Saturday detention and inflexible school.

I've skimmed this thread. Apologies if I have missed relevant information.

1. I think you were right not to rearrange scouts
2. I think school was not massively unreasonable to add an hour to the DT due to rearranging it.
3. The impression I have is that if hw is not done, they do a boring DT, but don't have to do the HW? That is crazy.

There seems to be possible things going on either:
a) your son is failing to write the hw down correctly, so doing it wrong/incomplete
b) your son is willfully not doing hw because boring DTs are nicer than boring hw
c) your son is not capable of doing the hw, and using not wrting down as an excuse to get out of it.

I get the impression you think it is (a).

My DD has difficulty note taking from verbal input, and especially at the start of secondary did not always write down hw clearly enough, meaning she had to go back the next day to clarify.

It is totally ridiculous that the school is not willing to check the planner to check he has written HW down correctly. If he is missing such a number of HWs they should be helping him, not just saying he's got to learn and then punishing him for failing.

I would try to one of
a) ask to speak again in person to Tutor / SENCO and insist they help your son,
b) say in future he won't do detentions for hw not in planner if they haven't checked his planner
c) say HW should be done in place of enrichment clubs (can they really mandate attendance?)
d) move schools to somewhere with better policies

Bundle it does have an agenda you just haven't thought about it. Using language that doesn't perpetuate sexism benefits us all.
I can't wait until we have a labour government again and they can hopefully sort all this shit out.

Talkinpeace. Maybe he might be a candidate for the vocational way .
I know you are a big fan of vocational education.

I don't think Op is planning for Oxbridge at the moment.

My niece and nephew did 2- 2.5 hrs a night. when they were in yr 11 at academic grammar schools.

45 minutes a night though is 45 minutes more than i ever did.

Thants, you too need to get a grip
It's an expression which has no agenda. Unless you particularly want to impose one. Which you obviously do.

9 years isn't only a few years in educational terms.

soul it sounds very much as though the OPsDS isn't doing even that amount of homework. But he probably should be. Poor kid.

Soul2000
I'm not quite sure what you mean.
To get top grades and therefore to head to decent universities, any kid doing the academic ten will be working a lot
45 minutes a night in year 11 will not open doors to the right parts of the UCAS form.

Revision is back with a vengeance - no completed modules going into the mocks ....

Coursework has been abolished in all academic GCSEs.
Have you not been reading about the changes Gove has brought in?
Modules are almost gone.
Retakes are nearly gone.
GCSEs have gone back to the 80's
And as grade inflation is now under control, the boundaries are getting tighter year on year.

Talkinpeace. You can see that you come from an academic background
suggesting the OPs DS will be doing up to 3 hours homework a night.
I suggest it will be a surprise if he does more than 45 minutes a night in YR 10/11.

Things have changed drastically in only a few years then. That is surprising, I'm 24 and did not have anywhere near that amount to do an evening. Yes coursework in year 10 and 11 but even then it did not amount to even close to 2 or 3 hours an evening.

Thants It pretty much is true.

thants
Do you have a year 11 child - doing linear GCSE's ?
I do.
10 academic subjects, a couple of pieces of homework per week per subject plus reading around
the mocks are only a few weeks away ....

2 to 3 hours a night! That's crazy and definitely not true.

Bundle maybe think about what commonly used phrases mean before using them. Just because a lot of people say it doesn't make it right.
Think of the racist phrases people used to use that thankfully most people have reconsidered saying.

Thants, this lad is a teenager or near teenager, he will soon be going out into the world on his own; quite frankly he needs to learn to do his work whether he feels passionate about it or not.

Scouts will not pay his mortgage or get him a job.
GCSEs will.
You are failing him if you do not support him in the core areas and allow the supplementary activities to be recognised as such.

In year 10 the homework will ramp up to 2-3 hours a night. Are those times ready in your schedule?

Detention is not working because your actions are making it not work.
No problem at the school, huge problem in the mindset of your household.

Thants "man up" is a commonly used expression, not a manifesto that the Y chromosome rules.

Rainbow, is the Saturday detention a new policy or were you made aware of it when applying for a place at the school?

I assume you had the scout commitments before so knew the implications for your family.

I hope that your ds doesn't pick up on all of this - there needs to be a united message from parents and school. Or else find another school if you disagree fundamentally with its rules.

Clearly the Saturday detentions aren't working so maybe forcing kids into school 6 days a week isn't the best way to encourage them to be passionate about learning.

Frogs it's offensive because you are attributing confidence and bravery to being male. If you don't find that offensive then I really hope you don't have a daughter.

"He takes himself Curlew. I take him to Saturday detention (to make sure he gets there!) but he comes home on his own"

So why does whatever you are doing on Saturday have any effect on him doing a Saturday detention? Or am I missing something?

Rainbow I really sympathise with you! Do you think he may have an undiagnosed LD? My DS is dyspraxic, and thus hopelessly disorganised, and it is a monumental struggle with homework.

On the point that he does not write down the correct or complete assignments - have you tried a recording device? We had some success with this, as it's techy and he likes to use it. Get a simple, cheap one (for when he loses it....) He can speak the assignment into the device, or have the teacher repeat it into the microphone, or have a friend do it. It's clearly still user-driver but it increased his likelihood to get the right information home.

Also... changing schools? Sounds like this one is not doing a great job with him.

And for all the posters telling the OP to just get her 12-year-old to do his homework... yeah, I bet she hadn't thought of that! [head slap] How simple!

Ds' school went down the same route as flipchart's ds': put him on report so he could see for himself exactly how his behaviour was affecting his performance.

He needed that: some children are bright enough only to need one detention to see where they are going wrong, but ds needed to really have it spelled out to him that this wasn't just some silly idea by his overeducated mother. And the school, thankfully, were happy to oblige.

He is now upstairs doing the weekend's homework, having spent most of the weekend travelling to visit a sick grandparent. By my calculations he should still be able to fit 3 hours work in tonight as well as supper.

Ok - well lets be constructive and adult about this, rather than telling a grown woman that she needs to grow a pair of testicles. Fortunately there have been many of other posts which have been much more helpful and practical - hopefully the OP can take something from them.

Well, whatever you want to call it, she needs to do it.

Man up means what exactly?

If you mean be more assertive then just say so, rather than telling a woman to grow a pair on testicles, as if being a man and having a pair of balls is something to aspire to in some way.