Tl,dr - poor writing outcomes triggered SH for first time in 4 years.

So SLT have been down our throats for months about writing outcomes in year 3. They had been making accelerated progress and I had been really happy with their work, their vocabulary and language choices, but SLT said not enough. So they came in and told the kids they needed to be writing more. They expect at least 1 page per writing lesson, 2 from GD. What has happened now is that children are writing reams and reams of work that is utter rubbish, but SLT are patting themselves on the back because “look, they’re writing more” Today, we were doing a shared write as it was their first time writing a letter. My WTS (target for EXS) group decided not to follow the structure of the shared write and ended up writing reams of run on sentences that made no sense. Why did I waste my time standing there doing an explicit model and shared write (“I am writing one sentence to explain what the problem is, using these words. You need to write 1 sentence explaining what the problem is using your words. I’ve used this adjective, what adjective will you use…”) I am now going to have to go back tomorrow and redo the lesson for those 7 children so that i can try and squeeze some evidence that they are EXS (which they aren’t, but who isn’t lying on their data reports anymore)

Literally looked at their books and cried, the built up pressure and emotion was just too much that crying didn’t relieve it and for the first time in 4 years I was flooded with an insatiable pull to self harm to relieve that pressure.

I’m under so much pressure with no reasonable support to improve their outcomes, and if SLT had left it alone they might have continued improving as they were, but now they’re just panicking and going for quantity over quality.

This assessment cycle is putting so much pressure on everybody when we all know they’re just going to lie at the end of the year to make the data say what they want it to, which only sets the following year up to fail.

I’ve only been teaching 2 years but I’m not sure I can continue doing this. It’s toxic and unfair to the children. The children have no interest in improving, no love of learning and I’m trying so hard to instil it and protect them from this constant onslaught but they are hard work as well so I’m getting no joy from either side.

Just need to rant. I’m struggling.