Ministers are poised to scrap the system which ensures pupils with special needs such as autism and ADHD get personalised support at school.
The Government is considering ditching bespoke-education plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) under a wholesale review of the current model.
On Sunday, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – legally binding documents that spell out Send children’s individual teaching requirements.
A record 639,000 children in England currently hold an EHCP following an 11 per cent rise in the year to January, with the figure almost doubling over the past six years.
,,,,
The recent increase in ECHPs has largely been driven by three types of need: autistic spectrum disorder; speech, language and communication needs; and social, emotional and mental health needs, which include ADHD.That trio now accounts for almost three-quarters of all EHCPs, while severe learning difficulties and physical disabilities make up just four per cent respectively.
And there’s the mile being taken, isn’t it.
A SEND diagnosis brings benefits these days. So, a SEND diagnosis is something sought. And, often enough, gained.
Shrug, who would expect different?
We have a family member in teaching. It’s worth noting that, post pandemic, there has been a significant rise in behavioural and educational problems in the new intake years.
Note that this is not the virus magically mutating kids. It appears to be the fallout of a lot of families having their home and work lives massively disrupted by lockdowns, remote learning, parents changing jobs or working from home and the subsequent economic instability.
Some of these factors have had a noticeable impact on children’s behaviour and learning skills, in ways that SEND picks up. That cohort of ‘Covid kids’ are working their way through the school system and turning up in statistics like these.
It turns out that dramatically changing what were relatively stable home lives can mess kids up, and that some of them subsequently need support. Who knew?
Large increase in the birth rates of cousin fuckers as well.
What is the most popular boys name now? Began with M but isn’t Michael…
My daughter in law, a primary school teacher, told me ten or more years ago that parents pushed to get their kids ‘statemented’ because it meant more money and special treatment.
I wonder how many kids were diagnosed with ‘Special Educational Needs and Disabilities’ and got extra money and special treatment because of the ‘disruption’ between 1939 – 1945?
Oh that’s right, none……
We’re navigating EHCP and all its little friends at the moment. There are three parallel systems, and completing one of them doesn’t get you any advantage in any of the others. EHCP gives the school extra money, and is not dependent upon any diagnosis, merely an observation of needs. It is not a diagnosis and it is entirely support for the school, not the parents. The diagnosis itself is separate, and the benefits are separate again. If you have the diagnosis then there is less paperwork for the other two, but it’s not a free pass and the waiting list for diagnosis is in the region of 4-5 years.
The issue the government will have with EHCP is that it’s basically a grant to the school, who can spend it as they see fit, provided it’s to help the child in question, which will quite often be in the shape of a non-unionised teaching assistant. So no backsheesh for the trades union, and it counters the over-riding ambition of the government to remove all autonomy from schools.
Extrapolate that 11% rise and pretty soon every child will be special. But if everybody is special, nobody is special. It’s not surprising that people are talking about changing a system that’s so open to abuse.
Maybe stop jabbing them and see if this replicates findings in Amish communities? Severe autism is difficult and xpensive and its frequency has gone up with number of jabs to babes with immature immune systems ie under threes from 1in 10000 tp 1 in 30 in highly jabbed populations
As AndyT points out, Covid has caused a lot of problems for a whole cohort of youngsters – our grand children among them. I think ours got off reasonably well as we were able to form a bubble with them and they could come to see us and get out and about in our garden. But I know a lot of their friends really struggled. Those early years are critical in getting children socialised and used to interacting with others their own age – but that aspect was disrupted.
But as for the main thrust of the article, I don’t think the system itself is the problem, it’s that perhaps it’s too easy to get on the list. And the system definitely does not want scrapping.
From personal experience, going through a normal school system, with no support, as an autistic kid is … “difficult” (I have some rather more flowery language I could use, but then it would probably trigger even the most liberal profanity filter !) Infant, and then Junior, schools were hell for me. Secondary school wasn’t much better, but I did at least have some teachers who recognised I had some special needs – not that the system recognised that back then, so they had limited scope to do anything.
6th Form was bad – I didn’t get the A-level grades I should have been capable of. And then I got to University …
I look back, and school failed me. It’s an observable fact that those at the bottom end of the intelligence scale get extra support – those at the top* don’t as it’s assumed they can look after themselves (newsflash, we were youngsters, trying to learn our way in society while also learning the stuff to pass exams.) I was never pushed academically, so in those early years I never learned how to learn. So to an extent at 6th Form, but definitely at University, I couldn’t cope – school had failed to teach me the skills I needed. I made it through, got a poor degree (didn’t even manage a Desmond), and then went on to a career which I could not say is anything to shout about.
It was only as an adult that I got an autism diagnosis. It’s helped in that it explains a lot about my struggles, but too late to dramatically change anything (I’m now counting down to retirement.)
* Not trying to brag, but when I applied to Mensa I scored in the top 1% of the population for intelligence – entry requirement is top 2%. I only did it to see if I could.
Some years ago I was at a meeting, and there was a bit of a presentation on this – the presenter put up the standard bell curve, pointed to the bottom end (those that would in my day have gone to “special school”) and mentioned that there’s support for those. Then he pointed to the top end, what these days would be labelled “gifted” kids and pointed out that there isn’t much support for them because of an assumption we are clever enough to look after ourselves. Then a key moment for me – he asked (IIRC) who had struggled at school, and especially at university – and almost all of us put our hands up, we had a shared experienced of having had school fail to prepare us for life, because of a false assumption that we could figure all this out ourselves.
If it were so easy, we wouldn’t have needed to go to school !
I’d have thought another factor with the Amish would be their average age at first birth being in their early 20s, vs. late 20s for other white Americans. Same story for Muslim British vs. White British. There’s apparently less autism amongst Muslim British than Whites, but the usual NGOs are arguing among themselves about the reason, many blaming under-diagnosis so gimme the money.
We evolved to become parents in our late teens and early 20s. Putting that off for a decade, with all the DNA damage acquired in that time, is bound to have consequences.
@Ljh – I trust you can cite peer reviewed evidence ?
Or are you just repeating some rubbish you found on the internet, where someone with an agenda has cherry picked numbers to put together a plausible sounding theory to support it ? In particular beware of correlation being used to claim causation.
Of course, we could abandon vaccination programs as some would have us do. But look where we used to be – when families were regularly 10, 12 or more children, just to have some hope that some of them would survive to adulthood ! And many of those who did reach adulthood were severely disabled – when did you last meet someone in an “iron lung” due to Polio ? I never have, and that’s mostly due to the success of vaccination programs.
Ljh:
This is one of those things where Wikipedia’s “Citation/Source Needed” marker comes in handy….
Even if you consider the….. rather excessive… expansion of “The Spectrum” over the past decades to include literally everything that’s 0.1% aberrant from what the Sociologist/Psychologist crowd have dubbed “Normal” , such an increase would have had alarm bells ringing pretty much everywhere.
And given the Anti-Vaxx crowd something to actually work with instead of conspiracy theories.
But hey…. it’s a free world….
I saw a table charting the mortality rates for Scarlet Fever, Measles, Diptheria, Whooping Cough and Smallpox from 1838 to 1976. The numbers began to drop around 1900 and carried on dropping to 1940 ish, remaining at the same level up to 1976.
Overlaid on this was the introduction of antibiotics, and vaccines for the diseases*, beginning with Penicillin (1944), Streptomycin (1947), DTP (1957), Measles (1968).
The cases were going down long before the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines, and *there isn’t a vaccine for Scarlet Fever yet it followed the same downward trajectory as the others. Weird eh?
Grikath @ 10.36, It’ll be interesting to see if RFK Jr’s investigations confirms your belief that there’s ‘nothing to see here’……
@ Ljh
There is a genetic component to autism so it is entirely UNsurprising that one out of many self-isolating communities is free from it. As a guy who learned some statistics I should be amazed if we could not find a community lacking any particular genetic condition.
@ Adolff
Penicillin does not treat Scarlet fever, mumps, measles, whooping cough or smallpox. Nor does streptomycin. Nor does DTP. Anti-bacterials do not protect from viruses. Measles is not a cure for anything.
Don’t talk soft
Trick cyclists love a ‘spectrum’ because everyone is on it somewhere, and therefore everyone is potentially a case for (lucrative) treatment. But if I had kids in school, I’d definitely be trying to get them assigned to some ‘special needs’ category, because it gives them extra time in exams etc etc.
AndyT – Note that this is not the virus magically mutating kids. It appears to be the fallout of a lot of families having their home and work lives massively disrupted by lockdowns, remote learning, parents changing jobs or working from home and the subsequent economic instability.
Yarp.
Lockdowns were a nightmare for a lot of children. It wasn’t a big jolly snow day.
Kids are extremely sensitive to fear and uncertainty, and our government and media spent years terrifying the public over this shit, disrupting normal education and social activities, and making life extra financially difficult for Mum and Dad (which they’re still doing).
And, sadly, some families are abusive. Lockdowns meant being locked in with your abusers, many of whom had nothing better to do (because lockdowns) than be drunk or high all the time. Imagine how much fun being locked in the Overlook Hotel with your dad, Jack Nicholson, must’ve been.
Bear in mind, our society wasn’t in great shape in 2019 either. Lots of children and young people were already struggling with mental health before their government ignored decades of evidence-based medical advice, torpedoed the economy and tried to separate the population into “essential” and “non-essential”. (In reality all jobs are essential, except MPs – we wouldn’t miss them).
Some of them will still be telling psychiatrists about their lockdown experiences in 30 years time. Lockdowns were an enormous crime against normal human life, a staggeringly foolish and malicious policy failure that has left us in a worse position than if we’d lost a major war.
Never in the field of human politics was so much wasted for so many by so few, and with so little to show for it. If a troupe of drunk baboons had somehow stolen the national credit card, they’d have done infinitely less damage than Boris and Rishi and the rest of the gang.
John77 @12.34, I suggest you re-read my post. Antibiotics may not prevent or even treat viruses but they do treat secondary infections (the biggest cause of death during the Spanish flu was bacterial pneumonia). For some reason they were dismissed during Covid………..
DTP = vaccine to prevent Diptheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (whooping cough) introduced in 1957, Measles vaccine introduced in 1968.
It’s amazing how many Labour backbenchers agree with Tory actions in government
-Rishi let’s SEND numbers double ‘we agree with that’ they say
-Rishi let’s welfare spiral, in particular PIP and LCWRA for mental health ‘we agree that all that too’ they say
-Rishi let’s the pensioner bill keep rising, more illegal immigrants than ever, net zero ‘we agree it would be an outrage to back down from any of that’ the Labour backbenchers would scream.
-Moooar NHS. They agree with that too.
Can’t make sense of what they are for.
Steve
Some of them will still be telling psychiatrists about their lockdown experiences in 30 years time. Lockdowns were an enormous crime against normal human life, a staggeringly foolish and malicious policy failure that has left us in a worse position than if we’d lost a major war.
I used to get a lot of shit on the Telegraph comments board (this was before the CIA/MI6 instructed anyone who questioned the wisdom of the Ukraine war be removed) around describing Lockdowns as the Gretest crime in British history but I am honestly struggling to see a more catastrophic policy in my lifetime. My son – five at the time- still certainly recalls it vividly as a very scary experience. Obviously I know why Whitty, Vallance and SAGE haven’t been hanged but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen – Whitty especially for his subsequent driving of the anti-pub agenda as well.
” *there isn’t a vaccine for Scarlet Fever yet it followed the same downward trajectory as the others. Weird eh?”
Wasn’t this put down to midwives and doctors washing their hands? Sterilising instruments and general changing of lying in practices for mums who have just given birth?
VP – it was a real masks off experience all round. We fought out how many of our countrymen are innumerate, fearful shitebags who think the world should be sacrificed to prevent them dying from a cold.
I am honestly struggling to see a more catastrophic policy in my lifetime.
Immigration or Net Zero, but the harms they cause have taken decades to mature to this point. Lockdowns telescoped generations worth of damage – to the public finances, to trust in our institutions, to the general public trying to get by – into just a couple of years. And instead of addressing the damage, they’re ignoring it and gaslighting us that their only mistake was in not locking down harder.
All completely unnecessary and in complete defiance of everything the WHO advised before 2020. That’s the bit that sticks in the craw – none of this insanity was recommended by “science”. Dr Ferguson and his colleagues are frauds.
VP – this was before the CIA/MI6 instructed anyone who questioned the wisdom of the Ukraine war be removed
I’m lucky because I get to hear directly from senior pubsec and civil service mandarins what’s on their tiny Oxbridge educated minds.
That dopey woman they got to write the Strategic Defence Review – the one who thought it would be a good idea to tell the world we’re at war with Russia – is very representative.
Sir Humphrey will tell you, openly, that we’re at war with Russia. He told me, and the conversation wasn’t even about Russia (it was about computers).
Not sure what else to say about that. It seems very odd, and worrying, that we’ve got a governing establishment that believes it’s already at war with the biggest country on Earth, and is indiscreet enough to say so out loud in the absence of any declaration of war. It’s equally bizarre when you try to understand their logic about how we should win this war – encourage kids to join the cadets, and hire a bunch of Nigerians to man the British Army?
At least the Russians are rational. To a fault, even. They can’t believe how stupid and stubborn Western Europe is being over a war which is going appallingly badly for Western Europe. But remember what NATO said:
Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century
We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.
These. Are. Not. Serious. People.
Hallowed be @ 3.36, that was my point. Vaccines could be the best thing since the proverbial, but there may very well be other factors in play.
@ Adolff
I learned to read before I went to school.
I expect “bait and switch” from Guardianistas but not from anyone in a genuine debate
@ Adolff
When I looked up DTP it did not say that it protects from Whooping Cough – which, in any case, had almost vanished by 1957, a decade I failed to catch it.
… our society wasn’t in great shape in 2019 either. Lots of children and young people were already struggling with mental health…
Indeed. But why did comparable nation states recover more rapidly? Were UK lockdowns more severe than elsewhere? Or did the lockdowns simply amplify the decadence of our institutions – from the family to the civil service and beyond?
I don’t know the answers. Any thoughts?
That should read “a decade after …”
FYI I cannot remember anyone dying of Whooping Cough – but I do remember a boy dying of leukaemia in the early 1950s
Ummm…. John77… Leukaemia is a blood cancer. Specifically of the bone marrow that produces white blood cells.
Especially agressive and deadly if it develops *that* early… It crashes your immune system even harder than unmitigated HIV..
There is no vaccine for that, will not be in the near future, and even now requires the most agressive of treatments to even stand a chance of survival.
in the ’50’s? There was literally nothing the doctors could do to treat it. It was a death sentence.
When it comes to polio, there are controls regarding effectiveness and side effects of vaccines still all around us.
One example are the super-religious communities in the dutch Bible Belt, who leave “everything up to God”.
It’s funny that the outbreaks of polio, measles, tuberculosis, and all the Nasty Stuff of the Days of Yore crop up there once a decade, like clockwork.
And where you can see people/kids in a wheelchair because of polio, born well into this century.
Along with other signs of the results of first/second-cousin marriages over generations…
You can see the results around in schools, right here ouround my little Sodom and Gomorrah splitting the middle belt and the southern belt. **
Social Workshops, and all the other special resources needed to maintain and deal with the results of that particular religious fancy.
And these aren’t Flavoured Enrichment.
There people are like stubborn Yorshiremen *** who refused to move an inch since the War of the Roses.
They didn’t even up and left for the Americas like similar groups like the Quakers and the flavours of Pennsylvania Dutch.
They. Stayed. Refusing to move and being right ornery about Outsiders. And are still around to this day.
But yeah…. Quite a lot of modern and accessible data regarding effectiveness and side effects right there…
** One version of the Truth is that Dordrecht and its inundation in the 16th C prevented the 4th religious war ( [something]Reformation officially) in Clogland. Some of those versions of Steve’s Book are quite militant, and 40 miles of windswept swamp/water did a lot of separating the biatching factions.
*** yeah, yeah, you pendants… Tautology…. But still…
Steve,
“We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.
These. Are. Not. Serious. People.”
Someone got this thing in my head recently of “your brain on media”. That because so much of life is now experienced via TV or movies, rather than lived experience, that’s how they see the world. Few people in the UK go to war, or even know someone who has recently gone to war. Most people don’t read serious things about war but watch movies or TV documentaries or things in newspapers. And the latter two things are all about getting an audience, so are just about making it fun and sexy rather than informative.
Steve,
“Not sure what else to say about that. It seems very odd, and worrying, that we’ve got a governing establishment that believes it’s already at war with the biggest country on Earth, and is indiscreet enough to say so out loud in the absence of any declaration of war. It’s equally bizarre when you try to understand their logic about how we should win this war – encourage kids to join the cadets, and hire a bunch of Nigerians to man the British Army?”
There is a ratchet with war, that is also a bit like a sunk cost fallacy. That once you’ve sent arms, training, special advisors, it would all be a waste of Ukraine lost, wouldn’t it. “But we won’t be sending a full army, just a small force to help defend this one area” and once you’ve crossed that Rubicon you can just start ramping up.
Honestly, I have no fucking clue about Ukraine, and in particular, why Russia really cares. I don’t feel I really have a good answer that clicks for me. I have no idea how committed Russia is to this. If we kill enough North Koreans, are they going to give up and go home, or add the Red Army? And that’s really critical to know. If Russia’s just going to be like “fuck it, let’s not any more” then great, but if they will start committing serious armed forces, then shit will get real.
Theo – Indeed. But why did comparable nation states recover more rapidly? Were UK lockdowns more severe than elsewhere? Or did the lockdowns simply amplify the decadence of our institutions – from the family to the civil service and beyond?
I don’t know the answers. Any thoughts?
Dunno know about other countries, sorry.
I do know there’s a real problem with mental elf for children and youngsters in Britain and a worrying number of them are in despair. Sorry, I don’t have the answers either. It’s not as if we’re good at fixing people’s mentals even when they do get an NHS psychiatrist. At least we no longer lobotomise people, but psychiatry hasn’t really come that far since the days of the brain scraper. It’s mostly about drugs, and a nice lady asking you about your feelings a couple of times a month. Baggy trousers!
In general, for the lucky people with reasonably good mental health, I think lockdowns provoked a similar mentality to those women who shop in their pyjamas. It broke the norms of British work patterns, and now we’re having a devil of a time trying to get people to put the same effort in as they used to.
WB – There is a ratchet with war, that is also a bit like a sunk cost fallacy. That once you’ve sent arms, training, special advisors, it would all be a waste of Ukraine lost, wouldn’t it. “But we won’t be sending a full army, just a small force to help defend this one area” and once you’ve crossed that Rubicon you can just start ramping up.
The British state is definitely overinvested in the Ukraine project, more than we will be allowed to know for 30 years. It’s nuts that the Yanks want to stop a massive war in Europe, but the UK and Euro governments want more war instead – even tho we’re broke and have no plans to win. “To the last Ukrainian” wasn’t a suggestion.
Honestly, I have no fucking clue about Ukraine, and in particular, why Russia really cares. I don’t feel I really have a good answer that clicks for me. I have no idea how committed Russia is to this. If we kill enough North Koreans, are they going to give up and go home, or add the Red Army? And that’s really critical to know. If Russia’s just going to be like “fuck it, let’s not any more” then great, but if they will start committing serious armed forces, then shit will get real.
I’m still trying to pick myself up off the floor at the Norks being real. It had all the vaporous bovrilous smellmarks of bullshit, from it being used to justify the US facilitating “deep strikes” into Russia (why?), amusing stories about them wanking themselves to death in trenches, and Ukrainian soldiers on the front line in Kursk doubting their existence to the BBC.
North Korea becoming a co-belligerent to the Ukraine war was not what I expected. The war is getting very silly and they should stop it.
Someone got this thing in my head recently of “your brain on media”. That because so much of life is now experienced via TV or movies, rather than lived experience, that’s how they see the world. Few people in the UK go to war, or even know someone who has recently gone to war. Most people don’t read serious things about war but watch movies or TV documentaries or things in newspapers. And the latter two things are all about getting an audience, so are just about making it fun and sexy rather than informative.
To be fair, if they knew what war is, almost nobody would fight them. Appalling things. PTSD isn’t some cool guy action hero backstory, it’s like being poisoned and horrified by Shelob’s bite. But young men never listen, even when you tell them the Mobile Infantry made you the man you are today. Yes, being glued to a screen for much of your life watching other people act out situations is definitely programmatic. Bernaysian cancersticks, right? Monkey see, after all. Right turn, Clyde.
But there could be a deeper ishoo with mass media saturation of people’s brainspace: main character syndrome. Main characters never get randomly killed off screen by a bit of flying shrapnel or friendly fire. They also don’t get hit by a drone 3 minutes into the assault and spend the rest of their lives as a blind quadriplegic who shits into a plastic bag. Fuck wars, Edwin Starr was right.
John77 @ 5.19 and 5.24, “The DPT vaccine or DTP vaccine is a class of combination vaccines to protect against three infectious diseases in humans: diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus (lockjaw)”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPT_vaccine
I won’t comment on your reading ability or on your reference checking.
No bait and switch, you are reading into my post what you want to read into it. You’re not TDA are you?
Back to the original issue – a mate of mine taught in public schools in the US many years ago & realized after a few years that most schools/principals wanted as many kids as possible to be labeled as one of the special needs categories because of the additional funding. And, of course, all of the admin staff at every school who worked in the special needs area were very motivated to maximize the # so labeled.
I believe Charlie Munger said, “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome”.
Re: the Spanish Flu, I recently came across an interesting theory that the high mortality rate was iatrogenic in nature. Supposedly, aspirin was relatively new and THE wonder drug. Someone who wasn’t responding would be given more, and more, etc.
Don’t know if this has been seriously vetted, but quite interesting.
“A record 639,000 children in England”
That seems incredibly high. The population England is supposedly 58 million. About 17% of them are children. So just under 10 million.
So over 6% of children have one of these plans?
most schools/principals wanted as many kids as possible to be labeled as one of the special needs categories because of the additional funding
At least in the UK, it’s wildly disingenuous to suggest that schools use labelling to “get extra money”. Our local school has a (currently) very high number of very disruptive kids. It’s not only that kids with educational needs are not being properly supported, they can absolutely trash classrooms and bring lessons to a halt. The money on offer barely covers the necessary staff to allow those kids to be properly handled.
Without it, they’re not just ‘failing’ one or two kids, they’re seeing whole classes fall behind. So the choice is apply for extra funding to prevent classes being disrupted, or have most of a school year drop below expected progress and grades.
It’s worth noting that the people who say “it wasn’t like that in our day” come largely from a generation where you could drop out of school to do manual labour. Being educationally challenged was pretty much invisible, because many kids dropped out as soon as the school couldn’t support them. That’s the same generation that produced adults who now don’t believe vaccines work, or that they cause autism.
AndyT, how about we identify the disruptive kids (shouldn’t be too difficult should it) and remove them.
And yes, it wasn’t like it in my day because the behaviour wasn’t tolerated, AND those kids who weren’t academic had choices – vocational training / apprenticeships / Technical schools or manual labour.
The system is now FORCING non academic kids to stay at school and then complaining they are a problem is a problem caused by the system, not the kids. See Hayek, F.
@ Andy T
It isn’t the autistic kids who are disruptive (and ADHD kids aren’t trying to be disruptive) – it’s the undisciplined (often fatherless) neurotypical kids who are the problem.
@ Adolff
I was reading into your post what I did NOT want to see (trainee statisticians are encouraged to avoid seeing things that they *want* to see): one of them was a claim that the introduction of DTP in 1957 reduced mortality rates in the 1940s
John77, there you go, you were looking for something……..
I never said or implied any such thing regarding the efficacy of vaccines, in actual fact, quite the opposite………..
@ Adolff
It is a tautology that if I read a word, sentence or paragraph I am looking for something – the message therein. May I suggest that *you* re-read your post?
@ some bloke on’t t’internet
I fairly swiftly deduced that Mensa was overstocked with people who had (or who felt they had) been let down by Society that was uninterested in using their talents and/or rewarding them for using their talents. But when I accompanied my son to meetings of the National Association for Gifted Children I discovered that near-enough 100% had been let down by the school system which gave teachers nil rewards for helping or encouraging the intellectually gifted, instead concentrating on getting more of those near the median or below to meet relatively undemanding benchmarks (OK for those well below median the threshholds may have been relatively demanding) while promoting school sports for those who were gifted sportspeople but not for those around or below the median.
In my generation the intellectually gifted were encouraged and helped (my school even had an “Honours Board” for pupils who had won scholarships). The change in attitude is a significant cause of the UK’s relative decline since 1964. Why should anyone want to be a University Professor or a “Captain of Industry” or an inventor if he has a chance of becoming a Premier League footballer (or an IPL cricketer) or a Pop star or a BBC presenter?