how common are detentions at secondary?

But the person who marks it doesn't and there is meaningful feedback aplenty...

And your response makes no sense as the universities know whose work it is.

@ParentOfOne ,

‘Ah, you have googled it... This is exactly the kind of critical thinking for which the book "Calling bullshit" is great.
Imagine that you hear about a company which notoriously gets its employees to work 80 hours a week, including every weekend. You wonder how healthy that is, but, hey, you have read an article where the journalist visits the office and says they all look happy, you haven't found anything online suggesting the opposite, so, hey, all is good, the article must be right!
Do you realise how flawed this line of thinking is? There are a gazillion reasons why people may not want to complain, or may not want to do it publicly.’

So, as opposed to my limited and open minded research, you have done zero research and adopted an entirely closed minded approach to a successful school.

You just choose to make assumptions based on your preconceived ideas and very limited educational experience.

Why don’t you supply some evidence that Michaela isn’t doing a good job for its demographic?

Some evidence is better than zero evidence and hyperbole.

I am responding directly to your "if you want meaningful feedback" comment which, clearly doesn't make sense in this context.

Universities anonymise coursework for marking and markers seem to manage just fine.

That would be because the lecturer anonymises the work and a record is kept of who did it. so it is no where near the same thing.
In fact if you handed your work in at a uni without your name on it the lecturer wouldn't even try to link it back to you.,

It's possible that your child is misunderstanding the reasons given for detention, as all of these seem mad. Simplest to ask the school politely if those were the reasons, and then take it from there.

Those do seem a little harsh, although the late to lesson one is normal, the lost student should be using their map or ask staff (sounds harsh I know)! Students being late to lesson is also a safety aspect, registers are taken quickly and any no shows are a concern for the school. Some students it is a genuine help to others especially start of a new school, however there are many that use it as an excuse to be late / bunk and the school have to address this. Students can be awfully inventive.

Behaviour in most schools can be shocking and they now come down hard on Yr7’s to instil discipline early, left late and it is ofte too late. Ours can get them for forgetting their own writing pen.

Are you sure these are genuine reasons and not made up? Maybe not your child, but due to anxiety etc some children can be very different at school than at home. If you have further concerns it maybe worth calmly speaking with their form teacher or subject teacher to check the current rules, maybe a chance to have a conversation.

@Newbutoldfather "I have googled it looking for students who say that they are unhappy, but can’t find much."

Ah, you have googled it... This is exactly the kind of critical thinking for which the book "Calling bullshit" is great.
Imagine that you hear about a company which notoriously gets its employees to work 80 hours a week, including every weekend. You wonder how healthy that is, but, hey, you have read an article where the journalist visits the office and says they all look happy, you haven't found anything online suggesting the opposite, so, hey, all is good, the article must be right!

Do you realise how flawed this line of thinking is? There are a gazillion reasons why people may not want to complain, or may not want to do it publicly.

@Pomegranatecarnage I met a pupil who had attended Michaela. He said he’d not enjoyed the strict discipline whilst there, but felt he would never have gone to University otherwise. He was in his final year of a law degree.

Did he say why he felt that way?

I have no doubt that Michaela will provide a better preparation for university than a failing comp where no one cares and pupils can swear at teachers without consequences. That is not the point. The point is that Micaela and this kind of failing comp aren't, can't be and shouldn't be the only options possible!

Were the only other schools available to that kid this kind of failing comps? If so, that was the issue, not that only Micaela's cultish methods were the only ones which could have worked.

Like I said, you can absolutely be strict and give detentions for missed homework, disruptive behaviour etc, without banning bicycles, giving detention to a girl who stayed home for period pain, banning pupils from wearing anything warmer than the mandated school coat and school microfleece.

One of the things which struck me as cultish in the Micaela documentary was that students are expected to stand up with their arms crossed when talking. The school forces this to avoid fidgeting. This is wrong on so many levels... It causes extreme anxiety to all the children who may need to fidget but who aren't disruptive because of this, and it actually teaches them a stupid, silly, unfounded approach which they actually have to unlearn when they graduate: crossing arms signals distance, it's the exact opposite of what you want to do in those cases. I would really want to understand why the only option that kid had to go to university was to be brainwashed into this nonsense by that cultish school.

I met a pupil who had attended Michaela. He said he’d not enjoyed the strict discipline whilst there, but felt he would never have gone to University otherwise. He was in his final year of a law degree.

It's pure laziness on the part of the teachers, in my day you actually got them for disobedience, rudeness and so on, not mistakes.

It's pure laziness on the part of the teachers, in my day you actually got them for disobedience, rudeness and so on, not mistakes.

Behaviour policy should be shared on the website so you could check there. I teach and the reasons given here seem very over the top.

My DD has just started yr9, on the second day back she took her old blazer by mistake which didn't have the behaviour card in it that they have to carry with them at all times, she got an instant detention. They're really strict at my DDs school

@ParentOfOne ,

‘That children at Micaela school are happy because a press article says so is bullshit. Seriously, you must be either naive or in bad faith to swallow that kool aid without questioning it. This is exactly one of those cases why the book "Calling Bullshit" is so beautiful and important for anyone to read in this day and age.’

But I do question it. I think the reverse is true. I have googled it looking for students who say that they are unhappy, but can’t find much.

‘How about selection bias? The school would not have let journalists interview the kids who were clearly unhappy there. Would the unhappy have had the courage to approach journalists, after being immersed in an environment which punishes them so draconianly?
How about those who left? Was any of them suffering from mental health issues? How about the mental health of those who remain at the school?’

All those are fair questions, but why are you assuming the journalist is biased? It is an oversubscribed state school, not a private school with a massive marketing department.

If you have evidence of bias or unhappy pupils, I would love to see it.

@Newbutoldfather

I take your point that policies which work with well-behaved middle class kids may easily not work with other kids.
But our inability as a country to find reasonable compromises remains shocking! It's not like the only alternatives are the hug or the whip, with nothing in between!!

Like I said: you can be harsh and give detentions for mobiles, missed homework, arriving late, disruptive behaviour etc, without necessarily banning bicycles, giving detention (Ashcroft) to girls with period pain, issuing a decree on the maximum level of acceptable warmth in the winter, etc.

That children at Micaela school are happy because a press article says so is bullshit. Seriously, you must be either naive or in bad faith to swallow that kool aid without questioning it. This is exactly one of those cases why the book "Calling Bullshit" is so beautiful and important for anyone to read in this day and age.

How about selection bias? The school would not have let journalists interview the kids who were clearly unhappy there. Would the unhappy have had the courage to approach journalists, after being immersed in an environment which punishes them so draconianly?
How about those who left? Was any of them suffering from mental health issues? How about the mental health of those who remain at the school?

I have a psychologist friend who says she would never ever send her child to a school like Micaela because this kind of draconian attitude to discipline can lead to all kinds of mental health issues.

I do wonder if the kids who graduate from these horrible schools will be the kind of adults who buy all kinds of bullshit vomited to them by politicians and managers because they are unable to think critically. Hey, look, they are firing my friend, but they told us we are one big family...

I am a secondary school teacher. All the examples you give are a ridiculous reason for a detention and very unfair and draconian.

https://time.com/5232857/michaela-britains-strictest-school/

Interesting article on Michaela giving some insight on why the school feels the need to be so strict.

I don’t know the school personally but that is the second article I have read that says the pupils are happy there.

And the results are undeniable, seemingly from ‘average’ students.

The problem with this forum,when education is discussed, is that it is 90% (at least) comprised of middle class parents of children who fundamentally behave at school and whose parents encourage them to work hard and do well.

I taught at private schools which had the same kind of pupils. The rules were overly strict at my second school. I very rarely gave detentions (my boss marked my lesson down for not lining the pupils up outside the lesson and doing a uniform check-something totally unnecessary in a lovely class who never caused any problems and genuinely enjoyed learning). Ultimately I left as I didn’t like the philosophy there.

I have also, however, been a governor in a primary academy school with a very mixed intake, and you would be surprised at how fundamental some of the problems were: unable to sit still in class, serious absenteeism and lateness, complete absence of work etc etc (leaving out the very serious issues referred up to LADO).

The rules have to be made so that they work for all the pupils, not just the well behaved middle class ones. Unfortunately, the flip side of that is that some pupils (and clearly parents!) think that they are overly harsh.

But, ultimately, it is not the rules that set the tone of the school, it is the atmosphere within it. It is whether the teachers enter their lessons with a smile and a greeting and interact well with the pupils, whether those struggling are encouraged (even if they are getting a lot of detentions). It is hard to define a good school, but if you talk to pupils and teachers, you get a pretty good idea, which is why going to open days is really important, and trying to chat to some random pupils, not the hand-picked ones giving the tour.

Universities anonymise coursework for marking and markers seem to manage just fine.
Regardless, detention seems like a waste of time and resources when all it would take is just reminding the student to write their name on it. No wonder people end up not being able to effectively communicate with each other if they are shown from the young age that every minor issue requires a nuclear solution.

That’s madness. The school policy on it is also so vague and unhelpful.

I had about 3 detentions in my 5 years at secondary school.
1 was for not doing my homework - fair enough.
2nd one for my skirt being too short (I did used to roll it up)

The last one was the shit one - I had really bad period pains and obviously didn’t want to do swimming because of it. The PE teacher was really awful about it, she accused me of lying and gave me a detention after school
(or tried to) my mum went mad and escalated it to the headmaster. Detention was swiftly dropped but the pe teacher in question was really quite dismissive towards me from then on & gave me a crap grade at the end of term (despite previous high grades & being on lots of sports teams) She was a bad egg.
Luckily we got a different (nice & fair) pe teacher a few months afterwards.

Also DD1 got far less homework at grammar school as they'd learned their lessons about putting too much pressure on the girls in the past. I feel like the standard academy type school has not learned that lesson yet.

Extremely common unfortunately and extremely counterproductive.

I would be a nervous wreck at secondary school these days. I don't think I would be able to learn in that environment and I did well academically.

My eldest daughter went to grammar school where actually they were just expected to behave and they were far more relaxed.

Unfortunately DD2 is not as academically able, though the teachers at primary school always absolutely raved about her attitude and effort and how kind she is. Her school was very draconian for rules and detentions, as is the norm these days and she developed anxiety and a real phobia of school. She is now home schooled as it was the only alternative.

(FWIW I just looked up some of the 'rules' in the handbook and it reminded me that I was absolutely NOT in favour of some of them - but it would seem the teachers are pretty level-headed and not going to award an in-school exclusion for not wearing a tie!)

Those examples are draconian and only - like you're experiencing - going to make the children upset, or more likely to act up.

I have two in Y11 and one in Y8. One of the Y11 had to wear lost property shoes on his first day as he went in wearing trainers (he had shoes, no idea why he felt it was better to do that!) but none of them have had detentions despite the odd uniform infraction. None of them are badly behaved but also your daughter clearly isn't either - I'd be really upset about this and would probably be asking for some clarity from the HOY. I'm very hands off in general when it comes to school but I will fight my kid's corner if they need me to.

OmG! Sounds horrendous and I am getting anxious just reading your post! I would take it up with the school ASAP- this is simply not okay. Punishing kids for forgetting a name and helping others is almost bullying in my books. Write to her tutor, head of year and pastoral care (if you have one). Ask for a meeting . Sending love ❤️