Toilet training and high anxiety – how schools are changing

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 headteacher 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.