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.

My son is a high achiever and has a high number of achievement points. This teacher was giving behaviour points every lesson. I demanded to know why and have a chat in order to see what was happening. The behaviour appoints soon stopped once I questioned it.

Your DS will know what the behaviour points are for,. Did you ask him?

My son’s grammar school was like this as well. We didn't take it too seriously, it was sort of reminder to us. My son did feel a bit embarrassed at the beginning, got many detentions and eventually learnt to bring the right thing, wear the right thing, not to run in the corridor, not to chat during the lessons, etc. Personally I thought it worked well with him.

Schools are nothing like prisons. Kids need to be taught to obey the rules. If they don't learn this, they will probably end up in prison. Then they will wish they are back at school.

Schools are nothing like prisons. Kids need to be taught to obey the rules. If they don't learn this, they will probably end up in prison

What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say. Do you mean to say British kids need to be taught to obey the rules because other countries manage to bring up their children without resorting to such overbearing pettiness and without all their kids ending up in prison.

To me the real questions are not if they have petty rules or seem heavy handed...it's do the kids achieve good grades at the end, and are the pupils who go to that school well behaved and happy young people...in general. Do the parents who have had their kids there for years think it has been a good place for them to be educated.
If so, go with the school's way of doing achieving that. Work with them.
If not, don't send Ur kid there. Find a different school.

Teaches have a hell of a job on their hands and are leaving in droves. Entitled kids who are badly behaved and are fully backed by entitled and unsupportive parents is just one of the things they face on a daily basis. I am not saying you are that OP .. that school might be awful😬 , but I'm just saying that schools take in general an approach that they feel will help the pupils most to achieve in the long run and prepare them for life beyond education. They aren't as far as I've seen, trying to make kids lives misery. Quite the opposite.

Just my tuppence worth 💞

@HRCsMumma where do I draw the line? By talking to my kid.
A detention for having 1 pen and not two? Silly detention and a discussion about the Prussian education system. An enlightening opportunity.
A detention for pushing a fellow student against the wall? A very serious detention and consequences at home.

All the psychological research says that 60-70% of people do go along with this (see Milgram and his successors!). But of course many do leave (I did). I think it’s an underreported reason for leaving teaching. I still work with children and I get to keep my morality about how people should be treated.

I should add, that’s NOT to say teachers who don’t leave have lost their moral compass… I was obviously in a particularly awful school situation.

If you treat people as the enemy they usually live up to that expectation.

If you treat people as the enemy they usually live up to that expectation.

I think this has a lot of truth behind it. I'd be interested to know how many teachers use the same philosophy they use in school at home with their own kids. Do they also punish every minor transgression in the same way? If not, why not?

It seems to me there is a huge disconnect between schools and the real world. I don't think it's anything new and it's very entrenched in the British school system.

The schools where my DC go are very much focused on what happens after school. They are expected to go on a work experience day in Yrs 5&6 with a family member or friend. We've just had parents welcome evening for my Yr 7. The teacher stressed that work experience should take precedence over school work; that the children should be actively looking for a week's work experience this year, preferably during the holidays but also during term time (any missed work to be discussed with the teacher when they're back ); odd days off are to be encouraged to let them get an idea of different jobs. They will have a project week where they will visit a local business, learn to write cvs and application letters and practice interviews. This year they have one half term in home economics on career paths and choices, and Yr8 they will have one lesson a week on job/ career.
The emphasis of school is not on passing your GCSE's, more on what happens after school. They show the children you need x,y,z to do this job and it's up to the children to decide what they do with that info. They don't treat them like idiots who need every spare second of their school day to be organised for them.

Yes it is normal. Zero tolerance from the beginning. I remember my yp getting a detention for having a top button undone.

Yes a lunchtime detention for something very trivial, after school detention for something a bit more serious, isolation for something more serious still.
there are degrees of detention usually so it’s not meaningless.
it’s stressful and I’m so glad school days are now over/ phew!

I'm really happy at how primary schools have become much more child-centred in how they teach, from what I've seen with DS it's much better for the children than how primary schools taught us when I was a child. The problem that I see is that secondary schools have gone the opposite way so the transition is more difficult, despite all the extra transition work that schools do now.

Sadly this seems to be the norm now. Grades of penalties for absolutely everything with little or no discretion on their,application . I wouldnt mind if they were for serious misdemeanours but detention for hoing to use the toilets during the lunch hour is harsh and disproportionate. DS's generation have had a huge increase in mental health issues and this is exacerbating it.

No - I don’t punish my children for every little thing. I am not as harsh as some teachers mentioned on this thread but I do have very clear and high expectations of behaviour. I have 32 teenagers in front of me. It has to be handled differently to the two teens I have at home.

It is the common thing these days, my DS's previous school were harsh on a lot of things - he once got 3 detentions in one day: for being late (though he was on the playground and in sight of the teacher, but hadn't walked past her), then as he was upset about it he went to the SEN hub but given a detention for being in the corridor on the way there, and a third detention for leaving the hub and walking back to class. He has various SEN and had permission to go to the hub when he needs to, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. All three were one-hour detentions. He's now transferred to another MAT that has a holistic approach - instead of detentions they give short "reflections" with a teacher, where they discuss how they should do better next time, which seems to be more successful as it seems relatively few children then keep their bad behaviour resulting in detention

Gosh that's horrible

Sounds a bit harsh IMO,but I suppose schools these days have been getting so much shitty behaviour from a sizable minority of pupils that they have decided to clamp down on everything with a zero tolerance policy.

Yes it does unfortunately seem to be the norm, I have 2 teens in 2 different high schools (years 9&10) and it seems to be the case in both. I feel it has gotten worse this year, my daughter has to have her pencil case out before they’ve even gotten into school, whilst they line up for form. Equipment and uniform is checked and if missing something/wearing something wrong they are sent to line up at the fence and disciplined. This then happens at the start of each class too. It’s crazy. I’ve got 2 more kids to get through high school yet so I wonder if it’ll keep getting stricter 🤔

Gosh - that would be anxiety inducing for my 2 (ND) before they've even got into school.

Erm I think schools used to be a lot stricter so I'm not sure that's the reason for a mental health crisis.

The fear and behaviour points system contributed to my absolutely compliant 11 year old with SEN not being able to go to school at all. Her NT peers all said how much they hated school too. Schools aren’t on to a winner with these much too heavy handed approaches. They just give even the most robust kids anxiety and completely annihilate the anxious ones. It’s so predictable that this would be the result, as well, that’s what amazes me.

Generally no they didn’t (ex teacher here).

Schools today are zero tolerance on any minor indiscretion. (Mainly secondary I’m taking about). Each year they are getting more and more petty.

Problem is if you move the ‘line’ closer and closer to a place where more and more people are likely to fall foul of it, you penalise a larger percentage of them for minor things (pencils, hair, blazers etc) you then push those kids outside of the range of acceptable behaviour for minor infringements, you then have a much larger proportion of students outside of the ‘acceptable’. This just then creates a vicious cycle and resentment. School is a bad fit for many young people, todays one-size-fits-all, highly academic, to the detriment of all else system is bad enough but the add in the petty system of constant punishment for minor ‘offences’ and it’s no wonder so many young people hate school.

Ugh it's horrible this - clear boundaries are fine, making kids want to cry with anxiety not so much.

No, they weren’t.