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?

It was used in my high school (i'm 31). I got put in isolation twice, once for shouting 'for fucks sake!' during an argument with a friend in the corridor. Just as the head walked past.
Once for smoking on the top field while sciving a lesson.

My school wasn't particularly rough, a bit of fighting and cheek really.
Our isolation room was about 12 desks against the walls with little dividers attached to the walls and we had to work in silence.

They still have the isolation room and also have a calm room now, for students who have more complex problems and need a safe space to calm down. They are allowed to shout and stomp about in there.

@corythatwas - cos if the OP was in there a lot then it obv wasn't working. Also, two weeks is a long time to be in that kind of environment, and if it's not used in conjunction with anything else then it's an approach that won't help disruptive pupils in the future. I get why this kind of measure is used in certain circumstances, like in the immediate aftermath of a fight, but it is a bit of a shit way of 'dealing with' a persistent problem. Also EdPsychs are obv going to be more into less reactive solutions than isolation cos that's pretty much their job.

They used it all the time at my school for really bad cases.

We had 'Internal Suspension' anything from one day to 2 weeks, after that it was 'External Suspension' for up to 2 weeks, then you were 'Expelled'

Internal meant working on your own in a room the size of a bathroom with one window, a desk and a chair. The room was between the HT and DHT offices. You were given text book exercises for all lessons, everything was written work and was marked by the HT or DHT at the end of the day. You still got homework and also had to complete/redo anything you hadn't finished in time or completed badly. Inclusion was extended if you took the piss and didn't do the work.

Lunch was early, you went and collected your meal (supervised by one of the office staff), bought it back to the room and ate it alone.

I was given Internal twice, once for 2 days for punching Derry Dog-Breath in the nose and once for 5 days for shaving my head and dyeing the remains bright purple.

I actually did some of my best course work during Internal - no distractions!

(Both times the worst part of my punishment was being grounded by my parents for even longer, oh and the mud brown hair dye my mother bought to cover the purple)

Pingu, absolutely agree that it should be used in conjunction with other more positive and productive measures

and (as I said earlier) in a way that is as humane as possible

but at the same time I do think teachers have a duty to think of what is going to be helping not only for the disruptive pupils themselves but also what is going to be helping the other pupils in the class- including the anxious pupil who may be self-harming or unable to sleep at night because of classroom experiences

it's a balance

Using emotive language like "solitary confinement" doesn't really suggest a very balanced approach at all, though. An EdPsych should be able to do better than that.

Also EdPsychs are obv going to be more into less reactive solutions than isolation cos that's pretty much their job.

There seems to be a group of ed psychs that are pushing for any removal to isolation to be stopped (including the naughty step), unfortunately they aren't putting any realistic suggestions forward to replace it.

Yes completely normal.

Your Ed Psych maybe went to a school where a little hushed whisper or a tint raised eyebrow was enough to silence the room.
Not the case for the majority of people.

There's disruptive behaviour and disruptive behaviour.

Fighting and throwing tables and that kind of stuff, my children's secondaries would have deployed you to the isolation unit too.

How long ago are we talking?(sorry if you've said already)

The problem is that if it's too much cups of tea and head-cocking chats about our feelings then it becomes far more attractive an option than sitting down and shutting up in chemistry.

She must be a very new and inexperienced EdPsych if she had never heard of internal exclusion I have worked in/closely with schools for many years and it is perfectly normal. Calling it "solitary confinement" is ridiculous.

There seems to be a group of ed psychs that are pushing for any removal to isolation to be stopped

Problem is schools can't expel them without huge financial cost, they are rarely SEN kids so no extra cash for support, services are stretched and some parents just don't care what their kids get up to

Yes we had isolation in our school. People were put on it for a day of they broke uniform rules and longer if ot was something behavioural.

Not solitary confinement , that sounds like isolation rooms they are still used often. DD spent at least 2 days a week in isolation before moving to specialist school, was used once a certain amount of behaviour points were reached , if after school was missed or incidents such as truanting, swearing etc. When I was at school was a bit more extreme I was in a room completely alone, no staff or other kids !

We had isolation - I never misbehaved seriously enough to go there, but from what others said it was nothing special. Just an ordinary classroom with some work and a teacher to watch you. Lunchtimes and break people got their food and took it back to the room. I suppose some people might think it was cruel, but we didn't, even the kids who were in isolation. It was only a day, 2 at most (and that was onlyif they'd been in isolation before). It was just very boring. It was one step down from suspension, and only for serious offences - repeated fighting, being constantly disruptive in class, repeatedly bullying, etc etc. It worked well from what I remember - it was so boring that kids tended to behave better afterwards, and there wasn't any admiration or anything for the pupil who went in either

Also to be frank, I think isolation was better than the alternative of letting certain pupils disrupt classes and everyones learning, being aggressive towards teachers etc. Letting it carry on wouldn't be fair. Detentions didn't work, and stream after stream of suspension knowing the pupil will only be watching telly at home wouldn't have been beneficial to the pupil either. Isolation seems a good solution - not disturbing others learning, but also not stopping the disruptive pupils schoolwork or learning.

There seems to be a group of ed psychs that are pushing for any removal to isolation to be stopped (including the naughty step), unfortunately they aren't putting any realistic suggestions forward to replace it.
This. And some teachers who think beu
Ing matey and acting like friends and therapists is more important than doing the job they are paid for with professional pastoral care.
The problem is that if it's too much cups of tea and head-cocking chats about our feelings then it becomes far more attractive an option than sitting down and shutting up in chemistry.
Tell me about it. It's like a few years ago when time out cards started being used more than with students with additional needs. For a while we had loads of students who all very suddenly acquired depression, anger issues and anxiety and thry all happened to get these overwhelming feelings just as the hard work started. Bit like the 6 month spike in self-diagnosed ADHD/ASD when figet spinners were cool (who magically aren't now).

It's like when internal isolation unita become a badge of honour where students think they can sit with their mates out of lessons, do no work and chat to a 'sound' member of staff

Our isolation was used for absolutely everything. I was always in isolation for little things like my shirt being untucked, my hair being too black etc...

Our isolation was used for absolutely everything. I was always in isolation for little things like my shirt being untucked, my hair being too black etc...

If a school put every child in isolation for a single untucked shirt you'd have almost every child in there over a year. My guess would be repeatedly not wearing the uniform properly, which is the same as persistently breaking other school rules, or being a pain about it when challenged.

Too dark black hair? Guessing thr school had a rule for natural hair colours and jet black hair is not a convincing natural hair colour on most people.

Yep I had proper isolation, not the focus room you described but one tiny desk in a tiny room off a teachers office. Happened a couple of times. Once was genuinely my fault; I'd refused to hand over my Nokia brick phone when I got caught texting. Then my mates thought it would be funny to stand outside shouting my nicknames through the teachers office so got another day for that because I couldn't tell them who it was specifically that had shouted.
Had another morning in there "for my own good" after a teaching assistant had trapped me in a classroom and shouted at me over some drama between her daughter and my sister that I didn't know anything about. Wouldn't let me leave and stood infront of the door, then pretended I'd shouted and sworn at her for no reason (I'd said I had nothing to say to her pretty calmly and asked her to let me leave, then when she refused and carried on shouting the odds at me, I'd said to get out of my fucking way in a panic when she blocked my exit). Fun times!

We had it in the 90's. Sometimes as a fixed number of days, sometimes just if you were thrown out of a lesson. I was disruptive out of boredom and quite liked isolation, because instead of having to sit through someone droning on I could just sit and read.

Isolation just meant being dumped alone in wherever was free, even if that was a separate building like the gym. I'm assuming some inspector made them stop for safety issues and then we had group isolation, and that involved someone insisting I did some pointless exercise so I took to disrupting that.

Punishment then escalated to what was referred to as the sn room, presumably because nobody cared if I disrupted their education. Where I behaved perfectly because she was one of the few decent teachers, and gave me free access to the library and a cupboard of old textbooks that were left from when the school had a sixth form.

We did have suspension but never really got that as I was happy to truant without permission, let alone being told to leave.

DS2 has been in isolation many times. Not due to rudeness, aggressiveness, swearing and certainly not for throwing tables but due to not being able to follow instruction due to his learning difficulties and working memory issues. He was even put in isolation as punishment for hiding in the loos due to being stressed at being told off all the time!

Makes my blood boil all over again reading this thread. Just goes to show that some head teachers are absolute cunts.

Isolation/internal exclusion would be normal for doing something like throwing tables.

I got put into isolation alot in primary school because I struggled to follow the work due to my dyslexia.