Nov 3, 2019, Northern Ireland, Derry Journal: Principal pioneers projects to address education ‘crisis’ https://www.derryjournal.com/education/principal-pioneers-projects-to-address-education-crisis-1-9128197 A Derry principal has introduced a pioneering new subject and a raft of other measures to address emotional well-being amid a “crisis” in the education system. Katrina Crilly, who took over as principal at Oakgrove Integrated College in 2017, said she could not stand by and see children across the education sector being systematically failed due to a funding crisis, pressure on statutory services and lack of services for children impacted by trauma and other issues. As a result, Mrs. Crilly, with the backing of, and input from, staff and a range of other bodies, has spearheaded a raft of new projects which have seen Oakgrove become the first post-primary in NI to introduce a fully staffed Nurture Room, and a new timetabled subject, Mental and Emotional Education (MEE), among other groundbreaking initiatives. “What we are doing here is creating a model,” Mrs. Crilly said. “The reason why we are creating a model is because our systems are in crisis. I, like many of my colleagues, am frustrated and gravely concerned as to why we have so many young people in our schools who are struggling emotionally, socially, and ultimately academically, but yet no one is helping us to solve this growing problem”…. “We are finding more and more of our children are being referred through Special Education Needs (SEN) route as having social emotional behavioural difficulties but that route is also under funded and under resourced with endless cuts and restraints on support for schools. Another route is Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and that is crippling as we speak, with waiting lists increasing. The other system we have is Educated Other Than At School (EOTAS) but they have no space. So we as schools are seeing all of these services open to us are in their own crisis. They are hard-working professionals but they are underfunded, understaffed and their demand is going through the roof. And who do we have in the middle of all of this? A young child whose future depends on our ability to provide an education, but schools are now expected to provide not only an education but all the other support systems as well, and it simply isn’t not good enough, so we need to create our own model. “If we can do this and this proves to be successful then we will reduce the demand on these services and impact on waiting lists. It may not impact on children diagnosed with specific mental health conditions or learning difficulties but it may help us deal with the crisis we have of children suffering from anxiety and inability to cope with the increasing demands of teenage life”…. Then Mrs. Crilly decided to take this a step further again, creating an entirely new subject to be timetabled for all new Year 8s coming into the school. The result was MEE, ‘Mental and Emotional Education’. … Mrs Crilly stressed MEE was not a ‘bolt on’ to the curriculum but was rather embedded in current Year 8 timetables. “Development of the Year 9 curriculum is near completion as I intend to make this a three year subject, hopefully with a qualification at the end if Year 10.” MEE includes a Feelings Wheel, with discussions around words such as ‘depression’, ‘mental and emotional communication’, and the children set their own targets…. “In the MEE programme we talk about Upstairs Brain, where you do your thinking, rationalising and problem solving, and your Downstairs Brain where all your emotion comes from. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Loss of Brain Trust features over 9,000 news stories published worldwide since January, 2017
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
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What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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