AIBU to think missing five lessons as a detention seems counterproductive?

This 100%. It’s to give the rest of the community a respite from your son so they can have some learning time where their education is not disrupted. The relief students and a teacher feel when a disrupter is not in a lesson that day immense.

It’s utterly irrelevant whether your son sees being deprived of lessons as a treat or not. His thoughts on a detention/isolation/suspension/whatever are not a factor. We don’t put dangerous or unsafe people in prison depending on whether they like being in prison or not. We don’t even sanction people based on whether it’s a deterrent to them as an individual personally or not. It’s primarily to take them out of circulation so the rest of the population who do everything right can be safe and unaffected by their behaviour.

It’s well known that government agencies and other large institutions never do anything that doesn’t work. This is why they are always effective and have never had to change anything.

More important are the children not messing around. Your DS’s behaviour is disrupting learning in their classes, that’s not fair. See it from that perspective and suddenly what is reasonable and unreasonable can look a little different

It may not be the "silly noise" your DS made, but some (usually boys) seem to think it's funny to make sexual moaning noises when their teachers back is turned. This is considered sexual harassment and is dealt with firmly.

He needs to work on his bad behaviour. The schools detention policy isn’t the issue here

I’d contact the school head of year op and find out exactly what the behaviour was, and check what their official behaviour policy is. It sounds like a day in isolation to me rather than a detention, and I’m surprised you haven’t been contacted by the school about it taking place. A day in isolation is pretty serious and our school would have spoken to a parent about this.

School has the behaviour policy on the website and it also gets sent out by email to parents at the start of each year. So it’s made really clear to parents as well as students which helps avoid any confusion. They also inform parents by email if the student gets a detention after school that day, as well as having everything on an app too, so we can see their whole behaviour record, any positive or negative behaviour points given and reasons why. Same for detentions or isolations, everything is recorded and easy for parents to view. Sounds like your school hasn’t made their behaviour policy very clear or accessible to parents?

I agree with you that a day in isolation seems extreme for making silly noises in class, unless it was the culmination of some previous strikes? Make sure you get the whole story from school about what’s happened, as well as a clear explanation of their behaviour policy. It could be a ladder type situation, so ours is a verbal warning for a first strike, second strike is a detention and also removal from that lesson depending on what the behaviour incident is. Third strike is a day in isolation, it used to be called reflection but I don’t think it was being taken very seriously so they changed it to isolation.

Does isolating them from lessons work? I guess for some kids it’ll work by giving them a shock, and feeling scared, mortified etc which could make them behave better afterwards, it’s meant to be a punishment that they learn from but certainly won’t work like that with some kids. Our school says that with isolation the student loses their right to be in lessons with the other students, that it’s a privilege to be in class learning. I don’t think many 15 year olds see it quite as a privilege though, almost certainly not the ones ending up in isolation, so it does seem a bit pointless in that regard.

On the other hand, I do feel it’s not fair on the other 30 odd students who are having their learning disrupted, and there needs to be behaviour management and consequences for bad behaviour and disruption. Dd has a class where a few of the boys are constantly a nightmare, the teacher can’t get through the lesson content she’s trying to teach, they’re running behind other classes, the other kids who want to crack on and learn are fed up, especially as it’s year 11 and their GCSE year. Splitting the boys up hasn’t worked, they just shout to each other across the room, they’ve had detentions and been removed from class, I expect isolation will be next. I’ll report back via dd on whether it works with them or not! Like you say there will be some kids who will just keep ending up in isolation and falling further behind by missing lessons, they then won’t engage or be able to understand the work the bad behaviour happens again, and round in circles we go. Here, if you reach a certain number of days spent in isolation you get a suspension, a few days or a week spent at home. Finally if things get really bad it’s a managed move to another school. A couple of kids in dd’s year were given managed moves to different schools in year 10. Our school is also quite open that if you don’t like the behaviour policy then you can find another school.

I get what you’re saying about a day in isolation and missing lessons seems counterintuitive, and you might be able to negotiate an alternative sanction, it really depends on exactly what happened and if you can suggest an appropriate alternative punishment, definitely speak to the head of year. I would also question why their behaviour policy isn’t made clearer and communicated directly to parents. Get all the facts in front of you and take it from there. I’d also want to try and get to the bottom of what’s happening with this particular teacher, strange how it’s just in one lesson and one specific teacher. I’d be proactive and try and work with school to address this, especially where it’s his GCSE year and as we’ve just been told, every lesson counts (plus statistics on how attendance percentages affect grades, so there’s a clear link to missing lessons being detrimental)

YANBU. It is counterproductive. As you acknowledge, disruptive behaviour is a PITA and there should be consequences. Missing the rest of that particular lesson plus a detention in some form seems more balanced.

My DC hasn’t had a detention yet, but has mentioned detentions and tellings off to others for tiny things that completely deviate from written policy. Children can lie, but he is troubled by what he sees. From his standpoint, he’s relieved he hasn’t had a big punishment yet, even though he hasn’t misbehaved. That’s what pupils are seeing. I was well behaved at school, but the military level of the schools in this area are concerning. One can want disruption handled and expect consequences for it, whilst still thinking a school is draconion. I was told by children on open days that some teachers abused their positions quite openly. I heard about isolation for someone whose ears hadn’t healed enough after getting them pierced at the beginning of the summer holidayys, year 7s getting detentions for getting lost in their first week, getting into trouble for wrong answers.

They line up in silence in the playground, then go to their classroom in silence, line up outside the classroom in silence, get ready to learn in silence, have form and uniform inspection, go to next lesson in silence hoping not to need the loo, line up outside in silence, ditto for next lesson until their break. They hope they remember a snack as lunch ends an hour before the end of the school day and many kids don’t bother as the queues are too long. If for any reason the teacher rightly or wrongly thinks they’re not paying sufficient attention, that’s a sanction. If you query the sanction, it’s a bigger sanction. All parents have been written to and told not to query sanctions. There’s a type of parent or poster who I hope never have any influence over school policy as they seem unable to grasp common sense, nuance or proportionality. There are those who have (or pretend to have) blind faith in schools as though all schools are the same, even though parents and teachers speak out.

This is an internal exclusion and it’s quite serious.
i agree it’s not the best way to handle it - he is just going to fall behind and some children will potentially get worse.
i personally would be asking the school why they aren’t being given the same work as their classmates. They could be given the lesson PowerPoint and same activities. Especially for gcse where there’s probably a scheme of work they’ve been using for years

Yes it is common. Most schools have an isolation unit. These children are given work, so if the disruption is because they find it hard in class then it is a calmer, less demanding environment for them.

Schools can't expell kids that constantly disrupt class, even when they are violent, as easily as they previously could. These are the measures they need to take to ensure the majority who want to learn and aren't disruptive have their needs prioritised.

If you are so worried about your son's education then get him a tutor for the subject where he can't control his behaviour.

And you've been repeatedly told.

His classes get a chance to learn when he's not there.

He gets an opportunity to think about what he did.

By the way, what did he do?

It worked for my DS. It doesn't work for the serial offenders who spend lots of time there. It's just management of unacceptable behaviour. Lunchtime and after school detentions require a member of staff to give up their free time. For some boys ( it is mostly boys) nothing is going to improve their behaviour during lessons. There isn't enough time or money to do anything else.
It's probably as counter productive as break and lunchtime detentions for the children who struggle to sit still/ behave in Primary school.

It's for schools to decide what behaviour system works best for them. You could remove him if you are unhappy with it. Or just tell him to behave

He said that one boy hasn’t had a single lesson all term because of his behaviour. GSCE years. If I was that parent I’d be changing schools
If true his behaviour must be appalling and I bet the school would be delighted for him to change schools. If another school would take him

There's shitloads of research and evidence around behaviour management. Teachers don't just pull it out of thin air. It's a proper profession with training and everything 🙄

From Tom Bennett, Government advisor on school behaviour:

...pupils need to be taught to behave well, and the best way to achieve that is through rules and routines that are implemented consistently and supported by senior management, and that those routines and rules flex only in the most necessary of cases.
“Inclusivity is not a model whereby we have one group of children who need to be included, and everybody else has to bend to accommodate those needs,” he explains.

He’s been a constant critic of more relational behaviour approaches, such as restorative practice, which he described earlier this year as “one of the worst system-level strategies you can imagine”.

And he explains that while ideas about giving children more freedom are understandable, they don’t survive the reality of the classroom.
“[People] love the idea of their children being allowed to do what they want to do, but they often lack the imagination to understand what impact that has on other people, and to understand the impact that other people could have on them, and to understand that when you exist in a society, it’s not just individuals that have needs; groups have needs too,” he argues.

In 2015, he labelled educators who believe in noisier classrooms “rocking with spontaneity” for learning as “absurdists” and remarked that “for every outlier who enjoys spending time in a centrifuge, there are 29 kids who can’t concentrate”.

You haven't said what your son did, which is telling.

If the other pupils can get on with their work, then yes, it's worked.

But why take him out of lessons he works hard in?

He doesn't get to pick and choose.

Yes. It'll send a strong message to your ds not to mess around. It's more serious than a detention. Hopefully he'll behave in future.

If he's absolutely fine in other lessons, then he's choosing to disrupt this one class. Why is he making that choice? You've said it's because he feels the teacher doesn't like him. It's most probably the other way around, i.e. he doesn't like the teacher. This presents the school with a problem. You can't have a 15 year old lad 'messing about' just to make a teacher's life a misery so he's in isolation. That sends a message. It clearly shows what behaviour is and isn't acceptable.

Yes, it does work. That's why schools do it.