When a new child recently joined my class, in the middle of the year, completely unannounced, there was nothing particularly unusual about it. The fact that the child in question spoke absolutely no English was not unusual either: teachers regularly welcome pupils who have English as an additional language into their classrooms, and I have taught several pupils who do not speak English over the past few years.

And yet my heart sank at the sight of this particular pupil. It was nothing to do with the individual child but rather with the fact that the range of needs in my class was already so vast that I was suddenly faced with a dilemma. Should I do what I would normally do in this scenario: sit with the newcomer and go through the basics one-to-one, with the help of flashcards and phonics cards? Or should I do what I had been doing with my class all year and work with one of several children with special educational needs and disability (SEND), who faces huge challenges in working independently?

Similar dilemmas are occurring in classrooms all across the country. Concerns about the negative impact of setting or streaming have led to the eradication of ability grouping and differentiation by task in many primary schools. According to the Education Endowment Foundation’s setting or streaming toolkit, international evidence for teaching five- to 16-year-olds suggests that “on average, pupils experiencing setting or streaming make slightly less progress than pupils taught in mixed attainment classes”.

This means that teachers are under increasing pressure to find new ways of meeting the needs of all learners at once.

At the same time, budget cuts have meant that many schools have had to lose support staff who would usually play an integral role in ensuring that children are learning and actively taking part in lessons (2018 research from the NAHT headteachers’ union found that as many as four out of five heads had been forced to cut back on teaching assistants for funding reasons).

Meanwhile, SEND coordinators are under immense pressure, so cannot always provide the practical in-class help that they might have done some years ago.

All of this means that teachers are having to source and create their own resources for pupils with SEND and squeeze this work into an already busy timetable.

Yet, just as resources are shrinking, class sizes are increasing, with 55 per cent of teachers in a 2018 YouGov poll reporting that their classes have become bigger in the past 12 months. Within these classes, there is often a huge range of needs to provide for. In one class, you could have children who speak English as an additional language, autistic children, children with speech and language issues, children who have mental health issues, as well as those who are thriving and need extra challenges.

So, where does this leave us? How can teachers possibly be expected to meet everyone’s needs in every moment of every lesson? The simple answer is: you can’t - and yet you have to try. The expectation for teachers to meet the learning needs of all is clearly written into the Teachers’ Standards: TS5 requires us to “Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils”. “All pupils” includes those with significant barriers to their learning.

Planning and teaching well-structured lessons and promoting good progress and outcomes for all students is precisely what being a teacher involves.

It might not be easy when resources are being squeezed, but the fact remains that equipping yourself with strategies to empower all children to learn and make progress every day is simply part of the job.

I have taught classes where I have found it relatively easy to keep on top of everything and everyone in the room. Then, I have taught classes where the range of needs was so huge that it felt physically impossible to “be there” for every pupil throughout the lesson.

I know from experience that consistently offering every child the level of individual support that they need simply isn’t doable all of the time. There will be classes and lessons where this may be possible, but I honestly don’t believe it can always happen.

However, I’ve also come to learn that it’s not the end of the world if a child is doing nothing in a lesson for a minute or two. Likewise, it’s OK if you didn’t get around to giving some children verbal feedback, because there will be an opportunity for you to catch up on that later.

One thing I have tried over the years is giving my children who need additional support mini-projects - such as making a comic book - to keep them occupied. This means that when they have finished a task, they have something to move on to, rather than sitting there waiting for me to become free to support them again. This might sound like “busy” work, but if a child is practising holding a pencil, writing and recalling a story, then the learning hasn’t stopped.

In an ideal world, teachers would have the time and resources to meet the needs of every child in their class during every lesson, but that isn’t reality. Teachers cannot be expected to work miracles.

There are already far too many teachers working until the middle of the night to ensure they are prepared for the next day’s lessons. We should be able to use our professional judgement in the classroom and feel confident that children will still make progress even if we didn’t manage to move a child’s learning on or nip a misconception in the bud before the end of a lesson.

Ultimately, teachers should, and do, strive to meet the needs of every child in every lesson, but we shouldn’t be breaking our backs trying to achieve the impossible. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t get around to everyone, or if we haven’t given one child a “challenge question”. It’s more than likely that there will be a very good reason for that.

Shannen Doherty is a Year 4 teacher in a South London primary

This article originally appeared in the 15 February 2019 issue under the headline “You can’t meet all the pupils’ needs, all of the time”