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.

What is SLANT and tracking?

If this is the school discipline policy, then it's fair to make it clear and explicit, and to implement it consistently right from the start.

But Fwiw this is a million miles away from how we treat our new students (I work in a independent school). My newbies have been popping into my classroom on a regular basis because they're lost, or they've forgotten their pencil case and they want to borrow a pencil, or they're worried about going to DT with the noisy scary equipment, or any number of other things they're worried about, and I look after them and sort them out!

We only really give Detentions for being behind with work (ie to catch up), for being rude to a teacher, for vaping, or for persistently doing something lower level (usually disrupting learning) despite warnings.

It's a silly behavioural acronym about being 'ready to learn' from a book called 'Teach Like a Champion'. I can never remember what all the bits are (acronyms really don't help me) but S is 'sit up straight' and T is 'track the speaker' meaning you should always look directly at the speaker. One of my best year 11s never does either but ask them what I have just said and they will be able to tell you.
it's all about proxies for attention. If they look like they're paying attention then that's all that matters!

@GrammarTeacher oh agree absolutely and so glad when I taught it was before all this craze. I too am concerned for the next generation of teachers if this is what they know. And the higher skills of being able to think and reason.

Although I am also currently looking at autism diagnosis!

If you want to look for a positive, though, the kids will very quickly learn the rules, they'll very quickly make sure they do have the right pens etc, and hopefully everyone will actually behave themselves in class and your child will get a chance to learn. This is not the case in every school.

Very common in the academy schools near me. They all set strict boundaries very early and many of the kids have a shock compared to their primary experience.

I think this approach is appalling , I've heard of an approach called mowing the grass with regard to behaviour which was used by some schools. Zero tolerance which was totally over the top and sounded very aggressive.

My DC's secondary doesn't have detention. They seem to manage fine.

I disagree.

I think that schools who adopt draconian procedures like to use this sort of faux social science to justify their practices.

It smacks of “in my day it was better” with a dash of the classic “in Europe….!”

I suspect the reasons are more straightforward. If you cram a load of kids into schools with constantly rotating teaching staff, then they’re harder to manage. It takes time to become a decent teacher, it takes time to learn how to manage behaviour.

Kids have to learn in shit environments - if you’ve stepped into a school recently then you’ll see how awful they are. The toilets, the classrooms etc (unless your kids are in a recently built academy or private school).

There are millions of children and families living in poverty now. An explosion of mental health problems in adults, and some of those will be parents. Good luck being a decent parent in those circumstances.

There is a massive workforce crisis in teaching. Teachers are leaving and the government cannot recruit enough teachers. If your child is at secondary school, go and look at the vacancies pages every now and then. You might have to cough up for a tutor if you want them to pass maths GCSE for example.

And to top it all off, we’ve had a government (and media to some extent) who have their very narrow idea of what schools and education should be like. Mr Gove in particular with a fetish for discipline (yes, I’m thinking of the self proclaimed strictest head teacher) and classical literature sucking the life out of school.

Instead of writing this off as a “back in my day it was better”, we need people to take the fact that things have gone very wrong and need fixing with investment and a kinder approach to children. I would hate to be a kid nowadays; on average, they very much do not have it easier.

I found this for my DD this week who started year 7. She didn't get in any trouble but spent the 4 days listening to every teacher tell them all the different ways they could get into trouble. Seems a bit heavy handed to me and she was very overwhelmed and emotional at the weekend. I'm sure it'll settle down and become fine soon as she's always loved school, I know they just have to set the tone.

OP my DD's school was like this. My DD has ADHD and is not particularly organised. I did my best to help her but she still got loads of detentions in year 7. They were extremely strict.

I thought it was petty and overly harsh at times.

It's been the making of her. Going into year 8 she was determined not to get any detentions. She's organised, packs her bag the night before, checks her timetable, rarely if ever gets a detention now.

She's happy.

They start off harsh in year 7 to set expectations early.

Does this approach to discipline even work?

Doesn't it get to the point where no one cares about a detention if they are given out so often? It sounds like it's the almost the teaching equivalent of a parent threatening to tell Santa if their child is misbehaving.

A secondary free school opened near us. Prided itself on its church values, amazing behaviour and it became very popular. The sort where the headteacher greets every child at the door.

Several of my DCs primary classmates go there and their parents are shocked by the number of detentions and even periods in isolation their children have had since joining. These are not 'bad' kids with troubled upbringings. One I can imagine would drive any teacher mad, but the others are completely inoffensive. They are considering moving their children to the 'rougher' comp as a result.

My DCs have both gone to a grammar school and a main reason was to avoid this type of behavioural management. At the parents welcome evening I don't think they mentioned behaviour once - it was all about learning, pastoral care and the opportunities they would have. They are even trusted to have their phones with them during the day.

I hope your son settles in soon OP. I feel for him. I would have been terrified too.

My DC go to a multi academy trust Secondary school. It has a reputation for being strict and it lives up to that reputation. Some of the rules seem over the top in my opinion but my DC know the rules & follow them so never get in trouble. I think if the school are relaxed about the rules to start with then it sets the wrong expectation. My DC knew the list of what was needed & made sure they had it all as they knew there would be an inspection on the first day (the school previously communicated this). I don’t have anything to compare to but my hope is the strictness means the behaviour is better & this creates a better learning environment (eg no phones). Although I agree with the PP that probably the ones that get the punishments mostly don’t care & continue.

I do think that for minor offences by a year 7 pupil a warning could be given and explained that if this wasn’t the first week of term they’d get a punishment so they understand the rule and what the later consequences will be. Also that there should be a punishment less than a detention eg for wrong equipment (there is at my DCs school).

It’s hard as there are two sides to every rule. Many schools don’t allow pupils to go to the toilet during lessons. I disagree with this as it can cause problems & isn’t fair eg if the pupil is on their period. However, there is a big issue with pupils vaping in the toilets. Also pupils need the right equipment to learn.

It isn’t nice that your DC has been upset. I think it’s important to explain to them why the rules are there & set up the expectations. If you push back on it then they will want to. It sounds like you didn’t know this was going to happen so couldn’t prepare your DC for it. My DC didn’t get upset as they knew this would be the case so it made it easier for them. DC and parents who don’t like the strictness choose to go elsewhere but we are lucky to have options.

Does this actually work though?
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?
Wouldn't kids quickly become hardened to the threat of detention, seeing it as a necessary evil in the school day?

Nope, my DS is a current year 7.

Schools locked down two weeks before the Easter holidays in March 2020 and he was in year 2. Absolutely. Definitely. His year 2 teacher is still teaching year 2. He missed the transition to upper primary school as a result.

He returned in September 2020 in year 3. Had to isolate three times because of class cases and then locked down again in January 2021 for 8 weeks.

Dr Naomi Fisher (often working with “missing the mark”) is a psychologist who writes a lot about this and the impact it has on the mental health of young people and their families. One size does not fit all. The explosion in home education is the result of very many sensitive and intelligent young people falling out of this failing system. My DD was one of them and after months of burnout has re found her love of learning and self teaching herself some brilliant new complex stuff. By learning in a way that reflects her style if she keeps this up she’ll actually be useful to an employer or run her own business. Her older sister survived an awful secondary school and despite getting all her GCSEs has half the study skills of her sibling because she mostly learnt to conform, regurgitate on rote , be mute and not question anything to survive school.

Id also remember that children exaggerate . You must remember some of the rumours that went round your school? Often it’s not the forgetting a pen but how rude they are to the teacher or some other behaviour. But that’s not a good story that reflects well on the child.

its unusual I would say for it to happen in the first few days .

my daughters school you’d get a penalty point for forgetting and i assume so many points equals detention.its a grammar school for reference.

@GrammarTeacher

I've never heard of this in Scotland. How can you look directly at the teacher when you're taking notes? 😕

In my experience Y7 kids are treated very harshly

Both of mine struggled in Y7. My DS didn't get one detention or sanction in Y7 because he completely withdrew into himself out of fear of getting into any trouble. Teachers noticed that he wasn't engaging with anyone and we saw his mental health deteriorate. In Y8 everything became more relaxed.

DD who went to a different school became obsessed with making sure she had all of her equipment to the point where she developed OCD. She also developed anxiety about the random bag searches and uniform inspections which involved being called to the front of the class and having your trousers pinched to make sure they weren't too tight. DD found this humiliating.

She never broke any rules but the fear caused mental health issues which we had to get help with. We transferred her to a small private school for the start of Y9 ( would have done it sooner had Covid not disrupted everything ) and she flourished once there as they had a much more relaxed approach.

Our school has a points system and it’s clear as day why she gets points. For nonsense like forgetting a homework diary.

It becomes absurd that it’s cumulative and not left to the teacher’s discretion.

Some kids get a day exclusion for violence and five behaviour points. Five points is equivalent to forgetting your homework diary five times. It’s silly.

I’ve just read a few more posts and I hadn’t considered exaggeration. In my DC school it’s definitely an equivalent of a penalty point if you forget something. Then penalty points add up to a more strict punishment.

I’d cut them some slack for the first week but honestly behaviour in schools has got worse over the years I’ve been teaching. At the same time complaints from parents about any sanction are through the roof. A balance on both sides is needed. It’s so easy now for parents to send an email complaining compared to my youth where a parent would sleep on issue before composing a handwritten letter or telephone call the next morning. That reflection time is needed in my opinion.

Schools could pay for silent vaping alarms if they want to tackle that. But because of lack of funding, they can’t so they end up introducing absolute draconian rules about toilets.

Forgetting homework diary means hwk can’t be recorded and then usually results in kids missing/forgetting hwk. If a child is forgetting their diary five times I would suggest they need more support at home with packing their bag as five times forgetting something is a lot.

They don't take notes. They are given everything they need to learn from. Many teachers online brag of how little writing they do in their subject.