#banthebooths - do you agree?

[AheartybowlofJan]

I came across this hashtag on twitter today and after reading around it think they may well have a good point. Especially when it comes to no regulation over how long children can stay in these booths over consecutive days. And the fact that SN and BAME children are disproportionately represented in the figures when they are collected.

Our trust has a “unit” where DC are excluded to with children from other schools in the same trust. No lunch break, no outside time at all, from 8.30-4 they are in the booth and do not leave except to use the toilet.

It’s like prison for kids!

Hardly prison.

You’re right, they get to go outside for exercise in prison!

I totally disagree with them in 'ordinary' schools. So easy to misuse and and think they are used too much (it becomes too easy). I’ve never felt right about them.

Specials schools, I don’t know enough about training and usage etc to have an informed opinion.

To end up in the booths they will have done something serious. The kids I work with ( not a teacher) complain that they ' didnt do anything. However when I've dug s bit there is always something. The usual things are calling the teacher a cunt, throwing chairs, attempting to smoke around the school building, serious disruption if the class, fighting with other pupils and so on.
At least in a booth they are still in school, still being educated, not disrupting other pupils education and staff know where they are and they are safe and not wandering the streets in school hours.
Hardly prison.
Theres an easy way for the pupils to avoid the booth if they find it that bad though! It's up to them to behave.

Maybe I’ve misunderstood. I’m talking about mini cells that I’ve seen popping up with more frequency. Like this, but without the padding and the window. Horrendous.

Ummm that's not what they are?!!

That's an actual cell

The articles are full of exaggeration and written by "behaviour consultants" who have a vested interest in banning them. (they can sell more books and training packages).

The booths aren't prison. They are desks with office space dividers. Hardly a human rights abuse.

An isolation room is one part of a behaviour management system. What other consequence do you propose for students that repeatedly disrupt the learning of others?

As for them being more useful in special schools; the converse is true. Special schools have smaller class sizes, smaller ratios and different behaviour policies for each child. Isolation would not be appropriate for a lot of students in a special school setting.

Google "study booths"

That's what isolation rooms have in.

All the ones I've seen and worked with anyway. There's always a senior teacher in the room and it's mostly a quiet place for individual study away from audience and poor influences to reflect on behaviour.

SEN kids at my school have a different arrangement.

@LemonGingerCakes

You've definitely misunderstood! There are not rooms like that in secondary schools.

Disclaimer* there may be padded style rooms in special schools for pupils to calm down in after a meltdown or similar. This is different and will be handled by the staff appropriately.

If you don't want isolation areas with divides between desks so the pupils can't annoy each other, what do you want the school to do with disruptive pupils?

I don't mean schools who use this for forgetting a pen. I mean for how the majority of schools use them - for pupils who regularly disrupt the teaching of the teachers and the learning of others.

I couldn't agree with you more op, too many people seem to have an uninformed opinion
on these booths and they are barbaric.

Spend a day in one and see how you feel then. They are not always used as a last resort, very often students are sent for the stupidest of reasons: too much talking, not sitting where told. Loads of reasons that the teacher should be able to handle, it's used as a default punishment more times than it should be.

To prove a point I went in one in my ds's school, and after two hours I thought I would lose my mind.

As I said, barbaric.

Glad I’ve misunderstood... however

Disclaimer there may be padded style rooms in special schools for pupils to calm down in after a meltdown or similar. This is different and will be handled by the staff appropriately.

There are (non) padded rooms like the one in my picture in a scary number of ordinary primary schools. The staff are not specially trained (other than a short course ). I am very, very concerned to see them.

Come up with a viable alternative.

Being sent somewhere to study in silence for a limited amount of time, and following an incident of serious bad behaviour - fine.

Being isolated for long periods of time, or without access to study materials, or for minor issues like uniform policies or forgetting a pen - fucking awful.

HarrietSchulenberg - proper funding for schools, mental health services, social services, sure start schemes..

Not our job Harriet. I'm sure that there are plenty of overpaid "experts" to do that.

Corporal punishment was banned because it was considered cruel. This should go the same way.

Booths aren't a problem. Making children sit at them for hours on end with no ,inch break is a problem, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with putting misbehaving teenagers at a study desk with a divider to prevent them causing damage or disruption to other children's lessons.

People should see for themselves what it's like trying to provide an education to disruptive, poorly behaved, badly parented children before they make judgments of schools who have to do this. if teachers had other options of what to do with such pupils, maybe the booths wouldn't be neccesary in the first place.

welease Provided they have work to do it shouldn't be a problem.

too much talking - they have probably been warned to stop, and they will be disrupting the class

not sitting where told - ie outright defiance and refusing to follow the teacher's instructions.

Why should a teacher have to spend time getting a student like that to cooperate instead of teaching the other 25 in the class?
Why should others have to try to concentrate on their work through the chatter of the person next to them?
My DD finds school work hard enough without disruptive pupils making it even harder.

Not barbaric if sensibly used.

How would that help dirty?

As a teacher I can see both sides of the argument and am sitting firmly on the fence.

On the one hand it makes sense to remove pupils who are seriously disrupting 31 other pupils’ learning. The education of 31 trumps the one disruptive pupils’ right here, I think.

On the other hand I always wonder what good a day or more in the isolation room is actually doing? Kids sit around for a day, most don’t do the work set and as a consequence pupils who are more often than not already disadvantaged and behind in their learning fall back even further.

It would be great if schools had the resources to properly support the isolated students, but that is definitely not the case in the schools I know.

@LemonGingerCakes where is that photo from? Interested in a link please.

I find it very hard to believe any school would have a room like that. Most schools can barely afford books at the moment, let alone the capital works required to build cells...

Isolation rooms are set out a bit a like carrel in a library. It's to allow students to focus on studying whilst placed in isolation.

Pupils will be placed in these rooms following serious transgressions which continuously disrupt the learning of other pupils or endanger other pupils or staff.

There are (non) padded rooms like the one in my picture in a scary number of ordinary primary schools. The staff are not specially trained (other than a short course hmm). I am very, very concerned to see them.

I've genuinely never seen one. Unless you mean an office! What are they used for? Shutting children in one alone is not OK unless necessary for their /other pupils safety.

Agree with PP re funding.

dirtymop proper funding for schools, mental health services, social services, sure start schemes..

And back in today's schools who can't control any of those things, what would you have them do?

I honestly think a lot of mners dont realise how horrendous some pupils are. I'm not even talking about inner city schools in deprived areas but some high schools in general in an average town.
Some schools are great with super teachers but all it takes is a couple of kids who are going through a trauma and have disengaged with education to put everyone in the class at risk.
Parents saying isolation is horrible would be most upset if their child was hit by a chair because a pupil didnt like the way a teacher looked at him!

"all it takes is a couple of kids who are going through a trauma and have disengaged with education to out everyone in the class at risk" which is exactly where proper funding for mental health services, social services as well as schools of course comes in (that was in reply to continuallychargingmyphone btw)