the bottom have attainments below, say, 25%, and not infrequently zero,
which gives the appearance of low achievement, and is a management blunder, being psychologically inept.
We hold it as a maxim that no student should be given a test
in which he or she does not have a reasonable chance of a score of 60%.
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The problem is that trends in the management of schools and curricula mean that teachers are more likely to increase this
"one size fits all" approach rather than to reverse that trend. Thus, anxiety is set to increase.
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| AI and automation of teaching |
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The impact of AI and the automation of teaching and marking is a causal factor that must strengthen this trend.
From the point of view of teaching methodology, AI is a disaster. The assumption behind AI is that it can do the "thinking"
and preparation for publishers and teachers, and, to give credit where credit is due, AI can be remarkably good at
summarising a document or providing a set of minutes. However, AI "works" by scraping the content of the Internet —
therefore, at best it can replicate the factual content of what it may find on the web, but it cannot create new
content and, significantly, it cannot create new ideas. There is no innovation — and it is precisely innovation that is needed.
There needs to be innovation into the structure of knowledge that is to be disseminated and innovation into new
methods. AI and automation will increase the trend to fossilisation of existing systemic failures and coupled to the
other vicious circle principles that I outline below will lead to further dehumanisation of the school environment
with immediate impact on the mental heath of all who come into contact with it.
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It is also a problem that AI is fashionable right now. It is being actively promoted as the "magic bullet" solution to
all the problems, which decidedly it is not. Governments in an unthinking top-down, throw taxpayers' money at the problem and
appoint another committee approach, constantly look to AI as the solution. Thus, government policy is exacerbating the
crisis, not remediating it.
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| SEND provision |
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Students who are failing are provided with support — this is known as SEND provision. Students may be withdrawn from the classroom
to receive individualised instruction from teachers or teaching assistants. While this appears to be an ideal solution to the problems,
existing SEND provision is overall not fit for purpose and hence does not resolve them.
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The programmes of study provided to those delivering SEND education are themselves not fit for purpose. These programs
do not make a difference.
The well-intentions of teaching assistants cannot be questionned, however, most of them are not qualified as
teachers and are not able to meet the needs. What parents of children who have SEND needs want is an effective
intervention that brings about educational progress. This is what they do not get.
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| Confrontation |
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It is at this point that parents start complaining, and the complaints are loudest whenever the problem is compounded by other
emotional issues, such as bullying. Here, what we may call the "system", which comprises all the other layers of support
built above the layer of direct intervention, responds to justify the provision provided and hence
to cast blame onto the victims — the children, whose learning needs are not being met, and the parents who are complaining.
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This leads to a further wastage, as report after report states: financial resources, paid for by taxation, are used to deal with complaints
rather than provide
additional resources to schools and specialist teams to prevent the complaints from arising.
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However, even these reports are made in the atmosphere of wishful thinking. As the Insitute for Fiscal Studies comments, "You cannot
magic quality into existence by writing it on a legal document." A signfiicant part of the problem is that the programmes of study are not fit for
purpose, so application of these programmes cannot provide the children with meaningful intervention. Hence, the complaints only get
louder and the "system response" gets even more confrontational.
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| IQ and standardised testing |
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A yet deeper layer of the problem is that the "system" is altogether the embodiment of a false theory of educational development, that may
be idenfied by the term "IQ" and all that sails with it, "CAT4s", "Standardised assessment" and so forth. This theory states that if a
student has a low IQ at the age of six, then that student's educational attainment is pre-determined to be low, and, hence,
that no intervention can possibly work. In this way, the whole idea of SEND provision is undermined from the first, because
no-one working in SEND actually believes that the child they are working with could be improved.
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The theory of IQ and standardised testing embodies the thought, "You are thick, and you will never be anything other than thick".
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Black's Academy has conclusively demonstrated that this theory is false — it has not altogether subverted the utility of standardised
testing — on the contrary, it has shown that the data provided is useful, but not in the ways for which it has been used. It is currently used to justify
the failure of SEND provision to provide an intervention that is fit for purpose.
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The fact that Black's Academy has falsified the theory of standardised assessment is most clearly demonstrated by its case studies.
These show that Black's Academy improves every student that it meets, subject to some provisos — the most
significant of which is that we cannot improve a student that we never actually see. There is also a second limitation that the school environment
be not so detrimental to the academic progress of the student that the student does not fall into the category of "Heavy going", from
which it occasionally happens that frustrated parents withdraw their child from us in the misguided belief that the remedy is not working.
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It is time to give up the mistaken belief that "the school knows best". A school is a collection of people organised into a system, and
as a system it can fail, and individuals within that system can fail.
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| Why Black's Academy improves every student it meets |
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Black's Academy is a consistent and well-resourced application of the correct methodological theory of education — of differentiated
instruction and individualised intervention. It is the polar opposite of the "one size fits all" methodology that is currently sucking
the life-blood out of the youth of the UK and the world. It is made on the principle that we adapt the programme to the
child rather than the child to the programme.
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The case studies provide by now well-established routes through the Black's Academy learning system that justify these claims. However,
it is also the case that from the very first, the claims have been supported by well-grounded statistical analysis. Analysis of the first
thirty-two outcomes from the Black's Academy learning system showed that the difference was 14.5 standard deviations of the mean better
than what would have been achieved had they not attended Black's Academy. This represents an infinitessimally small probability that the results
are a fluke.
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| Conclusions |
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• Parents should pay close attention to the case studies so that they may understand how Black's Academy works to improve their
child's education, and, if that child has SEND needs, then how it meets them.
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• Educational leaders are invited to discuss with us how the resources of Black's Academy can provide effective interventions for children with
SEND needs.
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| Related links |
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• Case Studies
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• Further evidence of the educational crisis
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• Jersey's send crisis - published by policy center, Jersey
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