Excessive punishment at ds school

[supersop60]

My son's teacher punished him today; he had to miss his PE lesson (and watch the others do it) and tomorrow he has to miss his playtime and repeat a piece of work. What did he do? He forgot to put his name on his work.
WIBU to complain to the school? DS has pleaded with me not to, because he'll get told off again if I complain. Any suggestions how I might word the email/letter? or should I go in person. Additional info - he's in yr 6 and he's Head Boy.

If he doesn't want you to complain then I wouldn't.

It's excess punishment but there may be more to it.

Thanks everyone - I'll update you later.

Update - he had been talking in class as well, and everyone was told clearly to name their work. About 50% of the class missed PE ( suggests the teacher is not really on top of things). He only had to miss playtime for as long as it took to find his work from the pile and name it - didn't listen ( why am I not surprised). Glad I rang and talked to the teacher anyway.

Kids rarely give the full story. My 12 year old daughter sometimes comes home and tells me that "x" teacher gave "x" terrible punishment when "x" student had done nothing at all to deserve it.

I am not a teacher, but my parents were so it is in my background. I always tell her that there is usually much more to it than you know of - i.e. the apparently innocuous behaviour was in fact the tip of an iceberg, and there may well have been a lengthy build-up to this. I mean, the proverbial "straw that breaks the camel's back" sort of build-up.

It can sometimes be very tempting to go in with all guns blazing, but is rarely a good idea. If I am angry about something the school has done/said I try to phone my parents first to get a likely teacher's perspective and think about the way to approach it before I act. Only once has it been really worthy of a complaint to school. Otherwise, just a few searching questions was perfectly sufficient to clarify things.

Goblin why not ask then? At the very least the truth can be established...if the DC is lying he might think twice about this if there is a next time. If not the OP needs to have words with the school...

X post.

Gileswithachainsaw: Overreaction much! A name? Really. God you'd think he'd punched a teacher or something.

Erm, no, if he'd punched a teacher or something I'd expect him to be excluded.

OP are you going to have words with him about being more truthful with you? And also about the talking in class when he should be listening?

If it wasn't for mn you might have really embarrassed yourself by going in all guns blazing

To those saying its just a name.

If its classwork not putting a name on it can cause a huge amount of disruption the next time the work has to be used in class.

How can a teacher track your child's progress if none of his/her work is not named?

How does a teacher know if your child has done their homework if the work is not named?

How can your child get their work back if its not named?

For those who think that this is a silly thing, I have told pupils that if they do not put their name on their work they will get a detention, I tell them this when I set the work, I tell them this when I remind them of the hand in date and I tell them this when I collect the work in.

In the end if your child doesn't listen to instructions then it is their fault.

I wonder how many doing pe felt punished when half the class got out of it.
I would have prefered the punishment of not doing pe when I was in school.

fairenuff - words have already been had!

'DS has pleaded with me not to, because he'll get told off again if I complain. '

Oh you sucker, he's going to have a ball at secondary.
How very cruel of you to go and find out what actually happened, and how embarrassing that the Head boy is setting such a poor example of good classroom behaviour when he's presumably only been HB for a couple of weeks.

Down ???????

What????

So he's chatting in class, exaggerating about missing playtime and the teacher is coming down hard on the class in the first few weeks of term.
Sounds a typical Y6 class to me, is it a school with high expectations of achievement from the children? Where you'd expect Y6 to be the gold standard and know what the expectations of behaviour are?
Teacher will have to become more creative with the consequences if they don't shape up soon. Missing PE is a poor choice.

Yes it does seem excessive but as others have said, is this a long running thing? Or are there other things in the mix so to speak?

I think the teacher was right to come down hard on the poor behaviour and set expectations in the first few weeks but agree missing PE is a poor punishment, not least because a good % of yr6 children would be delighted to miss PE.

Agree Boney. When I was at school, handing in unnamed work was treated just the same as handing in no work at all - because as far as it's purpose is concerned, it's the same thing.

But it sounds like that really wasn't the only reason anyway.

I think you need to go and speak to the teacher and find out what really happened. I don't think it can just be that he didn't write his name. And why would he get in more trouble if you said something to the teacher? They wouldn't punish a child for something the parent said. Or they shouldn't! You need to get the whole story, they should never take away a curriculum subject as a punishment, not least because that would be completely ineffective for some kids, my son would love to miss PE!

Go and chat to the teacher x

lemonade read my last comment. All sorted.