Whole class being punished for theft!

[puds11isNAUGHTYnotNAICE]

DD told me today that her entire class was punished for one child stealing purses. The class didn't get their play time session where they get free choice over what they do. They just had to sit there.

Bags, coats and drawers were searched. DD is 6.

AIBU to think that the whole class shouldn't be punished for the actions of one person? Also, surely the bag inspections etc. would have cleared up the problem?

As a one off I'd let it go to be honest.
Dd has missed many a playtime between reception and y5 due to whole class punishment for the actions of a few and as it's only happened a handful of times per school year and usually I can see where the teacher is coming from.

However her teacher has started having children miss playtimes for getting spellings wrong. They are in groups and if one child in the group gets a spelling wrong then that group misses playtime. Dd has gotten every spelling correct but has still missed Monday play times and because the children mark each other's spelling they know who has made mistakes which I think is unfair as it could make them a target. I've heard other year groups parents complain about this so I think it's across the school. This week dd has missed three playtimes, one because of the spelling, one because four of the boys destroyed some display work of reception children and one because two boys on her lunch table were throwing food around. It's been different staff giving the punishments but I do think it's been unfair, esp as they knew who had damaged the work and who was throwing food.

My DD has a purse at school for her lunch money (Scotland), as do all the other children who are having a school dinner.

I don't really know what I think about this as an investigation? What are the alternative options when no-one owns up? (Asking because I have no experience in this...)

Bloody hell that's harsh INicked, totally unfair on such small children.

How come the parents haven't banded together and stormed the place taken them to task?

This happened to me back in the late 1970s, only it was our class teacher's purse that was stolen. We were aged 10 and were all kept in over break whilst the head of year searched our coat pockets. It was horrible.

To be honest we all knew who had done it and the search proved that to be correct. However with 37 years of hindsight I now think that the actual search had been done earlier and they knew what they were going to find before they searched. Maybe if my useless school had spent more time in identifying vulnerable children earlier she could've been helped sooner.

'Maybe if my useless school had spent more time in identifying vulnerable children earlier she could've been helped sooner.'

I was thinking along the same lines Shiny, that they should be looking at why a child thinks it's OK to take a purse they know isn't theirs. There could be things going on that need looking into at home or they don't understand that they shouldn't take stuff that doesn't belong to them (which at 6 is totally plausible, 'it had a picture of frozen on it and I wanted it').

In my experience, while not fair to the innocent parties, punishing everyone over the actions of one person tend to have kids that keep each other in line. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have kids take a more vested interest in their classroom community and how they all behave. As PP have said, most people already know the guilty party before they search, so it's not like the kids are unaware of what's going on.

Obviously you don't abuse this policy, but really what else could be done than keep them in and search? If all the kids went outside for break, the stolen item could have been taken out and lost, given away, or discarded.

If an item has been stolen, it's much easier to close the doors where the item obviously is, and find it before kids are allowed to leave and create an even larger area to search and lower the chances of getting it back.

I'm only going on my 14 YO DD (who's lost 2 phones and a set of keys in the past few weeks ), but there's more chance that the purse is just lost rather than stolen isn't it?

How can they be so certain? Unless they already know who's nabbed it, in which case why punish everyone?

There are better ways to teach the difference between right/wrong.

Agent zigzag - I've never gone through a child's bag without them knowing at school. No need at my school. I work in y1 abd 2.