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

They are not always set work to do or if they are its more of a worksheet type situation in one of my daughters high schools they had them "working" in reception making tea coffee etc no school work

@clary all good sense stuff. But when systems are abused as they were where I worked, Reflection Room (aka Isolation) lost any clout it might have.

The poorly thought out policy might the demand on the 8 spaces in the room were such, HOYs had to book students in, sometimes weeks in advance. For serial offenders it was sometimes hard to work out which issue they were being punished for.

Teachers were asked at short notice for work but were teaching and rightly not on email, so didn’t see it until too late. The room was poorly maintained, full of work that never made it back to teachers. There was never any stationery or pens. Kids were in those “hutches” which they scribbled all over.

One lad used to put himself in there by telling hapless supervisors he’d been sent there but he just wanted a sleep (a lunchtime time spliff can get you like that!) And here’s the worse thing, in a school maybe with 10% Black kids, guess who it was most used by? Absolutely abhorrent management.

💯 agree OP. My son was an absolute pain at school and was suspended at least 5 times in secondary school for bad behaviour. He just saw it as time off school 🤷‍♀️ I couldn’t get him to do any work so it would end up in screaming matches but because I had to have Teams calls, he’d get 4-5 hours a day uninterrupted whilst I worked. He loved it. Schools need to give appropriate punishments.

And yes, I know it’s not completely down to the school. We had CAHMS involvement for quite sometime to try and resolve things.

Because that child is ruining the education for every other child. Yes attendance id important, for all the other kids who want to learn but carnt because of one child misbehaviour. It's better that child is taken out then ruining the lessons for every other student.

Well perhaps they shouldn't have been little shits then.

This 100%. I thought it was blindingly obvious but if your child doesn't want to miss out on his/her education, then they need to stop being a prick. They are solely responsible for the consequences they find handed to them A students feelings about whether they enjoy an isolation/suspension/detention over a normal school day are irrelevant and nobody cares.

The purpose of an isolation isn't what the student enjoys or doesn't enjoy, it's to remove a disruptive student from circulation so they don't cause further unhappiness or unpleasantness to the rest of the cohort. The only reason isolation is used is because schools have a legal requirement to keep children in the building. If they weren't bound, forced, fined and downgraded by this stipulation, 99% of headteachers would like to tell these kids to fuck off out the school and never come back. Always boggles my mind that people think that the child is doing the school a favour by being there. Nobody gives a shit if you want to sabotage your own education or not. I care about the other 29 innocent children in the class who just want to get on with it.

My DC is an “innocent” but is capable of seeing when a punishment seems counterintuitive.

I think it's a ridiculous idea and agree with you.

Why would they not get work given to them that is actually relevant to the classes they are missing?! I understand isolation, I do not understand not doing their jobs and teaching them the curriculum. Better to be at home and actually be able to do the lessons they need to pass.

At my sons's school they are kept in at lunch times/breaks/free periods. It's a high achieving school and kids don't like missing out on their free time, so that definitely helps more.

If they are disrupting the full class then as I said, isolation with the class work or staying at home to do the class work.

They should get work given to them. Sometimes it's logistically tricky bc the message (as a PP noted) doesn't get through in time. As a general rule IME (I would always send at the very least a text book and some instructions of what to do) the YP do not do the work set anyway. Again as PP noted when their DC finished the work set and the person in charge said that had never happened. I always lived in hope tho.

But the whole point is that this isn't what's happening to OP's son. Your son enjoyed having a day off school so it wasn't an effective deterrent. OP's son will spend a boring day at school so hopefully that will stop him misbehaving next time.

Little shits is subjective some are put there because their parents didn't think correct uniform is as important as "making a stand" my son nearly ended up in isolation for fighting fortunately there was a camera that showed he got attacked didn't even fight back but first response from the school was screaming they were going into isolation and might be suspended so I would be wary about judging everyone

My personal thoughts are if they are regularly ending up in isolation they are more in need of education and should be given more work to complete because they clearly don't make good choices

@AroundTheWorldAround how are things now?

The question is, really, how much of this is down to poor teaching? Too many schools rely on keeping children in line through rigid discipline systems that focus on the superficial, e.g. having the right uniform and equipment, because that's easy to enforce. What they don't seem to try to achieve is providing teaching that engages children so that they don't play up. I can certainly think of teachers I had who could make a room of kids sit down and behave just by appearing in the doorway, whilst others struggled all the time.

I can assure you that you can teach a really great lesson and some students will still mess about.

It takes two to tango!

Absolutely this.

When we excuse poor behaviour by "the teacher not being engaging enough" we end up with entertainment and not learning.

Honestly, very little. You only need a few (3-4) students in a class to ruin any lesson that isn’t rigidly structured (or any lesson full stop) if the norm of good behaviour isn’t enforced with 100% consistency across the school. And there are some kids who won’t cooperate whatever you do, more so if you’re female.

I’ve worked in schools and I’ve experienced it first hand. Unfortunately. And it’s not improved over the past 20 years since I qualified.

Yes, I had a GCSE class last year with four hard core misbehavers and four who were easily led (boys). Plus one under social services and one who made a good attempt at spending year 11 in the toilet (girls).

I decided I did not want to teach KS4 ever again and have taken myself off to a sixth form.

I'm a subject expert with 15 years of experience and a decent behaviour manager but I'm also middle aged and female and life's just too short to expend so much energy on teens who don't listen, don't work, and can't get on with other teens.

@Phineyj i was thinking more about this. The term “low level disruption” really doesn’t convey how damaging that sort of behaviour is. It’s the sort of thing that could routinely eat up a third of class time (“Miss I haven’t got a pen” “miss what page is it?” “Miss my tongue hurts”) and the constant interruptions are soul destroying. You can’t do “interesting” lessons with people who won’t listen, will look for ways to disrupt it and who have no interest in learning what you want to teach them.

As an ECT 20 years ago, I tried to use some of the fantastic ideas I learned on the PGCE and was dismayed to discover that (a) they didn’t care to be inspired; and (b) if I made a single mistake, it would undermine me for months. How many other jobs are there where you literally cannot afford to make mistakes when you’re still learning!?

“How many other jobs are there where you literally cannot afford to make mistakes when you’re still learning!?”

It’s wrong, but it happens in my DC’s school. There are posters on the wall about how mistakes are part of learning and everybody makes them. How demoralising, hypocritical and frankly insane is it to have signs like that around, whilst in reality sanctions are applied when a child answers a question wrong in class? How quickly do you think a child would be moved to isolation if they dared to challenge this?

What sanctions are applied when a child gives a wrong answer in class? That sounds quite unusual.

Sanctions are for stuff like not stopping talking after being asked multiple times to stop, shouting out, throwing things, damaging things, using racist/sexist/homophobic/anti semitic language, not doing any work at all... not for making a mistake about the subject! That's crazy!!

Yeh I never applied any kind of sanction for a child answering a question wrongly. Neither did nor does any other teacher I knew or know.

Of course making mistakes is part of learning. Often someone's incorrect answer will flag up a misunderstanding that is widespread across the class and shows the teacher that they need togo over x or y aspect again. It can be very helpful.

Seriously a child in a school you know personally (not one you have "heard of" - IMO there is often a lot of third-hand misinformation on threads like this) has been sent to isolation or given a detention for getting an answer wrong?

@kilkennycatsI thought so too. It is also just one of many things I’m discovering that seem wrong. It seems to be one teacher who is particularly bad (or good depending on your perspective) for this. After her first lesson in this subject, DD came home telling me how bad she’d felt for the kids who had got into trouble for getting questions wrong. She told me about the posters on making mistakes she could see at the same time. She told me how school said they’d allow for some settling in time, but then described how some teachers had totally humiliated children. She could see the discrepancies, a two year old could. I asked her how she felt engaging in lessons and she said she’d continue and just hope she got the questions right. Sometimes it’s consequence points, sometimes it’s a telling off. It can be practically anything that gets a telling off or put into the not completing work or disruptive behaviour boxes though really, getting a tissue from a bag, not sitting straight enough, not having control over whether an item the teacher has asked kids to buy arrives in time, kids having the type of ballpoint pen she doesn’t like (serious).

I think it’s harder for teachers to SA now thankfully, but it’s much easier for abusive teachers to thrive in certain schools now. Some schools have such a tightrope to walk to avoid getting a sanction, that there’s not much further a teacher abusing their power needs to go. It’s not enough to do your work, be on time, be respectful anymore. It’s not even enough to do those and wear your socks at the right height, have the right shade of hair bobble, drag around equipment you don’t need, leak through your sanpro, not have time to eat, try to concentrate on the lesson whilst your body is screaming that you need a wee and your mind is telling you to track the speaker and sit up straight, sit in a blazer in a hot classroom, pretend not to see a friend in the silent playground line up line next to you in case one of you mouths hello, spend god knows how much cumulative time over the year having uniform and equipment checks and it’s just really really sad. I can see why some kids eventually feel that they’re going to get into trouble whatever they do, so they may as well be hung for a sheep than a lamb.

OP’s son was genuinely disruptive and should face a consequence, but I completely agree with OP that isolation is the wrong one.

When a child is getting into trouble or disengaging in a particular lesson, but managing in the others, it’s a bit of a red flag and the reasons behind it really need to be looked at.

That’s not representative of most schools 😬
If your dd is telling the truth, why don’t you move her?

Imagine a one word answer e.g. homeostasis. I’ve said it and the class have just chorused it together a couple of times, written it on a mini whiteboard while we spell it out together and then again on their own, chorused it again and finally turned and said it to their partner and listened to it back twice. If, immediately after that, I cold call a pupil (avoiding those who have a reasonable adjustment to not be cold called), I would expect them to give the answer. If they can’t make a decent attempt, especially as I’d have told them the question was coming to one of them before we started, then they haven’t been paying attention for the last 2 minutes and get a warning.