Opinions on teacher's behaviour before I over react...

[Namechangedforthisone287]

I have name changed, but only because I've discussed this IRL with friends so I don't want this linking back to personal medical things I've posted about recently.

DD is 12 and in year 7. This week they are doing tests in all subjects. Clearly, these should be conducted in silence. This afternoon, they have been doing a history test (DD says short test, only 6 questions) and her friend has spoken to her. DD felt she had to reply so as not to be rude. Another friend has then mouthed something to her from across the room, and DD has given her a thumbs up. The teacher has seen all of this, and has taken DD's test paper off her, and said she'll have to redo the test tomorrow in form time, by herself. He has then ripped her test paper up over the bin.

DD says she was humiliated and embarrassed as everyone was looking at her. She cried at the time, and cried when she told me about it.

Now, DD can be a chatterbox and absolutely should have got on with her test and not interacted with her friends. I can understand that it may have looked like she was cheating. But I'm really unhappy with how things were handled by the teacher. Fair enough to take her test and make her re do it, but tearing it up and making a spectacle of DD is a bridge too far in my book.

WWYD? She doesn't want me to make a fuss.

If it had been 1 incident she is involved in you might have an argument about overreacting but she just seems to be blaming everyone else, at 12 she needs to be taking responsibility for her own actions.

Having taught in "loads" of schools does not make you a worse manager of behaviour. Not sure how you make this correlation.

Not at all - and not what I said @echt. I basically said it doesn’t make someone a superior expert on behaviour and is therefor irrelevant. I said it could be the opposite because it’s not really the marker of a stable and progressive teaching career - although there are exceptions of course. ‘Loads of schools’ implies to me either supply teaching or relocating a lot or maybe even hopping from one job to the other because you can’t find your feet anywhere (perhaps because of your idealistic and impractical views on behaviour…) Short term behaviour management may be excellent due to teaching in many places - supply teachers need that! But good short term behaviour management is not the same as an in depth understanding of learning behaviour which you could get from working with the same children year after year, learning what works and doesn’t work for them and seeing approaches work or not work and change and develop in one school over the course of several years.
I’m not saying working in just one school would be great either! But working in ‘loads’ doesn’t give me the best impression. It’s a pretty misguided way to validate an opinion when it comes to the workings of a school. Quality, not quantity and all that…

Teaching in different schools gives you the opportunity to see what the effects of different behaviour and learning policies are. It's a great way of being more scientific about what works. It then gives you the ability to speak from a position of knowledge rather than just opinions based on nothing but emotion. Very few people on this thread seem to understand that developmentally speaking there is a HUGE gulf between a 12 and a 16 year old - more so perhaps than between your 20s and 50s. The teacher did seem to be out to shame the girl in question, and not her friends. Not really necessary at her age I would have thought. But as others have said, teaching is hard and teachers aren't superhuman. I think this was over the top but the main thing is this student has a mum who is on her side - one of the best predictors for good learning outcomes.

We had end of year exams each year in my secondary school. These marks represented your place in the year and were considered v important. When I was in Y8, I responded to a friend who spoke to me, the same as your daughter. We were marched to the Head and our papers were disqualified.

i was mortified and distraught at the time but I never did it again. I can see the funny side now, 35 years later!

But I don’t think the teacher was in the wrong.

She didn't 'mess up', she cheated in an exam, why do people try and trivialise poor behaviour? With such wet ideas it's hardly surprising they think they can get away with everything.

I'm a teacher and I understand the exasperation but I think ripping up the test over the bin was not needed.

I woukd tell your DD that the best qay not to get into any trouble is just not to even LOOK at anyone during a test. Then there is no possible chance of the teacher thinking she is communicating.

I wouldn't make a fuss over this at all. You may not like it but the teacher has probably done your DD a favour - there are no excuses for not following the rules in an exam - better to learn the hard way now than later when it really would be upsetting - the teacher is also sending a message out by example to the rest of the class that this is a serious matter.

I think the making her repeat the test is fair and proper.

Ripping up is a step further than I would go but having said that it certainly got the point across.

However teachers have what I call a margin of discretion - a range within which to make a judgment - and I think this is within the reasonable range even if not what I would have done.

Sounds like a good lesson for her

So she new the test was to be taken under test conditions ie silence.

She then ignored this to communicate not once but with two other pupils during a six question test.

That is communicating and potentially cheating, distracting other pupils, disrupting the test from the teachers PoV.

Minimising it with this kind of comment:
Now, DD can be a chatterbox and absolutely should have got on with her test and not interacted with her friends.

Does not help your daughter. The best help you can give to her is to reinforce the importance of how to behave in a test, because in a public test she could have not only that one exam cancelled but an entire set for cheating. Better she learns that now that is caught "feeling obliged to reply" in a formal exam.

DD felt she had to reply so as not to be rude

If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

OP not back?

Are you surprised?

If she had kept her head down and got on with the test she could have pretended not to have heard her friend talking. Also she wouldn't have seen a thumbs up from another friend, obviously she was looking around.

Better to learn the lesson in yr7 than in a yr11 GCSE. Please support the teacher rather than undermine him. You don't really know if she is the class pain in the backside by talking when she shouldn't. This is a good lesson for her.

Not even a tiny bit

Erm @FlamencoDance , doing the test the next day , seriously ? You do realise kids will pass on the questions to the child that tried to cheat
They were lucky they weren't disqualified there and then

My kids said nobody they knew has ever had a test ripped up or been disqualified for speaking in GCSEs or A Levels. They should have been disqualified - I am an exams invigilator and those are the rules.

Of course am invalid test is destroyed. Why would they keep it!

It’s common and teaches all the kids a lesson. My ds has been in a class where he was taking a test and suddenly he heard the sound of paper ripping and it was the teacher tearing up someone’s test. It’s a really important thing to learn - she is better learning this now and never forgetting it than getting disqualified from a GCSE.

I'm not really talking about ripping up the test which may have been a step too far. I wouldn't have done it. They need to learn from the beginning that they will be disqualified if they don't follow the rules of the exam room so it shouldn't happen in an actual GCSE.