The Hartlepool headteacher trying to find beds for 10,000 sleep-deprived pupils | Schools

7 comments

1. My girlfriend is a teacher, they stopped treating kids falling asleep in class as a behaviour issue and started looking at it as a welfare one. Turns out a lot of kids are sleeping on floors, sofas, sharing beds with multiple siblings or just have a highly disruptive home life due to the parents being addicts.

2. A brilliant scheme but it highlights how we are living in Victorian style living conditions again, damp homes, plenty of homeless, poor quality in food as the soil isn’t being crop rotated so lacks nutrients in it, people not having enough money to eat or even properly at all, a lack of jobs and lately crime a high level due to poverty.

3. When you have big families stuffed into small rabbit hutch flats, it isn’t exactly conducive to a good night’s rest for anyone.

4. My son’s girlfriend, both 15, often comes round to sleep. Her bedroom is the dining area of the kitchen. She often misses school because of uniform issues. The school send kids to isolation or home if they can’t afford to replace broken, too small uniform. I used to do the the foodbank in the school, for pupils and staff.

5. Watched a BBC documentary, years ago about child social services. One couple had a kid they completely ignored. His bedroom was totally empty, not even a bed, just carpet. SS bought them a mattress for the kid. Visited a week later and the mattress was exactly where it had been left after delivery, still wrapped up.

6. In primary school I use to fall asleep and they couldn’t wake me, back then the solution was to tell me I’d have to go to special education school. I managed to force myself to stay awake in future.

7. This guy is a hero, what he says should have a lot more weight than that minihitler who tries to stop kids being kids.