Did anyone have to go into solitary confinement as punishment at school?

[TippyTinkleTrousers]

I saw an educational psychologist last week as I was suspected to have dyslexia.

She asked about school, explained I was distributive and she asked how they punished. This is secondary school I'm referring to.

It was solitary confinement and she seemed shocked. I always assumed all schools did it and it was better than being canned as they did at my dads school.

If we were in trouble we would have between 1 day and 2 weeks in the what they callled The Focus Room. Depending on how bad we had been.

It would be a room of about 8-10 kids, with dividers in between all of them so the kid could see the teacher but no one else.

You would have a break away from one another and at a different time to the rest of the school. Same at lunch time.

You literally saw no one else and spoke to no one the whole day. Or days depending how bad you were.

I spent a lot of time in the 'Focus Room.'

The ed psych seemed appalled but I just took it as normal. I wondered if anyone else's school had this or similar?

What sort of behaviour was this used for?

It's normal for schools (now) to put pupils in isolation for very serious offences.

We had it.

I did not and do not see any benefit to this type of punishment. Seems totally bizarre! At least when kids got the slipper it was over after a couple of seconds (as from my dads experience)

Obviously I'm not saying we should bring back hitting children in schools, just comparing one terrible pointless punishment with another

Oh loads of bad stuff. Fighting, throwing tables. That kind of stuff.

It was a pretty rough school

It would be a room of about 8-10 kids, with dividers in between all of them so the kid could see the teacher but no one else.
So not solitary confinement, by definition.

You're in school, have been disruptive and have been sanctioned in line with a behaviour policy which is published by schools and communicated to students.

Normal low level classroom disruption rarely leads to spending time out on a focus room/ isolation room in my experience.

I wouldn't be appalled. I would be happy that a school was sending a message that learning is important and nobody has the right to ruin the learning of others.

Solitary confinement was how the ed psych described it.

I just explained what it was.

I had this punishment. I wrote something nasty about another girl on the science lab desk.

Nope - but my school was pretty hot on discipline and could actually expel people (and did), so the worst you were likely to get was a lunchtime detention or very rarely an after school one. Mostly they ruled by terror and didn't really have to give out many punishments - order marks and tellings off were mostly enough.

Oh we did sometimes have to stand outside the classroom - if you were sent out you were supposed to just stand there until you were allowed back, but that was a question of minutes, not long at all.

And yes, Mrs H, I still think it was very fucking unfair for the whole class apart from one girl to get a detention because Girl A thumped Girl B. You singled out the one girl because she 'couldn't have been involved because she was disabled', which is fucking ridiculous, and gave the rest of us detention even though half the class WEREN'T IN THE ROOM.

Ahem.

Solitary confinement was how the ed psych described it
Then the EdPsych clearly has some difficulty understanding the meaning of the words solitary and confinement.

(Instantly gets the impressions of the ed psych as the sort of person who has nevwr taught and thinks that bad behaviour ahould never be sanctioned because it's not the child's fault. Superficial judgement not because theyre an ed psych but because of people I've met who say similar stupid things)

Isolation is still used in some UK schools afaik.

I don't have a problem with it. You've (general you) been disruptive, so you are removed from class. You get breaks and lunch, just not with the rest of the school. Sounds like a school applying a standard behaviour policy and not allowing the learning of others to be disrupted.

It's hardly Miss Trunchbull and the Chokey.

It's not me that was appalled by the way. I just figured it was a regular, at the time at least.

I've been a secondary school teacher for almost 20 years. Every school I've worked in has had something similar, and the school I went to in the early 90s did too.
So yes I think it's normal!!

to be fair, it is difficult to know how you would reassure the other children in the class if you were not able to remove a violent child at all

it's not as if they can get up and walk away if they get scared

when one of ds' classmates started lashing out, ds (who got hurt) was so scared he tried to start school refusing

not letting the other boy out at the same break time for a while was one of the things that reassured him enough to be able to go to school

so I don't see how we can do away with internal exclusion

but it should be done in the most humane and productive way possible, which would involve the excluded child having access to adults to talk to, and obviously any problems identified and addressed

Has the EdPsych thought through how she would like to work in an environment where one or more of her colleagues are regularly starting fights or throwing tables right next to her and she can't get out of the way without being sanctioned and cannot simply choose another job?

You mean internal exclusion which in schools I worked in was used for very disruptive behaviour or being abusive. I've never seen it used for more than a few days at a time though.

In my school time (early 00s) you could be sent to the staff corridor, which was a corridor leading to rooms only staff were allowed into like the office, the staffroom, senior staff offices, staff toilets. Students weren't ordinarily allowed into the corridor at all so the idea was that if you'd been sent there you could focus on your work without being distracted by passing friends and would be loosely supervised because staff members are walking in and out. It was like a precursor to exclusion. After being in the staff corridor, or sometimes as an interim measure people usually got put on report which meant that they had a behaviour card which had to be signed by the class teacher every lesson.

Worst I ever got at school was detention, but it was commonly accepted that being sent to the staff corridor was a thing, I think you weren't even allowed out for breaks and lunch either but you told a teacher what you wanted from the canteen and they'd get it for you (or you'd eat your packed lunch at the desk.) Teachers would be annoyed by having to send work down to students because they weren't given much notice and so sometimes it wasn't very practical to adapt the lesson to that one child.

I thought this was a normal thing too TBH. They have it on that (Highly accurate documentary OFC ) Waterloo Road too - they have "The cooler".

@corythatwas You have to have 'worked with children' full time for at least two years to be an EdPsych - most come from a school background, many as teachers. Less represented alternatives include youth justice and social care. So, err yes they probably are aware of behavioural issues in schools/with children and young people in general.

Our school uses it - only for very serious and violent offences. It is always, always done in tandem with counselling to address the causes of behaviour. I don't have a problem with it if it is used in this way. Both my DDs have been victims of people who have ended up in seclusion and if the school had not addressed the behaviour in the way they did, their lives would have been miserable - and the pupil in question would not have had help.

We had 'isolation' at my school which seemed to be rolled out at the whim of teachers who had grudges against 'naughty' students. I seem to remember it bring for up to a week at a time -it was a great way of causing disruptive teenagers to completely disengage from our school and make all of us think most of our teachers were dicks, even if we weren't naughty. I don't really know why the EdPsych would be shocked; I don't think it's uncommon, but they may well think it was a bit shit.

I work in an academy, the pupils have a 5 tier warning in each class throughout the day. if they are told off by the teacher (for any behavior) they get a tick on a board and after that they get punished in isolation all the next day plus an hour detention in exactly the cubicles you describe. This is normal punishment practice in academies nationwide.

Why would they think it was a bit shit if it was used for (OPs own admission) fighting and throwing tables? Wouldn't it be rather more shit to force the other children to sit through that in their regular classroom?

@pointythings - yes, I can see why the school would use it in this way - it actually serves a purpose then. My school unfortunately did not employ this sensible approach and, unsurprisingly, it didn't work.

The way she reacted it was as if she had never heard of it.

She was very very well spoke. Perhaps she didn't teach in the kind of rough school I went to?

I was often in solitary confinement (I was always sneaking out for lunch, getting caught smoking, copying homework, repeatedly wearing non school standard skirts ) so it was quite the norm in my school back in 00's and I didn't even go to a rough one, in fact I was in a Grammar so many pupils were quite well behaved middle class kids.

My solitary confinement was literally that though, we would sit in an empty class and throughout the day different teachers would watch over me, whereas my teenage sister's school put them in the back of a different class (so yr 8 sat in the back of a class full of yr 10's who are pointing and whispering about them) and at dinner/breaks they have 10 minutes to eat lunch on a lone table then have to stand facing fire doors in the dining hall until the bell rings.
This I was shocked to hear and think is outrageous as it's inviting other kids to point and ridicule.

I agree normal practice in my school (although rarely for more than a day) surely this better than letting the misbehaving child siarupt everyone else in class - if they want to be in class woth friends then dont misbehave. And yes i was frequently in isolation in school.

We have
A short term isolation room for incidents of poor behaviour e.g. Fighting, swearing at a teacher, uniform problems they won't change.
A long term unit when behaviour has become unmanageable around school. We have a set number of bought places at the local PRU'S and then use our own internal one.
It works.