Controversial Behaviour Policy changes

Maybe they should have electrified desks.

When I was at school we had barbed wire desks - and we were thankful!

Maybe they should have electrified desks.

In the real world I've never heard of a workplace with a no leaning on desk policy. Wouldn't recommend it for an interview but in our day you just had specific lessons on interviews.

It's like someone's taken the Monty Python three Yorkshiremen sketch where they're all trying to outdo each other with how hard they had it as a kid and they're now in some kind of competition to try to replicate it with how tough they can be on discipline in schools. Except it's not funny when it's our generation of kids being put through it and I think the mental and physical health costs will prove to be horrific and continue for decades.

Milky how can a child not lean on a desk during lesson if they are, for instance, writing? How is making a desk so uncomfortable that it damages clothes (and possibly skin) achieve anything beneficial? Clearly you are one of those people who assume that all children are by default inclined to behave badly and that therefore the starting point of a regime must be punitive. Many of us on this thread prefer to go with 'innocent until proven guilty'.

So many people in this country who seem to hate the young.

@Chattonnoire

It sounds like your DS will benefit from this dose of discipline and doing as he's good for once.

Children shouldn't be leaning on desks during lessons- they should be concentrating on the teacher or their work.

And on the sitting in place quietly thing, my children's primary uses short (e.g. 2 minute) bursts of activity, usually to music as a way to 're-set' the classroom, perhaps between topics or if attention is fading and the kids are beginning to chat. It is a lot gentler than telling a whole class off and avoids shouting which is a big aim there. Majority of children on pupil premium, high percentage of ESL pupils and racially mixed school.

I'm just glad my teens are at the end of their school careers and that the school they are in hasn't (yet) fallen victim to this fad. I really feel for parents of good, well-behaved children whose only choice is between one draconian boot camp and another.

If you choose it, then you need to believe in the ethos.

The choice argument here is a red herring. You've chosen the school for year 7, plodded along OK for a few years and all of a sudden an academy trust takes over, changes all the uniform to some utterly obscure shade of colour and starts announcing rules like "if you feel sick we'll give you a bucket to puke in then get on with your work" (paraphrased from the Great Yarmouth story last year). Your kid's now up to year 9/10, got their school friends - but the school they're attending bears no resemblance at all to the one you picked back when they were 11 and you were doing school applications - the only thing it's still got in common is that dodgy bit of peeling paintwork round the back of the science block.

You didn't choose to send them to the boot camp with the ethos of "sit there, shut up, don't move, don't look away"... the choice was taken from you and now you're kind of stuck with your child often halfway through exam syllabuses, and having to either shut up and suffer with it, or massive massive disruption (assuming you can get them into another school at all).

So yeah, throwing in the "you chose it" issue with a new intake who've joined the school since it went all disciplinarily bonkers is valid... for
those kids who've been there and had this dropped on them it's really not a valid point to be making.

Ugh I hope this doesn't become a common thing in schools. Admissions is enough of a minefield without having to worry about being assigned a school like that.

OP, I have just found out that my niece's school has adopted this approach. I will come back to this thread and let you know how it's panning out.

kesstrel I agree the behaviour is undesirable, the question is whether that would have been dealt with in the past by a teacher calling the student on it and perhaps having a private word, or by the new discipline regime in which the student is immediately removed etc. Even if they are normally quite a nicely behaved child who might have just spoken out of turn.

My other child who goes to a different school has nothing like this in place, and it is all much more civilized but sadly this is not the case in my dd's school. It's done in a very heavy handed way for really quite minor infractions. It does 'work' after a fashion in that it does encourage compliance, but obviously most workplaces won't immediately sanction you and march you to isolation if you happen to utter to a colleague that Mrs Brown is a bit of an old boot.

I'm struggling to think of a situation where it would be appropriate to say something bad in class about another teacher. I mean, a situation where that wouldn't be dragging the lesson off topic and interfering with the learning of the 29 other children in a class.

I honestly don't think this should be seen as a free speech issue - after all, children only spend round 25% of their waking hours at school, and they have plenty of access to other people, and to phones, computers etc during the other 75% of their time, when they can express themselves freely.

Learning the self-control required not to slag off co-workers or bosses publicly in inappropriate situations in the workplace is probably also a good thing, IMO.

I was asking my dd last night about her school to gauge how strict it was compared with this school- no sitting at lunch but otherwise quite strict. She said that you are not allowed to say anything bad in class about another teacher and it's immediate behavioural exclusion for a period of time if you do, so one of her classmates said 'Mrs X is such a cow' and immediately got excluded. They are also not allowed to say bad things about other schools on their school premises.

Apparently they are allowed to think what they like in their heads! Thank god for that, huh!

It is a formerly difficult school and obviously this is the 'in' way to respond to the low level (not that low level actually) disruption and bad behaviour. I am torn as I hate the ethos but my dd is confident and feels well supported by the teachers, bullying is stamped on very quickly and it's a good learning environment in many ways.

I would not spend time taking this to the newspapers myself, as I'd rather get my child through the difficult exam year with little fuss. But others might feel taking a stand is an important life lesson.

Either way- laugh at these people! And perhaps discuss why this is their way of managing discipline. I went to a school that felt almost lawless at times and I think as a hard worker I would have preferred more staff control.

My son attends a school with a strict discipline and uniform policy and operates isolation and same day detentions. He has autism and is thriving as he knows what is expected of him and more importantly it allows a calm environment for him to learn.

His school don’t have a silent corridor policy, but he would prefer it if they did. He finds hustle and bustle of changeover quite stressful, but has permission, to wait for the rush to clear even if it means he is a couple of minutes late. Yes - contrary to popular opinion, even “no excuse” schools can make reasonable adjustments.

That said - I do have some sympathy for you as it was not what you signed up for.

For me - the seated only breaks - crosses the line into ridiculous territory. Even the likes Tom Bennet and Mark Lehain are unlikely to be supportive of this.

I don’t think you will have much luck changing their policies as a parent. Spend your effort looking for an alternate school if you are unhappy. If you are in Central London there are an awful lot of schools to try that will be within reasonable travel distance. If he is Y11 I would think about homeschooling.

Another option would be to name and shame the school in the hopes it would be picked up by the press - they love this sort of thing and not being able to socialise freely at breaks trumps all uniform/haircut stories.

So- if that's the position, and there's nowhere to move, I'd suck it up and keep your eye on the long game. Explain to your son that you don't personally agree with some of these rules, but that's the option right now for him to get his GCSE's and get out of there. It's only for one year. There's no point in scuppering his GCSE chances for the opportunity to be the first boy to open his mouth after being expressly told that the next boy to open his mouth would be out of the exam room (there is no way this was an accident).

All your energy is going into fighting the system. It isn't going to change quickly or for one parent, or even a small group. You are wasting time from now on in if there are genuinely no other schools he could move to. I'd tell him to get with the program, do sports clubs after school (my dd's school does a different sport every day after school and she also joined an athletics club) to let off steam. Apply himself to the work and not the injustice of it all. Get a tutor if there's any weak subjects and try to come out with a fabulous set of results so he can go to a different sixth form or college. That's what will set him free!

I find it ironic that the government is telling us to move more while schools like this one are want their kids to sit all day long...

Yes, it's easier to manage behaviour in this way, but easy is not always best.

But again, I have never in my life heard of a workplace that has these rules for lunchtimes. Maybe some separate lessons on how very formal meals work could be useful for some but lunch on a working day doesn't compare to a posh dinner party.

To me it says that the school has a load of disruptive kids in it and to avoid that school like the plague.

If you choose it, then you need to believe in the ethos.

But the OP did not choose this ethos. That's really the point of the whole thread.