After school detention every time they're late...

I used to work with children from all kinds of disadvantaged backgrounds and a lot of the time they'd be late for school because their parents were useless and didn't give a shit. Would the child then be given detention if it was their parents who dropped them off and caused them to be late? Just put of curiosity... My son is still nursery age.

Yes, I’m agreeing with you. It’s an archaic throwback and it doesn’t work anyway.

The school will simply be told “no”. They don’t get to “detain” my child. Sorry, but they have no lawful right to do so and it’s doesn’t work for us.

This is the best way to do it, vote with your feet.

This is tragic. And this sort of scenario is one thing that worries me about potential after school detentions at my DC’s secondary school.

There’s a lot of pupils who get school buses in from outlying villages.
There are “late” buses for the outlying villages, that the school provides for pupils participating in after school clubs, but school policy is that pupils doing after school detentions aren’t allowed to use these late buses.

Which you’d surely think is a safeguarding issue, as the pupils on the school buses to these villages are typically coming in from 3+ miles away, on routes that are along roads with 60mph speed limits and partly without pavements. And public transport isn’t great round here either.

We have a car, so it’s not so much of a safety issue for us in the event of our DC getting detentions, but not everyone has access to a car.

Twice in the same week = detention at my place

There will be none of this shit when my kids start at secondary school. My kids will be instructed not to comply with any form of detention without my or my wife’s agreement.

Same day after school detention for lateness at our secondary. Late is after the register has closed which is about 5 minutes after tutor time starts. We've had one detention while I was away from home and DS ending up staying at MILs rather than at home with DP. There was a day when the main route past town was closed early morning due to a fatal accident, it caused gridlock through the town, the secondary route everyone was directed to went right past school, and around 75% of children were late, there were no lateness detentions that day because it was out of the control of parents or children.

my Kids school does break or lunchtime detention for lateness - not the whole time but enough to inconvenience them. After school seems harsh and I presume it’s to annoy parents who have to go pick them up after missing school buses etc into forcing them out of the house on time in the mornings.

does the school have problems with attendance? Hopefully this will work to get kids in earlier.

That doesn’t work in schools that are trying to focus on attendance - at mines school, if they haven’t arrived by the end of form time, and there’s been no call or email sent to say they aren’t coming in the system automatically sends a text to the parent number listed saying they haven’t arrived at school and can the parent confirm if they are staying at home. Usually an email is sent as well. By end of first period, they start calling all those who’ve not responded to the text with a “sorry forgot to tell you they’re at the dentists”.

Kids can’t just not turn up and bring in a letter the next day, it’s a safeguarding issue if the parents believe they’ve left for school and didn’t arrive.

Detention won’t make them on time to school though. What happens if you refuse to accept the detentions?

My DD has had maybe 3 lates in the 3 years she's been there, never had detention. 1 late for 2 mins seems OTT. But it sounds like it's been a shit show there so I can understand the clamping down to probably try and achieve better outcomes?

I’m a teacher and very glad I don’t teach in a school with such draconian rules. I think it’s inhumane.

New head often has a clear out of staff who are not prepared to change.

We had a new head a few years ago a dew left i was delighted about. The school is a far better school now.

And yes a new head like a new boss like to put there stamp on things. No tolerance is a common one. But considering the pressure schools are under for attendance lateness counts against that so not surprised on the crackdown.

How do after school detentions work? Surely there’s not a legal recourse to detain children at school against their will?

In theory the school can insist, in practice they can't. A school isn't a prison. But if you refuse to do the detention it is escalated. So in ds' school if you didn't do a lunchtime detention you'd find yourself doing an hour after school, if you refused to do that it would be a Friday night detention with the head; if you didn't turn up for that I guess you'd be in temporary exclusion territory. But I think they'd engage with the parents first.

My local school sadly had a fatality after a child was kept in after school detention. An extremely rural area and the child was killed on their way home after having to take a late bus. The teacher didn't come back to school and it was horrendous for everyone. All detentions are now lunch time.

We live 7 minutes' walk away from secondary school so ds was never late.

We were a 35 minute bus ride from his sixth form college so he was occasionally late then, but sixth form colleges are a bit more sensible.

Not normal at my DC's school - which is lucky as they get the bus and it isn't the most reliable!

Exactly this.

But if the delay is not down to my child, I'd take it up with them. Any punishment has to be because the child was at fault, not a third party.

Feel for your DH because it must be crap and yep - your example is exactly the sort of crap I mean. It doesn't reach the kids anything other than to dislike their teachers who are often both inexperienced and lack experience of any other workplaces to impart actual life lessons which I remember were always touched on during classes (anecdotes etc).

Yep.

Fairly standard at the senior school my dds went to until July last year. Dd1 was never late, dd2 probably had 4 detentions due to lateness in 5 years so hardly a big issue. It was about 3-5 minutes late each time to registration/form time so not eating into lesson time, and every time was because she woke up late. She’s quite a walk away from the school so she would always end up running most of the way to make sure she wasn’t too late.
it’s a fair sanction as far as I’m concerned, lateness is a big bugbear of mine and I think it can show disrespect if it’s a persistent issue. Of course it’s also sometimes just shitty unfortunate circumstances ie bus was late, dog ate my shoe, washing machine broke down with my wet clothes inside, car broke down etc but these things don’t tend to happen every day!

Sounds like a good way to increase absences. "I'm late so I'll get a detention so I just won't go and fake a note from my mum in my student planner"

I bet the stress of immediate punishment doesn't help school refusal either.