#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!

why do you think they are acting like this?

Cos pissing around is more fun than maths, and they are willing to pay the consequences.

I went to a talk about behaviour management and the person gave an example of a nursery that was struggling with some parents taking the piss by picking their kids up late. So they instituted a late pick-up fine. What happened was that late pick-ups increased massively. While the penalty was unknown, (or was social disapproval), parents made the effort to get there on time. When a price was put on it, parents thought ‘yeah, I can afford that’.

So the nursery dropped the fine, but late pick-ups continued, because now parents had got over the hump of doing it for the first time.

If you want to deter, you need a consequence that actually kids don’t want to do.

AheartybowlofJan
In my experience it's complicated. I've seen kids with unresolved trauma who have lashed out and who are well behaved. I've seen children in care who behave almost perfectly and awfully. I've seen middle class children who have every possession money can buy but not have time from their parents and so their parents compensate by storming into school to defend their child who has broken simple rules and in turn the child learns they can tell home it's not my fault and someone will kick off. I've seen children from areas with low educational outcomes whose parents take the view that 'I did alright without no GCSEs so you dont need to worry' or where they are brought up exclusion is routine and violence is routine so trying to show another way falls on deaf ears when home call up school claiming the member of staff should have known their boy would have smacked them.

I don't believe in writing kids off. I do believe there is a place for isolation as part of a school package, which has lower sanctions, appropriate steps, SEND support, a strong leadership team who back clas teachers etc.

I would say, having worked with a good range of students, that I've found consistently followed rules (with reasomable adjustments) and positive relationships work most of the time. So I do sanction for small things and I do care about defiance on small things and I don't negotiate rules and expectations, but that goes hand in hand with a belief that all children can achieve.

I don't think strict without warmth is effective even if it gets compliance, but some places may need to start strict and bring the warmth in once there's basic order.

JoanMavisIcecreamGirl
I totally agree there is a middle way.
My point is this campaign isn't being ran by some benevolent people. It's being ran with an agenda behind it and with a bit of digging the agendas become clear.

It's being ran with an agenda

A book, a behaviour package to sell, and fat consultancy fees.

There have been a number of threads that have been started on this topic in recent days. Someone wants the mums on board.

I know, and thats why i havent signed it. Im just saying it doesnt have to be all or nothing. Though they have an agenda some of what they say makes sense, and personally writing off children as little shits and nothing more early into highschool doesnt sit well with me.

JoanMavisIcecreamGirl

Putting students in isolation is not writing them off. With a supportive reintegration into school and a monitoring report a lot of students do improve.

It's difficult to imagine what classrooms are like now if you haven't been in one recently. The level of bad language, defiance and abuse can be shocking. There are a lot of parents disengaged with education and they have passed this attitude on to their children. Those students are the ones who need boundaries and consequences to incentivise good behaviour.

I was thinking that too noble. Maybe it's after the last few attempts with teachers tended to get limited interest and a fairly understandably professional response of: 'poor practice needs investigating but maybe we should show an ounce of intelligence and professionalism by considering there are many ways to do things'.

A more nuanced and sensible approach would be:

1. Should those who have been violent or threatening to others be in general circulation?
2. Should those who disrupt the learning of others be kept in the classroom to continue disrupting?
3. Do you believe that if the teacher was a bit more entertaining and placed the interests of disruptive children above your child's education that would be a good approach?
4. Would you be happy with your child losing 10 minutes of learning a lesson, so nearly an hour a day, due to the behaviour of other children?
5. Do you think there needs to be a clear behaviour system that allows children to learn and be safe in school?
6. Do you think that in a policy of appropriately stepped sanctions, there is a place for some students working out of circulation for a set amount of time?
7. Should that place out of circulation be a calm room where students get on with work and do not clown around with other students who have been disruptive and/or defiant?

If your answers to 1-4 are no and your answers to 5-7 are yes, then you accept there is a place for isolation in schools.

There's lots to discuss regarding the running of isolation, reasonable adjustments for SEND needs, pastoral support, mental health support, how to reduce regular attendees in isolation, the need to rightly whistleblow poor practice. But all of that can be done without buying into a questionable agenda designed to bully schools into accepting the questionable methods of a few loud consultants who are getting worried that schools choosing a good behaviour policy over hot chocolate bitching sessions might affect their income.

teacher supportive reintegration? Id like to see what that actually involves because whilst i was at school it was back into normal lessons the next day and usually back into isolation the day after that. Once youve been in isolation you end up with a reputation amongst teachers who will then send you there for minor things simply because they can. At my school the naughty kids remained so. Nothing changed.

I agree there needs to be consequences. Of course there does but i am just not sure isolation is that effective.

I also think a lot of parents disengage because their child has been sent to isolation for minor things or its become so frequent that its not a major thing anymore.

I dont think a lot of schools are supporitve supportive of children like this because theyre not high achievers. Dss school in particular is only bothered about league tables and how they can publicise that.

PP’s point about behaviour not being addressed early on- my eldest is in year 6. Was assaulted very seriously by a child also year 6 who to me ( a mum no educational career) has obvious behavioural problems. He is known to local parents as having a violent family older siblings excluded from the school for violence, always in trouble for bad behaviour. Not on my radar until the assault. At that point I asked the school what they would do. Frankly if I’d known then what I know now I would have called the police and this will be my policy if any child over the age of 10 deliberately assaults my child again. The school said that the situation would be dealt with seriously and handed the kid a red card for behaviour. The school have a policy of restorative approach which is code for “let’s chat.” I opted my son out of this process as I don’t want him having to miss his play time to regulate the behaviour of his attacker, thats his parents job although in reality That’s the schools job. Then he assaults another child this time in year 3. In the same way over a football. In between the two assaults there was some serious bad behaviour that led to the class teacher saying to the them that the boy will be subject to inter school exclusion if he misbehaved again. He did and guess what no exclusion. He is sent to my daughters class weekly because his teacher can’t cope with him. Last week he sat smashing books around the book corner all afternoon while she as tracing to learn. I don’t want my daughter to see an adult putting up with that kind of crap it normalises it and that is taking the piss. All this bollocks restorative approach does naff all. Kids need to know that actions have real life consequence. You can’t molly coddle kids who are violent and nasty and say they have unmet needs so we won’t punish their bad behaviour it’s fucking nonsensical. But making a kid sit in a room at a desk for weeks on end doing sheets of no educational value with no social interaction is not logical. Get them out of mainstream school into proper provision with proper behaviour enforced and find out what the hell is going on with them there. Or have a class room dedicated to teaching ( actual teaching.) with specialist teachers for each school to deal with these kids. I don’t think kids who attack other kids should be allowed in mainstream schools. Sorry but the risks for kids are just too high. My child has the right to a safe education.

The thing is joan that under progress 8, schools can't just focus on high achievers or enough to get a C.

A child who scored highly at KS2, but for whatever reason is heading towards flunking GCSEs can have such a significant impact on overall progress 8 that it would take 20 students to over perform statistically to bring the school back to zero.

Strictly speaking, the way a school would get higher progress 8 scores would be to let the very able get along nicely because they're not going to add much value, then have a big push on the top end of your middle ability so they get 7s or 8s rather than 5s and 6s. Then look where you've got students with low ks2 entry and do loads of literacy and numeracy intervention to turn 2/3 targets into 4/5 targets.

Usually it involves the student being mentored and monitored by a member of staff. Isolation is rarely used consecutively apart from fixed term internal exclusions.

The mentoring /monitoring can help identify particular subjects or times of the day that are an issue and put a plan in place.

From a league table perspective low attaining students are "worth" just as much as high achievers with progress 8 so your theory is incorrect there.

I think the problem, and I’ve done a bit of reading from both sides, is that the use of these booths isn’t regulated, and what they look like and how they’re used in school A, is massively different to school B. Which causes a disconnect. Do I think they have a place as a last measure, when other options have failed, or to protect the safety of other students? Yes. Do I think they should be used for minor infractions, uniform issues, or without accounting for SEN? No. Absolutely not. But without clear guidelines, and accountability, for schools, then it’s open to misuse, and could potentially do more harm than good.

ColdTattyWaitingForSummer
And that's a sensible, measure response from someone who has taken the time to look at the debate and issues and not decided 'argh must be angry, human rights, abusive, traumatic, mustn't ever be used in any school at all because, well my opinion'

Its not a theory i have seen it at dss school. Under achieving pupils dont get half the support that the really bright children do.

I am sure its not the same everywhere but that is honestly how this particular school operates.

Not sure why people associate bad behaviour with sen or associate booths with ASD. Ds is currently being assessed for ASD. He has no behaviour issues and finds poor behaviour in his classrooms makes him really anxious. He hates school as it is loud, busy, overwhelming and there is lots of disruption. His school do not have booths and most disruption stays in the classroom. To be honest he would probably opt to sit in at a desk with a divider than have to put up with others poor behaviour choices.

A school local to me introduced a much stricter behaviour code, including a much quicker exit to isolation from the classroom.

They said when it was introduced, they had loads of kids in there. Then those kids discovered that the school really meant it, and they stopped pissing around. Except for a small group of kids.

What it did, was enable the school to identify that small group of kids who couldn’t behave when the stakes were high, and start to figure out what the issues were. Those kids had previously been masked by a sea of bad behaviour and actually, getting rid of the vast majority of poor behaviour not only allowed teachers to teach, but pastoral staff to focus their efforts on the kids who really needed it.

@sharpasaknife I have evidence that most kids in isolation don't have SN...I teach in a secondary school and am timetabled for isolation cover.
The SN students are supported in another part of the school. The isolation room holds the mouthy muppets who just want to make life difficult because they can. If they don't get their own way e.g not sitting in the seating plan because they don't want to, then they throw a strop, swear at the teacher and walk out. All sanctions have been used, what do you propose then?
Saying there, there, don't worry about following a polite request from the person in charge of the room who knows all of the PP, SEN, G&T etc needs both formal and informal; you carry on and sit where you want even if it means that the student who was self harming and needs to sit near the door to feel safe and thus will stay in the room, has to sit somewhere else. Obviously the self harming student needs don't matter as long as mouthy one gets what they want.

So how do other countries do it? I’m in Scotland where the use of isolation is incredibly rare, I think there’s maybe 6 schools in the country reported to even have an isolation room and somehow the children gain a good education.

@jellycatspyjamas I left teaching in Scotland because of the abuse I received from kids and feelings of helplessness that I was letting down the other kids in my class who weren't getting an adequate education because I was dealing with the abusive ones. I've have killed for an isolation room when I worked up there! Instead, I got 'restorative chats' and called a bitch again the next day.

Now I'm down in London - not sure if there are fewer abusive comments (I don't tend to count), but at least I now have a last resort way of dealing with them that makes my job manageable and enables me to focus on teaching not managing awful behaviour.

Well you wouldn’t end up working in an isolation booth in your job because if you called a colleague a fat cunt (real life example) you’d get sent home and told not to come back.
I think @lolasmiles is very sensible on this - isolation rooms aren’t inherently awful it’s the whole school behaviour policy that needs to be looked at. Certainly those black booths don’t look like what we have, ours looks almost exactly like the one noble posted. Possibly your sons school behaviour policy is too strict and/or badly applied. If so I would genuinely try to move schools. I agree with you that some schools do not have great behaviour policies.

Also, totally agree with your last post @noblegiraffe I think being strict pretty effectively seperates kids who cannot behave from those who just piss about because they can. One or two stints in the isolation booth ought to do it for kids in the normal range of bad behaviour, I agree with the idea that repeatedly ending up in there or spending consecutive days at a time demonstrates the school needs to do so thing more.

I work in AP. Pretty much all of our children haven't seen the inside of a classroom for months before they get referred to us. In some schools isolation is used long term (for some, not for everyone), and it doesn't work (for some, not for everyone). I've tended to see the same as noblegiraffe. A tight behaviour policy sorts out the minority for whom that system doesn't work. There needs to be somethi g in place that does work. Obviously, I would advocate access to high quality Alternative Provision, but that is a) expensive and b) not always available. School systems should be joined up. There's not enough of that.

spending consecutive days at a time demonstrates the school needs to do so thing more.

Devils advocate but what more can a lot of mainstream schools actually do?

Usually by the time a student is repeatedly isolated they will have been mentored by staff (2 different ones in our case), parents will have been asked for at least one meeting (often far more than this), teaching staff will have been given specific de escalation strategies. However when this level of support fails (it is approx 1 hour per student per day with phonecalls, meetings mentoring). What do we actually do?

Teaching staff are pushed for time as it is. We want students to be in lessons and learning. We can't pull magic rabbits out of hats to get students to behave.

Properly funded and accessible alternative provision would be amazing.
So would a large scale societal overhaul in attitudes towards teaching staff and schools.

Devils advocate but what more can a lot of mainstream schools actually do?

Ah yes when I said ‘do more’ I was thinking about the need to start the whole process of ‘why is this happening’ - ie. if not diagnosed with SEN is there SEN, do we need to get an EP in, can we provide TA support or arrange AP etc etc. It seems we’re quite lucky in my school in that we still have access to this sort of assessment. I just mean it’s obviously not desirable to park a kid in isolation cos folk have run out of ideas and not follow it up. Seems like some schools are quite pro active about the support that goes alongside the use of isolation rooms and others less so. Mine don’t do the kind of active mentoring described above straight away, there’s quite a lot of ‘watch and see’ (which is annoying sometimes for sure).
It’s so interesting to hear how various schools approach mentoring etc. differently.

Wow pingu, you really are lucky. We have 2 Ed Psych assessments per year. That is it.

My son (13) had to spend the day in an isolation booth recently.

The reason: the previous week a little bastard who had been bullying him for months started on him in class and ended up throwing something at his face. The thug got removed from class and on his way out shouted that he would “sort him out” the following day. My son, sick with anxiety, got off the bus the next day and instead of heading for school where this scumbag and his mates would be, went and hid in a forest for the entire day. School phoned me asking where he was, lots of worry as it wasn’t like him at all to Mitch off school, finally got hold of him and got the full story, I phoned the school and told them about the months of bullying and threats and the assault the previous day. They assured me it would be dealt with. So the school punished him with a day in isolation. Which he shared with the shit who had been bullying him for months. That was his punishment too. A day in isolation with his victim. Worth noting he is a year heads son.