I’d never really heard of Lewis Capaldi before I witnessed him take to a stage in baking sunshine at Glastonbury 2019 wearing a parka and a T-shirt with Noel Gallagher’s face in a heart, responding to the former Oasis star’s mocking “who’s this Capaldi fella” ahead of the festival. His self-deprecating schtick was endearing, if discomforting. Which made watching him on television this weekend struggling with his Tourette’s and losing his voice in front of a vast Pyramid Stage crowd all the more unsettling, especially knowing he had taken three weeks off for “his mental health” just to be there.
My lucky daughters were present, both then and now. They WhatsApped me to insist the crowd was supportive, singing his songs for him and being understanding when he cut short his set. But, should he have been exposed to this pressure-cooker situation at all? Look at the photos of him on stage contrasted with 2019. His struggle is self-evident. It plays into my worries about how we support people with neurological conditions, which have only mounted the longer I am a teacher.
To the best of my knowledge gleaned from all my data, I do not teach anyone with Tourette’s, a neurological condition with co-morbidity (more than one simultaneous condition) with conditions on the autism spectrum including ADHD, OCD and Asperger’s. However, I do teach many autistic pupils and am aware that there are loads more that our extraordinarily dedicated in-school SEN (special educational needs) professionals suspect are on that spectrum, but lack a required diagnosis to allow the school to receive funding for another TA (teaching assistant) to help them with individual EHCPs (Educational Health and Care Plans). The current situation regarding EHCPs is – bluntly – shameful.
There are currently 517,000 EHCPs in England alone. In 2022, there were 114,500 initial requests for an EHCP, up 23 per cent from 2021. The good news lurking in this is that more parents are now confronting the supposed “stigma” of a diagnosis to support their child. The bad news is that the Government’s own guidelines call for a 20-week maximum wait time between application and a plan. Cue mild-mannered teachers’ unprintable language. Only 51 per cent of EHCPs were issued within that time. A £2.4bn local authorities SEN funding “black hole” means that some are waiting up to five years (!) for a plan – an entire secondary school career up to GCSE.
Sadly, there is still some ignorance around how some of us regard those with neurological conditions. There is a contrast between “woke” liberals and others who really should wake up to the cruelty of mockery. I’ve only truly “lost my shit” with pupils once this academic year: when my Year 7 class mocked a boy with Asperger’s to the point where he fled my class in tears. I felt I had truly failed in my duty of care towards him. Dealing with neurological conditions should neither be a source of mirth, nor a means of saving money. We need to have a hard look at our own attitudes to those we have a duty of care to help.
