SENDucation and Well-being Tuition

01/09/2025

For many pupils, the move to secondary school is a moment of anticipation – new friends, new subjects, and a growing sense of independence. But research in England shows this transition often comes with a hidden cost: a sharp and lasting decline in wellbeing. Data from a 2024-2025 survey carried o...

31/08/2025

Dear Bridget Phillipson,

As a Clinical Psychologist and parent, I'm deeply concerned by your recent comments about school attendance. You've fallen into a classic correlation-versus-causation error.

Children who miss the first week aren't absent because they "started badly" - they're likely facing underlying challenges that make school psychologically unsafe. When 1.6 million pupils are persistently absent, that's not a compliance problem - it's a design failure.

The real question isn't "How do we get children into classrooms?" but "Why are so many children unable to attend school?"

In my clinical practice, I regularly see:
• Children with neurodivergent profiles struggling with the school environment
• Pupils experiencing school-based anxiety so severe it manifests as physical symptoms
• Families forced into "elective" home education because schools can't meet their child's needs
• Children whose attendance difficulties stem from trauma responses

Fining struggling families adds pressure without addressing root causes.

Instead of focusing on compliance, let's ask:
- What makes school feel unsafe for so many children?
- How can we adapt environments to meet diverse needs?
- What support do families actually need?

Every child deserves education that supports both learning AND wellbeing. That sounds really hard for our education system, but it's exactly what our children deserve.

Dr. Natasha Holden
Clinical Psychologist & PDA Mum

31/08/2025

31/08/2025

❤️

"School was not easy for me."

Carol Greider achieved success in molecular biology in the same way she overcame dyslexia as a child: with persistence and creativity.

Since she found it hard to read the traditional way, she found another: she taught herself to memorise words and letter order, circumventing her inability to sound out words. Carol Greider is one of many Nobel Prize laureates that have dyslexia.

31/08/2025

Good Morning, a poem this morning after watching sky news and BBC news report that teens are missing school due to “Anxiety” because of social media, I mean yea it’s a factor but that’s not the whole picture, so here you go Sky News and BBC News here is the whole picture.

Not Just Anxiety

They say it’s the phones,
the TikToks, the memes,
as if Wi-Fi is the villain
stealing our teens.

But it’s not.

It’s classrooms too loud,
corridors too cruel,
a system that punishes difference
and dares to call it school.

When bullying festers, silent, unseen,
it carves deep scars where laughter has been.
Anxiety blooms in the spaces they tread,
haunting each classroom, each word left unsaid.

It’s families breaking
under bills they can’t pay,
in a country rich enough
to choose another way.

It’s cupboards half-empty,
homes grown colder,
parents stretched thin
with no one to shoulder
the weight.

It’s CAMHS with locked doors,
waiting lists that last years,
an app to download
instead of a hand
to hold through the fear.

It’s GPs who shrug,
and schools that accuse,
as children are passed
from desk to desk,
their cries
lost in the queue.

It’s the grinding poverty,
the stripped-away care,
the cruel pretence
that services are there.

And our teenagers,
they are not broken things.
They are warning bells,
ringing louder each day,
echoes of a truth
this country keeps burying:

This is not just anxiety.
It’s not bad parenting.
It’s not social media.

It is poverty.
It is policy.
It is a system designed
to survive on neglect.

And still, our children rise each morning,
a quiet rebellion:
a reminder
that they deserve more
than a country
that turns away.

With Love ❤️ Michaela 🫶🏼

27/08/2025

We think we need an inquiry into the deaths of children following family court cases.

25/08/2025

23/08/2025

I know, as I post this, that for at least a third of 16-year-olds today will not be a day of celebration.

That’s not because this year group are particularly predictable, or because I have secret information about the GCSE results.

It’s because GCSE results are highly predictable, even though there is always some fuss made each year about how girls are doing better than boys (or vice versa).

GCSE results are graded by comparing the marks with those from previous years, and making sure that the number of people who get each grade remains more or less the same. There’s some variation, but not a lot.

This means that around a third of each cohort are always going to fail their GCSEs. By fail, I mean that they won’t get the grades they need to go onto college without having to do retakes or do another course at the same level as GCSEs.

This is how GCSEs are designed. If everyone does exceptionally well one year, they’ll just shift the goal posts so that some of them still fail. It’s not possible for everyone to pass. If a school does exceptionally well and everyone passes, that just means that more people in some other school failed.

This is different to a test like the driving test. The driving test is an assessment of how good you are at driving, regardless of how good everyone else is.

I know this isn’t much consolation if you have a teenager who has just had disappointing exam results. It’s not a happy way to end your time at school.

But what it means is that they are not alone. Failure is built into the GCSE system. A third of young people have to fail each year.

They all have a future regardless. Let’s help them to feel hopeful about that.