is it normal for secondary schools to use fear their induction method for year 7s

[Alevelquestions]

My child started secondary this Wednesday and the school has concentrated on emphasising all the ways they might get detentions. Kids have already been given detentions for not having the right colour pens, for not sitting straight or for forgetting parts of their PE kit. This is within three days of starting. My kid hasn’t had a detention but on Friday he told me he spent the whole day trying not to cry because he thought he’d have detention for forgetting his white board. The school prides itself on discipline but it seems to be at the expense of humanity and remembering these are quite young kids undergoing a major and unsettling transition. Is this the normal approach nowadays? It genuinely makes me so sad.

Let me tell you, being run like prisons doesn’t stop bullying at all. Some of the strictest academies are rife with bullying. They spend a lot more time on the wrong length trousers and forgotten pens then they do on bullying.

crazyunicornlady73
I've always thought, about these schools, if you use a big punishment for a tiny "crime" like dropping a pencil (this came up twice in conversation last night) then what do you do for the medium and serious behaviours?

This always makes me laugh, the detention wasn't for dropping the pencil it was for the ten minutes of disruption caused when the pupil faffed around attempting to reclaim it.
Of cause the parent only ever hears "dropped a pencil".

I had one pupil that claimed that I gave a detention just because he entered the classroom. They had a seat next to the door and it took him ten minutes to actually sit down, always 5 - 10 minutes late, coat, bag off and on chair, wander across to friend to find out "what was happening in the lesson", a call across to his other friend just to say "hello", ask for a pen, ask for a ruler, ask what we were doing "just to make sure".
The parents only ever heard "detention went entering the room".

And for those with the response "not a very good teacher".
Sanctions and behaviour are only ever any good if the SLT and parents back the teacher.
Otherwise what is the point.

Also SLT being to lenient, being the pupil's friend, using restorative justice and generally using anything written by Dix doesn't prevent bullying either,

It's not a choice between prison style rules or anarchy though! There are a whole range of schools in between quietly getting on with it, without giving year 7 detentions the first time they don't have a pen.

Remember the school report quoted about Boris Johnson? He was not expelled.

Fortunately not the same experiences here.

They're are actually quite lenient for the first few weeks, even with the established year 11s and upwards.

Detentions are also rarely given on the same day. Parents are notified and detention takes place a few days later.

All the rules are in the planners so everyone knows what to expect detentions for.

From experience most teachers don't give detentions the first time yr7 don't have a pen or similar.
Most schools (that I have worked in) get teachers to set the schools expectations in the first lesson/s and go easy on the new starters for the first month if not the first half term.

So sad to read this and all the comments supporting punishments for not following arbitrary rules. I work in schools from time to time and the utter hypocrisy astounds me. Girls are forbidden to wear skirts but teachers wear what they want, students are given detentions for wrong pens/disorganisation but you try and sign in as a visitor and you can guarantee no-one has a pen and half the time someone has forgotten to book a meeting room/doesn't know the student's name when we are having a meeting about that very child! None of these mistakes bother me, just the fact that we tell kids they are bad people for making mistakes and here are the adults allowed to be human and get away with it!

I home educate my three kids and have from birth. After spending much time in schools and being involved with teacher training courses, I can honestly say that you couldn't pay me to send my children to an educational institution in this country. Home education is the most incredible experience for our family. If anyone is considering it, please do it!

Yes to all of this! And the letters home with mistakes in, being sent two different times for returning to school. I could go on, yes they are human, yes they make mistakes but so do the kids!

That sounds horrendous! My DCs school gives them all a weeks grace in sorting their kit out before they get into trouble - seems a much kinder approach to me.

Girls are forbidden to wear skirts but teachers wear what they want

Teachers are employees, not students, so are not bound by the same dress rules. It is not hypocrisy.

Very normal.

My DS had one detention in his entire school career (he's just finished Y13). Or course, this was in the first week of Y7, for forgetting to bring in his signed drama 'contract' (I think we had to sign it too and he forgot to put it back in his bag). He is very anxious and found it quite upsetting. Luckily they seemed to lay off after that.

Girls are forbidden to wear skirts but teachers wear what they want,

I don't know why people put this forward as an argument when its wrong, teachers have a dress code that they have to abide by,

students are given detentions for wrong pens/disorganisation but you try and sign in as a visitor and you can guarantee no-one has a pen

Even you?

My happy child at primary with lots of friends has just started secondary y7. Hasn't even been a week and he has got in trouble for losing his pen in class (someone took it).
First day he couldn't remember the way to the entrance...a long walk and the building is overwhelming huge for him. He rang me scared of getting a late mark. I thought a teacher would reassure and guide him in as its his first day but no he got a telling off.
I'm worried how this will affect his mental health.
I don't want him babied but for goodness sake don't the teachers look at the age of the child.
Big difference from y7 compared to a y11 teenager.

Girls are forbidden to wear skirts but teachers wear what they want, students are given detentions for wrong pens/disorganisation but you try and sign in as a visitor and you can guarantee no-one has a pen

What rubbish. I assume no female teacher is wearing a skirt 3 inches below her fluff - with her thong on show.

And yes small misdemeanors are a starting place for kids to take responsibility and learn how to sort themselves out - yes it’s sad parents are doing it all for them -mummy won’t remind you when you’re 30!
there Has to be a starting point and if this is forgetting a pen then so be it

More Headteachers/teachers should follow the lead of a Manchester headteacher (Tottington High School Academy) in how the new children are welcomed to school.

I just came across a video clip of an incredibly heartwarming 'guard of honour' ceremony at the end of the day led by the headteacher. A million times better than sending out a fear of detentions.

I'm sure the children will flourish under his leadership.

Anywherebuthere
that’s very sweet but my yr 7 daughter would crawl up her own arse walking past all of those older kids like that!
Theres no one size fits all. Just as one might love the fuss and be terrified to the core about getting lost; another might just want to glide around without ceremony - confident they can use their map/ask a prefect and follow basic instructions.

Anywherebuthere

But you don't know what else they did during the day.

There are many nice things that have been suggested in the past.
One was that teachers should greet the pupils at the entrance to the lesson and offer them a choice of greetings it came from a primary school youtube clip from Japan.

There was so much wrong with being able to implement this idea that it was ridiculous for secondary schools to even try this.
Yet the SLT decided that we should all do it. It died out within a week.

God this is a depressing thread.

It paints a picture of a combination of poorly run schools, incompetent teachers, failure to support SEN, entitled parents, unsupportive parents, anxious pupils, naughty pupils …..it’s got it all.
In reality we know society is a combination of all these things. Are some teachers crap? Yes. Are some parents unrealistic in their expectations? Yes. Are plenty of others just trying to get through doing their absolute best? Yes.
Schools and teaching do need to change. A one size fits all approach doesn’t work. Inclusion for some children is not appropriate. Teaching needs to be restored to a respected profession with decent conditions so that highly qualified and talented graduates want to do the job. Equally some parents need to reflect on their role in supporting the school.

Pissing my self laughing at this. What utter nonsense.

I think that's a really good summary actually. I agree with it.

What I find fascinating in a lot of this is the gap between perceptions and reality too which is driving the problem because it becomes a battle of deflection:
The kids won't take responsibility and don't understand it's not because you forgot a pencil, it's cos you are being disruptive asking to borrow one when the teacher is trying to teach.
The teachers have to actually control the class and sometimes shout at kids. They can't not do it because other kids don't like it.
The kids who don't like it often are over sensitive either because they have been mollycoddled or because they have SEN.
The mollycoddled have not been prepared for high school by parents and they blame the school for this. Those with SEN at that level perhaps are in the wrong setting or have inadequate support which also isn't the school's fault.
The SEN kids still need to learn certain life skills and not be disruptive otherwise it damages their education and everyone else's.
There no adequate punishments or support for more serious behavioural issues so this ends up undermining the whole thing.
Primary schools are providing inadequate preparation for high school and they have cultures which are at complete odds with each other. There is little if any real work between the two to bridge this gulf.
High school is generally a shit show and unpleasant for a lot of kids because of the size of them. This hasn't changed as much as people think despite headlines about mental health.
Mental health just wasn't talked about and acknowledged in the past. There was this understanding that High School for some was about survival rather than this myth of the 'best days of your life'. School has always been about conformity and anyone who doesn't quite feels it a lot. There's been shit teachers since the dawn of time.
SEN kids have always been bottom of the pile and mainstream schooling environments really don't suit themselves kids and never have, but we've got swept up in the idea that inclusion works. I am yet to fathom the logic of put a kid with social anxiety and aversion to load noise, in a school of 1500 kids.
Unfortunately there's two camps with special needs - those with behavioural issues who are loud, aggressive and violent and those with SENs who are incredibly vulnerable and sensitive and the group who were always most at risk from the former group. And they tend to be lumped together, usually for cost reasons more than a lack of understanding of this issue. This makes everything worse.
We tend to rose tinted our experience of High school - even those who didn't have the best time because we forget how awful it was for us at the time. But this also over emphasises the long term impact too. A lot of people don't find confidence and happiness until much later but do find it. Their experiences as children shape them - perhaps for the better because they realise life isn't all good, in otherwise very sheltered lives. We talk about trauma and adversity always being bad forever. They aren't pleasant and desirable, yet I do think without it our society wouldn't necessarily be better either without those experiences which may sound perverse to many. You can't explain that to someone without the benefit of life either. Instead we've ended up almost pathologising negative life experiences and then reinforcing it as something holding us back and that continue to be negative long after the fact rather than an idea that they give us resilience and empathy for the future.

I dunno. We ARE getting things wrong but I don't buy into it because because schools have created a culture of fear. It's a combination of a lot more things and I don't believe that it's always as accurate as the suggestion because so many kids are lacking in exposure to anything because we increasingly are less focused on teaching kids independence and it's ok to make mistakes earlier on (culture at primary school where everyone is a winner, we can't say negative words, everyone is happy and we all sing cumbyah and this colliding with a reality where it's competitive, dog eat dog world in reality where there's lots of people who aren't very nice after all). At primary school kids don't understand when they are getting/doing things wrong because of framing and constant positive framing (which isn't necessarily always helpful) and then they suddenly find they are getting things right and it comes as a shock. This ISN'T a culture in other countries I might add.

Spot on!

two very good posts.

If its part of an academy trust yes completely normal, mine got a negative point first day back for forgetting a pen 🤣

My daughter’s grammar school was like this.

In the first few days she was constantly threatened with detention - it was usually things she could not control like the pe kit list did not list football socks - so she asked her pe teacher what colour socks and was told dark socks so we chose dark blue from her brothers extensive collection as it was the colour of the pe kit. She goes to school the next day with the dark socks and a different pe teacher says if my daughter didn’t bring black football socks in the next day she would get detention. We had black socks at home! She could have taken them in.

And then I had run out of plastic backing to cover her books so she brought one Spanish book in in a clear plastic zip lock bag…..Spanish teacher goes if my daughter does not bring the book back in the next day covered in plastic backing she would get dentention. It was not even in the school prep rules parents needed to do this to books anyway or I would have had more plastic backing available.

What happened with my daughter is she ended up being neurodiverse - the idea that there were no clear rules on detention so she could not avoid getting it terrified her. She wanted clear rules on what she needed to do to avoid it and this was not how the school operated as they just constantly threatened the kids. We ended up pulling her out of her top grammar and moved her to private.

It is clear in year 7 that schools deal with a lot of new children from a variety of backgrounds and one way of getting all kids on the same page is to threaten them with compliance. The problem is there are a very small minority of teachers who over use this technique and basically get a sick power kick from scaring new year 7s.