Internal exclusion for forgetting lanyard?

[Naem]

My DCs school has just brought in compulsory lanyards (different colours for different years), which are attached to their lunch card (which has photo ID, although very faded).
I can understand the sense of being able to see at a glance which year any DC is, but what is surprising me is that they have also brought in that if a DC forgets their lanyard, they are to be internally excluded until a parent arrives with it (which if parents work, may well not be possible).
I gather that one parent got around the internal exclusion by paying for a new lanyard and lunch card on Parent Pay. In the past if a DC lost their lunch card, it took a couple of days for it to be produced after payment was made, but maybe they have speeded up the system to make same day provision possible.
DD was initially very scared by the very heavy handed way it was announced in assembly (she is generally nervous about this sort of thing- a former primary school teacher once said of her "the other children tried to teach her to be naughty, but she wasn't having any of it", but she can be forgetful), however apparently other kids in her class have suggested to her that this might be the way to get out of classes one hates (there are indeed classes that DD particularly loathes), although I wouldn't have thought she would have the courage to carry that through.
I do know that last year, a boy in DS's class, who had not left himself enough time to cram for an important exam (an early GCSE), deliberately went up to the head of sanctions and insulted him in the corridor, so as to get internally excluded, so as to be able to study for the exam all day without the distraction of his other classes So already there are DC who appear to be gaming the system, prior to the lanyard offence. Now presumably he could just have been unable to find his lanyard, no insulting of teachers necessary!

I had originally assumed that the internal exclusion system was supposed to be to remove children from classrooms where they were being disruptive and not letting others learn, not for offences that have no bearing on classroom learning . I guess I thought this because it seemed to me to be counterproductive to insist that a child who might otherwise benefit from learning in a class and who is not preventing others learning is internally excluded and likely to then end up falling behind.

Is it normal in other schools to have internal exclusion for offences such as forgetting a lanyard?

[Naem]

Do others DCs try and deliberately get themselves internally excluded?

DD hates "being punished" (self image of a "good girl"), but when internal exclusion was described, she thought it sounded wonderful. She tends towards the quiet type, and would happily sit and daydream for hours, and if she could read a book - then heaven! She finds the whole rushing to and from class and the noisiness of class a bit overwhelming at times. I suspect that if she got over the "you are being punished" bit she is at risk of really liking internal exclusion. Problem is that she is not a very good self motivated learner, except about things that interest her, like animals (will do homework of course, because that is what is required, but catching up on her own is liable to always be deferred by daydreams).
If other schools are punishing with internal exclusion for matters that are not actually about disruption in class, are there other DCs out there who are actively seeking internal exclusion for the quiet?

[BarbarianMum]

Yep, totally normal.

[Naem]

Do they do this in private schools too or is it a state school thing?

[CraftyGin]

They wouldn’t do it in my DD’s private school. If they forget their lunch pass, they have to get a day pass from the office, and the glare from the admins is punishment enough.

Missing lessons would be criminal, IMO. How does this help anyone?

[Naem]

That's what I thought. I went to a private school (albeit on scholarship), and they would never call parents to come in unless an emergency (they knew very well that the parents' work was where their fees came from) - so would never expect parents to drop everything and rush in with lanyards, reading books or whatever. And as an academic school they wanted their girls to do well, and employed teachers to ensure they did, so would never have taken girls out of class to sit on their own and miss that teaching. Detentions yes, for various infractions, or types of community service in lunchtime or after school, but not to shoot themselves in the foot by making the education harder to get.

[Chocolala]

other kids in her class have suggested to her that this might be the way to get out of classes one hates

The clever ones always work out how to game the system. I have a lot of respect for them.

Modern state schools seem to be run like prisons these days. Don’t step there, don’t smile, no talking in the corridors, wear only what we tell you, no taking jackets off despite the hearing being cranked to tropical, be an unthinking robot...

There are interesting articles around on US schools with policies like these, essentially saying it’s excellent preparation for life in prison!

[hestia2018]

DDs school uses biometric fingerprint readers for paying for school lunches. No issue with forgetting lunch passes!!

[MaisyPops]

Most schools use fingerprints these days for lunches to solve that issue.

Isolation for small things will depend on the school. In schools where there is a need to crack poor behaviour and attitude then I have some sympathy. Other times personally I think it's a bit much.

Any sensible school leadership should have a plan for students who end up in isolation too often. (E.g. too much time in isolation leads to a managed move to a different school because after all you've proven you have zero desire to follow our rules and make the most of our curriculum. The managed move and fixed term exclusions remain on your record.)

[BubblesBuddy]

Why don’t parents make a fuss about these ridiculous rules? My DDs were privately educated and we didn’t have such rubbish to put up with. I am lucky that we could pay but I don’t know a local school that behaves like this either. I would have moved to avoid such places! Awful.

[MaisyPops]

BubblesBuddy
Maybe I should don my hard hat but usually it's because schools where most of the parents will challenge stupid rules in a positive and productive way don't tend to have the more prescriptive type rules. They also tend to be the schools that have better behaviour overall because the vast majority of parents will support the basic idea of children should behave at school. I've known some schools have students involved in behaviour reviews or had parents complete questionnaires about how to deal with behaviour etc.

The type of school that typically has more (what I consider) ridiculous rules tend to an the schools where parents have battled school for years over even the most basic expectations.
E.g. uniform says no leggings. Parent sends child in wearing leggings and ugg boots. Then complains when child is sanctioned.
E.g. teacher says the test is done in silence. Child talks and tells the teacher to fuck off as they walk off. Parent will claim their child was excluded for only asking a friend a question

Of late there's a bit more of the very disciplinarian schools springing up (seems to be quite a popular trend in some places), but typically in my experience the endless picky rules always used to be a product of kids and parents who were seemingly incapable of doing even the most basic things (which is why although I don't particularly like the approaches I sometimes have sympathy with the school).

[YeOldeTrout]

That's bizarre, why don't they keep spares? Like spare PE kit, etc. Add cost to parentpay system if required.

[YeOldeTrout]

ps: Q to get food at our school is so long that most don't brave it daily. Fingerprint payment system, otherwise. Can't lose those. :)

[AlexanderHamilton]

Its a good job they don't do that where dh works. They'd end up having to internally exclude a teacher (he forgets his lanyard at least once a week and on Open Day the IT person was wearing someone elses becasue she left hers at home!

[BertrandRussell]

"Why don’t parents make a fuss about these ridiculous rules? My DDs were privately educated and we didn’t have such rubbish to put up with"
If you want ridiculous rules, then the private sector is your place. Not so bad now, I accept- but one fab example is not being allowed to look into the quad in your first year.......

[RomanyRoots]

My dd has a card to swipe to gain access to school.
No card, no access or have to pay £5 for a new card.
strangely enough she has never lost or forgotten her card as the replacement would come from her money.

When lanyards are necessary for security/ safeguarding, then children or parents should be made to bring it to school.
They'll soon remember if a parent has to leave work to bring it in.

[hmmwhatatodo]

What a silly rule. Why don’t they have fingerprint systems for dinner and a coloured tie to identify what year someone is in. There’s no way I could walk out of work every time a lanyard was forgotten/lost just to bring it in. Total waste of time and all it’s going to do is wind people up.

[MrWolfknowsthetime]

Just keep the lanyard permanently in her school bag. The she can't forget it.

That's what I do with my work ID card.

[Naem]

There’s no way I could walk out of work every time a lanyard was forgotten/lost just to bring it in

Agree with that one - it would take me in the vicinity of an hour and a half to get from my work to DDs school, so there is no way I could do it. I have told her that if it happens, she will just have to deal with the internal exclusion. As mentioned, my DD is starting to warm to the idea of internal exclusion (she's the quiet daydreamy type) - I guess we will see when it happens, she can be really scatty, and there will for sure be some day she forgets.
The bit about annoying rules I get (not saying I like it, it seems to me that the more prison like a school is, the more a kid is likely to be turned off their main product, which is learning) the bit I really don't get is the use of internal exclusion when that will of its nature put the kid behind in lessons, meaning they will learn less, do less well on tests, fall further behind, as they can't build on what they know etc. Rules that make it harder for a kid to learn than before seem incredibly self defeating.

[BubblesBuddy]

There are rules and then there are school traditions. Independent schools can have many traditions but they are not petty rules enforced by punishment. Well not in our experience.

I totally agree that where there are many reasonable parents and well brought up children, the need for petty rules seems to be less. However petty rules lead to children who are resentful and somewhat institutionalised. Some will long to break free! As in every situation, there is a happy medium.

[Cauliflowersqueeze]

Agree with Maisy.

No student in my experience has tried to get an isolation to do work by being rude. The kind that are rude like that do not care about extra revision. They might walk out a lesson or swear and leave or get hauled out and not mind being in isolation because they like the peace or not being required to work hard, but I’ve never known someone deliberately kick off because they’re keen to be isolated.

At a previous school we had a massive problem with kids arriving with no equipment. In a class of 30 you might get 4 who had a pen. The teacher would spend 10 minutes either lending out equipment (their own) or selling equipment, or sending them to go and buy equipment from reception. We then had a rule that unless you had a pencil case with a pen, pencil, ruler and rubber, you weren’t allowed in class until you bought one or a parent.
After the initial furore, we had almost complete compliance and lessons were far smoother. Made a huge difference.

So the lanyard rule is probably similar.

[iwantasofa]

Modern state schools seem to be run like prisons these days

I visited an ofsted outstanding secondary state where the teacher hosting me told me proudly that the building was designed in exactly the same way as a prison... It was too, I hadn't noticed but could see it when she pointed it out. laid out for maximum visibility.

[Naem]

No student in my experience has tried to get an isolation to do work by being rude. The kind that are rude like that do not care about extra revision.

As mentioned, according to my son, this really happened to a friend of my son in Year 10 in the same school. They were sitting a GCSE a year early, and the kid in question decided that he was better off being in isolation so he could cram for this GCSE, rather than having to be in his regular classes (which were for GCSEs he would only sit the following year), so he went up to the head of sanctions and was deliberately rude. I have absolutely no reason to doubt my son about any of it (my son also was one of the kids sitting that early GCSE, and wondered if he should do similarly, although he had been revising quite hard, and didn't think he could pull it off).
Pretty sure the kid in question was a set 1 kid pretty much throughout. The school has a decent cohort of middle class parents with high aspiration for their kids, despite being a comprehensive, and certainly the set 1 kids have high aspirations for themselves, although some of them may underestimate (particularly the boys) that work and concentration are actually required to get them where they want to go, and they often think they can wing it (which some of them can), and be disruptive in class because they are bright enough to find it easy. I totally understand putting some of those in internal exclusion. My son was always more borderline set 1, and he could get very frustrated by the kids who messed around when he was trying to make sure he had understood the material.
But when your kids aren't "so brilliant to need to pay attention" kids, but "bright enough when they do get taught properly to do well, and generally want to do well" kids, internal exclusion for extraneous things like lanyards might end up being the difference between them staying in set 1, rather than being put down to set 2, or ultimately getting an A* rather than a A in old money GCSE.
Some punishments are counterproductive. I never complained (didn't want to be that parent), but when my son got a lunchtime detention, I could 100% predict he would get a host of negatives from the periods after lunch. Some of that might be because he was feeling angry about the detention, but I think the more simple explanation was that when he had a lunchtime detention, that ate up most of lunchtime, so by the time he got to the canteen, there was no food left that he was prepared to eat, he went hungry, and then was incapable of learning anything in the afternoon because his blood sugar was low, and hence he was disruptive. Time and maturity solved the problem (once they hit Year 11 or so, they start being treated as more mature, and somehow miraculously appear to behave more maturely), but the reality was that after school detentions, although offically a "worse" sanction, was actually better for us, because being hungry put him into an awful mood. But this is only a necessary consequence when you have a canteen that generally runs out of food every lunchtime, not an innate consequence of a lunchtime detention (although there is some evidence, I believe, that having a chance to run around at lunchtime might help better performance in after lunch lessons).

[Cauliflowersqueeze]

Yeah - really risky though. Could end up as a fixed term exclusion or a series of lunchtime detentions or being taken off prom or losing some other privileges. When kids are rude there is normally some kind of trigger or irritation that leads to it. Sounds really odd that a student would be calm and relaxed, but fancy a bit of time to do extra revision instead of going to lessons, seek out a deputy Headteacher and be rude to him in the hope of getting a day of isolation. Just my experience.