Autumn sunshine. Some thoughts about education and culture and hospitality.

We have sunshine again this morning. The last week or so has been a mix of Keats’ “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” and a late Indian summer, but without the warmth of a real Indian summer. But having had such a mediocre summer (not quite as bad as some people make out but still pretty mediocre), it’s nice to get some sunshine now. And we always welcome a few days without rain so that the bridle paths can dry out and the mud puddles can disappear again for a while. But it would have been nice to have had more sunshine in August. 

That’s enough about the weather.

I read this morning that the bill for special needs education in England has hit £10bn a year, with the number of children and young people entitled to government support in the form of education, health and care plans set to double to 1 million within a decade. Also, it seems that the number of children diagnosed with autism in England’s state schools shot up from 57,000 in 2015-16 to 132,000 last year.

Why? What are we doing wrong?

Excuses given: 

• There is a greater awareness of autism than there used to be - true, nobody spoke about it when I was a child. Maybe nobody knew about it. There were “slow” children but surely that’s not the same. 
• The impact of Covid. That period of lockdown and social isolation has shaken up lots of things in our society: work patterns, how we get to meet people, and the social development of small children and dogs.  Was it all handled wrongly? Covid has become the blame-hound for all sorts of things.
• Schools are seeking EHCPs (education, health and care plans) for pupils in order to access high-needs funding. That’s another thing that shouldn’t be necessary: schools should be properly funded! 

I still maintain that if schools were smaller and if classes were smaller, teachers could give the children extra attention without the need to put a label on some children in order to get funding. It would also go some way to preventing teacher burn-out: it quite shocking how many enthusiastic people go through the process of teacher training and last two or three years before deciding it’s all too stressful and move on to something else. 

But, of course, smaller schools and smaller classes would mean investing more money in education. It all comes down to money in the end. Schools, prisons, hospitals, care homes, social services, public transport - they’d all work better with proper funding! 

I read something the other day about pubs and restaurants, in Wales I think it was in this case, closing because of the high cost of overheads. Also because people simply can’t afford to eat out or even go out for a social drink. It’s cheaper to buy your beer or wine and drink at home. As I read that I was reminded of something else I had heard: a related problem. Jay Rayner wrote about it in the Guardian

If restaurants and pubs close, struggling young actors will have nowhere to turn to for temporary employment between acting jobs. Actors such as Jamie Dornan have spoken in interviews about their years of waiting on in a variety of pubs and restaurants before hitting the big time. And it’s not just actors; it’s musicians, writers, artists of all kinds. 

The hospitality sector supports our culture! We should support the hospitality sector! We should go out to lunch more! Good grief! I’ll be advocating ‘eat out to help out’ at this rate! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!