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

Your child wont have the opportunity to disrupt the learning of others today. That the big win for them.

You keep swerving the point. It’s GCSE year - he needs to stop messing around in any lesson, not just the lessons he favours. You need to get on top of this as does your son - that is the real issue. The school are quite rightly protecting the interests of those who DO want to learn and can behave.

The school are protecting the interests of the majority who do want to learn yet can’t because the minority eg your son will not behave, so yes, it’s an effective consequence. Stop ruminating on whether it’s fair or not and get on top of your son’s behaviour so he can access lessons again.

You take him out of the lessons where he's not targeting the teachers to send the message that any and all attempts to target a particular teacher are unacceptable.

Kids don't miss lunch. They have to be allowed to have lunch. You don't mention a few things, like how long is lunch? Really, after he's got his lunch, how much time would a detention be? Fifteen minutes or 45 minutes? Write a note of apology? Five minutes? His lessons are probably an hour. How many has he disrupted? If this behaviour is ongoing, a five minute note writing activity wouldn't be proportionate.

You also don't mention his size or the gender of the teacher. If he's 5ft 4" and the teacher is a 6ft male, then that's completely different to if he's 6ft and the teacher is a 5ft 4" female. He's nearly 16. Doesn't matter if he works hard elsewhere. Does matter if his behaviour is attempted intimidation.

I mean there's something you're not really getting here. "Harassment is any unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of either violating a person’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them." This can include "Repeatedly shouting ... banter ... facial expressions ... ridiculing or demeaning someone ... insinuations ... taunting ... treating them as inferior ... making tasks unnecessarily difficulty ... etc." Just saying to someone who's nearly 16 that all of this can be resolved with a 10 minute out or brief note of apology isn't really adequate. Or to use your phrase, it would be 'counterproductive'.

I have had 4 children go through secondary school and 1 currently there. My eldest behaved well in school as did most pupils at the time (he’s now 32), my second was incredibly disruptive and had so many exclusions that I had to give up work to be available to support the school with his behaviour. He was particularly vile towards younger female teachers and this was the behaviour that got him excluded. I always supported the school and we were open and honest about the trouble we were experiencing. Although it made him cringe, he was part of every meeting about his behaviour. My next two sailed through school with no behavioural sanctions but their best friend was in isolation nearly every day. My fifth is suffering the behaviour of all manner of different children, she works hard and ignores it as best she can but I’m horrified at the level of behaviour children have to suck up and cope with in lessons. There is a boy in her learning group that makes sexist comments and gestures towards every female teacher so he gets sent to reset. If he was mine, I would be mortified but I’m grateful the rest of the group don’t have to suffer him while he is out of the lesson. Is it working to change his behaviour? Probably not, but why should he matter more than the children who understand the value of education? It is him that is squandering his education (the same as my 2nd child) and only him that should deal with the consequences. The rest of the class deserve not to be disrupted.

Talk to the school, be open but don’t query the policy. Instead focus on what actually happened in that classroom that resulted in that consequence. Work together to make sure he doesn’t have this happen again and, at 15, your son is responsible for his choices so make sure he faces that too.

As an aside, I don’t think schools do after school detentions anymore because parents don’t support them. I’ve seen several stories in the media about kids who can’t do the detention because they have to collect a younger sibling/have to catch a certain bus/don’t want to walk home alone etc. Some parents don’t value education and so don’t support anything beyond the standard school day.

Do I agree with it? No. Would it be my first reaction? No. I don’t believe he’s lost 5 lessons lightly as you suggest, and I hope you as a parent are going to step up and take this seriously. This kind of situation requires parents and teachers to manage before it escalates.

I think the crux of your complaint is that he’s missing lessons he likes and behaves in for isolation not the problem lesson, so everyone’s arguments about the other 29 aren’t valid? In which case, my point is that it is a punishment. The teacher may wish he was missing their lesson but the pupil is annoyed they are missing e.g. PE. He’s being deprived of things that he enjoys or wants to do due to the choice he made about his behaviour. Consequences aren’t always perfect but, when followed up and supported at home, they work.

It's not enough to have a child physically in the lesson. They need to be engaging with it, in order to benefit.
No one is being sent to isolation/R2L for minor behaviour issues. This will be because he has repeatedly caused disruption to the classroom or there's been a one off incident that was serious enough for the teacher to remove him from the room.

In our school a child needs to acquire 3 negative behaviour points during the lesson, to trigger R2L. The teacher gives a warning before the first point and sits the child elsewhere before the second. That's several opportunities to improve before removal.

The onus will be on him, as a GCSE student, to catch up on the other work he misses as a consequence of his behaviour and subsequent removal from classes.

He won't be there because of an undiagnosed need. The teacher will be in communication with head of year, ALN support. We get given information on our pupils and any additional needs, so they can be supported. The teacher will have offered in-class support. They want your child to pass, not least because teachers are judged on how well their classes perform in GCSE results!

If he feels she doesn't like him, maybe he should take a minute to consider why. And do something to change that.

Remember that every time the teacher has to pause their lesson to address behaviour, the whole class is losing precious teaching time. If I was the parent of another pupil in that class, I'd be cross that your child's behaviour was affecting my child's education, on an ongoing basis.

The teacher has to balance the needs of everyone (and their parents' opinions), not only your son's needs.

But I expect the GCSE lessons went much more smoothly for all the other students in the class, without the disruptive presence of your son.

If he wants to join in the lessons with everyone else, he’d better learn to behave himself, hadn’t he?

The benefit is for the other children who won't have their learning disrupted. This sounds like isolation rather than detention - in my experience the class teachers will be asked to send work for the child out of class to complete

It helps the other 29 students who can get on with the work and focus on their GCSEs without the ones who can’t be arsed running it for them.

It also makes it harder for schools to discipline kids if the parents are undermining them or agreeing that punishments are wrong.

I’d focus on supporting the teachers, they have enough to do without battling with kids who can behave but choose not to.

Tell your kid to do the punishment with good grace. Ask one of his mates what was covered in the lesson and do some reading up on the topics. Remove gaming privileges or something one night so he sees you in support of the school.

Your child is soon to be an adult. Time he took responsibility for his actions and stopped pissing about.

If your son is allowed to mess about in lessons, then the other children who can focus and learn are missing out. Of course your focus is on your child, but the school have a duty to support those who want to learn.

Undiagnosed children are getting fewer as diagnoses become so prevalent. But also there are just children who like to get attention. That isn’t due to ND, it’s a behaviour thing. Respect, attitude and potentially parenting. Rather than look for other factors to blame, just tell son that he wouldn’t be in this position if he didn’t mess up, and that you’ll be very cross if he does it again.

My parents always backed the school, and it meant I had consistent expectations and behaviour. I hope you haven’t let your son know about your concerns?

It sounds unlikely.

It's much more likely, as a pp said, that this day in isolation is a consequence of missing previous lesser sanctions that were set. Are you sure that didn't happen?

In a school I was in the system would be three warnings then you're removed from the class to isolation for the rest of the lesson, and/or if you built up a few of those and didn't attend the resulting detentions, you'd get the day in isolation as a re-set. As subject heads we were required to set work for any of our students in isolation if they'd have had lessons in our subject (regardless of who'd sent them there).

Have you actually looked at the behaviour policy?

Students are not always aware of how disruptive their behaviour is to the rest of the class. It is probably not just this one subject. There is generally a pattern, with some teachers more able to handle it than others.

Is your son disruptive in one lesson because of an unrecognised need?

Saying that the school shouldn’t punish other children in this way isn’t relevant to your child. You might as well say that your son shouldn’t do cross country because a different child might have asthma.

Is there a reason you are unable to read OP’s posts?

she states clearly that he misbehaved in one lesson and doesn’t in others. The exclusion from all classes is her question. It’s not impacting the other children in those classes, either way (he doesn’t misbehave there) and it may cause him to be disengaged.

She’s asking a question, not defending her son’s behaviour, and some posts have a really nasty undercurrent

What communication have you had from the school?

I’m guessing you DC has been an awful pain in class and destroyed learning multiple times - schools actually don’t want kids missing lessons.

The best thing you can do is go and speak to whoever put him in isolation and find out the reality of your DS’s behaviour.

I would honestly threaten (and mean) to sit with your DS in lessons if he can’t control his behaviour. Schools may not allow this but I actually had this (a parent followed their kid around all day) and that kid never kicked off again as they were humiliated by their parent..

Ypu need to get your kid’s behaviour sorted and you can work towards this by supporting the school.

I do think behaviour management in schools needs a review. But so does parental attitudes to behaviour management, because as a parent your focus should be on prevention rather than cure. If you think the sanctions imposed are harmful, then the most useful thing to turn your mind to is making sure your DS never receives the sanction.
In your position I'd be reinforcing the schools messaging about my DSs behaviour being unacceptable and telling him that if there was a next time there would be consequences at home as well as at school. I'd not let him have any idea that I was questioning the school, as that encourages him to disrespect their processes believing you'll support him in that.

If he misbehaves in one lesson, it's a choice behaviour and not an unmet need. He deserves everything he gets.

You don’t know how your child is behaving in other lessons, only what he is telling you. Nor do you know what he did in class - only his version.

Hes being punished. If he wa only taken out of the lesson he didn’t value, it would be almost a reward.

I would make an appointment with his head of year and find out what is really happening in his classes, and 100% support the school to correct it.

You sound like a caring, invested mum, who wants to do the right thing for their child, but is maybe going about it in the wrong way.

Rather than complaining about the system (honestly, you won’t get anywhere. Someone has been paid big money to be responsible for behaviour in that school. They’ve read all the research and done all the training and aren’t going to change it based on your opinion of it), could you get in touch with the teacher in the subject he’s struggling in?

Explain you support the school - and the sanctions - and want to help ensure it won’t happen again. Ask what behaviours they’re seeing in lesson, what gaps in knowledge your son has, how you can help him engage, etc.

But what about all the other children this child and your own disrupts by their own poor behaviour?

Teachers need to teach but can't with even disruptive children who often set off others.

A couple of things.

His bad behaviour will be impacting on the rest of the class. Either encouraging other students to act up, OR distracting others from work. If he fails due to not being in class, he is one child. If he can't behave in class he could affect the performance of say 5 to 10 other children. Better to get him out than affect others.

He probably goes to an academy. They will waste children for the sake of the overall success of the business. So if your boy doesn't shape up, he won't get an education. Academies are businesses and your boy is bad for their company.

The supportive, understanding primary years are over. He has to cope in places where he isn't popular. It happens. Not all teachers will like him. Not all the people I work with or for like me. It's life. He needs to shut up and keep his head down in that teacher's lesson or it'll only be him that is hurt by his absences.

Pastoral support worker here 🙋‍♀️

it sounds like your son is in isolation. It’s a consequence for messing around and disrupting others learning.

i can understand it’s counter productive but…

• work will be set for him
• it alllows other student to learn in peace
• your son will know the behaviour policy and still chose to behave that way. Actions have consequences.
• he will also miss break and lunch

Schools have very little to work with in terms of discipline so it’s many isolation and suspension. Some kids miss a lot of lessons because of this but school has to follow their behaviour policy to help the learning for the majority.

I am on the fence with your undiagnosed needs comment. Some are undiagnosed but that cannot impact the learning of others. I also don’t always think it should be used as an excuse.

All students, SEN or not, have to learn appropriate boundaries for adulthood. If they spoke to people in the pub how they often speak to teachers, it would not end well for them.

That teacher will be teaching 5 or 6 lessons a day. 32 children per class. That is around 155 children a day. Do you honestly expect that teacher to understand the 'unrecognised needs' of 155 children? Unfortunately, at this stage of his education, it is sink or swim.

If you want your boy to cope, book an appointment and go in to see the teacher. Be supportive of the teacher. Tell her you'll support her in whatever she needs your boy to do. And find out what he can't do in her subject and explain he's struggling with whatever the academic issue is. Absolutely do not for a second condone his behaviour to her. Be on the teacher's side and explain that you know his behaviour is unacceptable. That is the way to get your child's unrecognised need understood.

Not by ranting about behaviour policies. Because as others on here have said. There is NO way, no chance at all, that you will change a schools behaviour policy. If you can't help your child sort out his behaviour it will waste his education.

Removing the child who is causing disruption allows the others in class to have the time to learn.
Isolation isn't used for a 1 time making a noise issue, its used when the kid continues to be disruptive. The teacher may not like him, but as unfair as that is its life. Not everyone is going to like us but acting like a clown and disrupting others learning is not ok.