This summer’s education debates have been loud and divisive - but on one point, there’s agreement: too many children are falling through the cracks in our education system.

Having spent 16 years as an English teacher in mainstream London secondary schools, I’ve seen students disappear from my classroom, let down by a system that fails to support them.

The Schools White Paper, now expected in early 2026, presents an opportunity for the government to set out a new direction for education over the next four years. The need for reform is clear - the future of a generation is at stake.

Inclusion as a cornerstone

In the 2023-24 academic year, over 170,000 young people missed more than half of their lessons, with one in five missing 10 per cent or more. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special educational needs and disabilities are up to five times more likely to be excluded and three times more likely to be absent.

All signs point to “inclusion” as a cornerstone of the Schools White Paper reforms - and rightfully so. Inclusion can make a real difference to young people struggling in our schools. But meaningful inclusion requires buy-in from teachers, who are already understaffed and overworked.

Secondary school classrooms are demanding environments. We are responsible for all 30 children, whose issues range from cruel comments from friends to severe neglect or abuse - both of which impede a child’s ability to focus on Romeo and Juliet.

The reality for teachers

When faced with tears, angry outbursts or stonewalling silence, teachers try to be empathetic and supportive. But accountability measures loom large. We need good exam results, and there is harsh judgement for teachers deemed unable to “manage behaviour”.

In this environment, when one or two students seem to vanish, we don’t really have time to do more than notice. Maybe it’s a prolonged illness or a fixed-term exclusion that doesn’t seem to have a fixed term. We might email some catch-up work to the head of year, but our focus inevitably returns to our 29 other pupils.

But it’s not just one child: children are disappearing from classrooms across the country, and it adds up. Last year, 34 million days of learning were lost to unauthorised absence and suspension. So, where do these children go?

A new perspective

This year, as an outreach teacher, I’ve been working with some of the pupils who “disappeared” - children in the youth justice or care systems, or who are so anxious that school triggers severe self-harm.

These are the children who were rejected from a system that labelled them as failures or offered them inadequate support in their suffering.

Often living precarious lives, they are the young people likely to struggle the most as they make their way in society without school, friends or formal qualifications. So, what could I, or any teacher, have done differently that would have kept them in the classroom?

In all honesty, I instinctively know the answer: they needed support, and they needed it earlier.

They needed a school system that could meet their needs at the earliest opportunity, and staff with the training and time to build trusted relationships - a system that the Who is losing learning? report on reducing absences and exclusions calls “whole school inclusion”.

The role of teachers is apparent: it’s the “everyday interactions inside and outside the classroom” that will drive effective inclusion.

Support for all

But are we thinking enough about the cost of these “everyday interactions” on teachers? Dr Rachel Briggs defines “compassion stress injury” as “the negative psychological consequences of exposure to others’ suffering when helping or wanting to help”.

Teaching certainly involves lots of this. Once, after starting my day helping a student who told me she had taken too many paracetamol, I was teaching by 9am - with no time to process this or find out what had happened until the end of the day.

My experience is not unique: 89 per cent of teachers experience stress in their work, 62 per cent report the job negatively affects their mental health, and 49 per cent their physical health.

To deal with the daily challenges of teaching - including self-harm, being sworn at, assuaging a child’s (or parent’s!) tears - while being expected to teach, teachers need time and space. Time for training to support pupils’ diverse needs and the space for reflective supervision to work through the emotional toll of their role.

This support would enable teachers to be inclusive of all students and, ultimately, be better for everyone in the school community.

Shashi Knott is an English teacher and former Deputy Head of Sixth Form

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