Ban the Booths

tbh noble you're not making much sense.

Great thread OP. I hope and expect that the campaign will succeed.

I honestly wish someone, particularly non teachers, had a decent alternative!? My biggest class has 34 students in it. 34! Of course some have SEND, clearly I have no TA support. If I ask one to tuck their shirt in (which i don't because ours are Polo shirts) or sit in a certain seat/empty their mouth/put their phone away, if they refuse that instruction, a warning is given. If the persist they are relocated. If they refuse... off to the isolation booth they go. It is not immediate, they know the rules, and I have 33 other childrens education to prioritise

Saying ‘I think this is against the law’ isn’t the same as it being against the law.

Plenty of office workers work in ‘booths’. Do you think that’s against the law too?

Sorry, I didn't realise you were a teacher noble.

The law's the law though.

Maybe you don't understand the serious position a teacher or school would be in if it was found to have promoted this practice.

What, putting kids on the naughty step? I haven’t seen anyone swooping in to arrest Super Nanny so I suspect you’re talking bollocks.

‘Isolation booth practices’ usually = taking a disruptive kid out of the class, putting them in a room to do some work, and because other naughty kids are in the same room, having partitions between the desks so they can’t wind each other up. All supervised by a teacher who usually has some sort of behaviour discussion with the kid.

Immoral my arse. And if we’re talking about the rights of children, what about the right of the 29 other kids in the class to an education?

Completely agree with noble re shirts.
But I wish secondary schools had better systems of communication re those children who have RA under equalities act.

My ds has such an adjustment. He is otherwise a 'model pupil' as said by school himself. One day on his way through some double doors to queue for an exam the 'school uniform policewoman' barked at him to tuck it in and take plastic band off his wrist. He said he's allowed them. She then yelled at him. Being well behaved he complied.
He wrote nothing in the exam. With his fiddle and with shirt tucked in he couldn't focus.
2 years later whilst walking with HT through corridor she tells him the same.
In this case the HT told her ds is a pupil who has special arrangements and never to ask him again.
Literally the only thing I could get out of ds about his day. It actually means that much to him.

Re isolation booths. They are useful tool in disabling if they are applied alongside effective pastoral care.

Unfortunately the only stories I ever hear are academies using them for send pupils as they work towards external exclusion and PEX. I hope it anecdotal because if it's not we are going backwards as a society.

Oh bloody hell ‘arguably breaking the law’ by putting your kid on the naughty step is the stupidest thing I’ve read today

Are you a teacher?

Maybe you don't understand the serious position a teacher or school would be in if it was found to have promoted this practice.

This thread is about the use of 'isolation booths' not a 'naughty step'.
It raises key issues of its:
legality
morality
and the loco parentis principal.

If parents regularly use 'isolation booth' type practices on their children I would imagine that social services would take a keen interest.

How many people work in offices where there are partitions between desks? Quelle horreur.

The campaign link, that the OP gave, itself refers to the dubious legality of the practice.

The use of these booths is currently unregulated and unreported. We believe they are a breach of the UN charter on the rights of the child, disproportionate and unnecessary. Booths are not used in custodial settings yet some schools have large isolation suites where children might be held for long periods. Recent Freedom of Information requests by the BBC show that in 500 schools using isolation booths 200 children had spent more than 5 consecutive days in isolation in the past year

NationalAnthem if you send your child to a school with a uniform then you must accept that they have to adhere to that uniform. In the same way that if you wear a uniform for work, you do. No point refusing to wear your uniform for your job in, say, a bank, and use “goodness, how do they ever get work done in the bookshop across the road where no one wears a uniform” as your reason.

We have tried for my younger sister who has had extended periods in isolation. But it hasn't worked. But good luck anyway!

Further links for parents and children who would like to litigate over this practice in a school setting.

UN:

lawstuff.org.uk/my-rights/what-are-childrens-rights/
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 19 seems relevant in this case.

unchildrights.blogspot.com/2009/03/summary-childrens-rights-convention.html

European Convention on Human Rights.
Article 8 seems relevant
www.crae.org.uk/childrens-rights-the-law/laws-protecting-childrens-rights/european-convention-on-human-rights/

Domestic British legal protection

How does the Government make sure children in the UK have rights

In 1991, the UK Government agreed to make sure that children have all of the rights listed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Government should make laws and do other activities, like teaching people about children’s rights, to make sure that children’s rights are protected

The Government has passed a law – the Human Rights Act 1998 – to protect human rights generally, but have not passed a law specifically on children’s rights. Some of the laws the Government have passed help to protect your rights, like laws that say you must be given special help if you can’t live with your parents, for example, or laws that make discrimination illegal

A good human rights lawyer should be able to put together a case pretty simply on this one.

Teachers who promote this practice are presumably covered by their trades unions for any legal actions against them.

National do read the thread. Noble has explained quite clearly that it has buggar all to do with shirts, and lots more to do with outright defiance.
Loads of people have to wear uniform ( of varying degrees of strictness for work)
And woman19 how on earth could it be a test case. Child made to sit quietly and work by themselves, the horror

The whole tuck your shirt in thing feel totally unnecessary and it's time school stopped using uniform infringements to punish kids - it is such a stupid thing to get excited about. How on earth do other countries cope without uniforms.

Oh bloody hell ‘arguably breaking the law’ by putting your kid on the naughty step is the stupidest thing I’ve read today.

Bot of these use isolation as a punishment/sanction
Perhaps both teachers and parents who do this need to learn how to teach or parent with a bit more humanity and intelligence?

It is, I understand, a technique allowed, but monitored, in british prisons

In schools and in private homes, using such a technique means they are arguably breaking ECHR law.

woman19

I'm not sure why you think that it would make an interesting test case. Many parents still send their children to their rooms or use the naughty step.

Bot of these use isolation as a punishment/sanction.

In my school, children who have to wear different schoolwear (or wear their shirts untucks) for a medical need, whether that is a sensory issue linked to ASD or a broken ankle carry a card. Teacher asks them wear xyz is, they show the card and there is no issue, more often than not we are also informed by email.

Students who chose to come to school in the incorrect uniform (nearly always repeat offenders) are isolated with their form teacher.
Parents and students know the uniform rules and chose to flaunt them, normally its long talon like nails in bright colours, wearing jeans or trainers nothing to do with blazers or specific skirts that mnetters often complain about. If you wear a uniform to work you cant rock up in what ever you like for both H&S reasons and because you are representing an organisation, its the same thing.

If we isolated those in the same place as those isolated for poor classroom / unstructured time behaviour issues we would run out of space very quickly.

My son struggles with sensory issues around clothing, yet he's at the top of his class academically. You all can bleat "reasonable adjustments" until the cows come home, but getting schools to HONOUR THOSE ADJUSTMENTS is like pulling teeth sometimes. I would love to see schools banned from using isolation booths as a way to punish uniform infractions because there are a number of schools who either can't or won't use common sense and instead opt for zero tolerance, and for the life of me I cannot see how a child who wore the wrong socks belongs in the same room as the child who won't shut up/swears in the classroom.

This practice would make an interesting legal test case. It's arguably in breach of Article 8 ECHR, and the loco parentis principal which used to be premise on which school duty of care is based.

I don't think it's possible to understand unless you've been that teacher in the classroom dealing with a child who is being openly defiant. Parents see their one child and obviously see things from their side, and to a parent I can understand why "I got put in isolation because I wouldn't tuck my shirt in" can sound petty. But for the teacher, who has 29 other kids not being taught because they are having to deal with that one child, it's incredibly difficult. Perhaps the Daily Fail should run sad face stories from parents whose children can't get through a lesson without some other kid disrupting it rather than parents whose children were put in isolation for wearing the wrong shoes.

Does anyone disagree, happy?

What we may disagree on is that insisting that those kids who’ve already disengaged from education shouldn’t be in isolation, but should be in the classroom disrupting the lesson for everyone else instead.

Clearly, work needs to be done with those kids on re-engaging them, trying to get them an education and that should be happening. But the alternative to ‘ban the booths’ isn’t ‘intensive intervention with these kids’, it’s ‘stick ‘em back in the classroom and tell teachers that all would be fine if they simply gave them a handshake at the door’.

The amount of learning hours that this loses for everyone else in the class is incredible.

The point aim trying to make is that putting children who’ve already disengaged from education into isolation everyday because they wear trainers to school or something similar or don’t tuck their shirts in is obviously totally pointless.

My Ds attends a state selective school. They have a room called independent learning support. This is a room that is for everyone not in a lesson. So internal exclusion for those misbehaving or have been sent out of a lesson and those with learning support needs and sen. I don't think this works either. My Ds has sen but no behaviour issues and was in the room a few weeks ago when the head walked in and said "so this is where all the naughty boys go". It was a joke, Ds didn't find it particularly funny. As far as booths go, not sure what the answer is though. We do have a problem with behaviour in our schools and I sympathise with those teachers that have to face these issues everyday.

Interesting that an online petition for "Ban The Booths" has got fewer than 1000 signatures.

I think they're necessary. It's not fair that one student disrupts teaching time for 29 others. It's not about shirts being untucked, it's about defiance - a child with an untucked shirt (alternatively, insert other seemingly minor infraction) who tucks it in when asked is not going to be sent to isolation. A child who refuses, or argues that the shirt doesn't stop them from learning, is potentially taking teaching time away from others and should face a sanction.

OK, so shirts aren't major issues but the point is not the shirt, it's the defiance. If an adult has to wear a uniform at work, I don't think they'd get very far arguing with their line manager that not wearing it doesn't stop them from doing their job.

The "can't afford school shoes" thing is nonsense too. Unless the child is coming to school barefoot, then they can afford footwear. And shoes are not more expensive than trainers - both can be bought cheaply. So someone has made a choice to buy the wrong thing instead.