Harsh Times at Yarmouth High. New Head introduces new rules including sick buckets in classrooms.

[HelenaDove]

Posted this on another thread but i think it deserves a thread of its own.

HelenaDove Mon 11-Sep-17 21:06:41
www.edp24.co.uk/news/education/phones-confiscated-for-weeks-and-sick-buckets-in-the-classroom-tough-new-rules-at-norfolk-school-1-5188326
Add message | Report | Message poster HelenaDove Mon 11-Sep-17 21:08:44
“You never lie and make excuses like, ‘I just wanted to put something in the bin’. We all know children say things like that to get out of work. You never pretend to be ill to get out of work because we expect you to work through it. If you feel sick we will give you a bucket. If you vomit - no problem! You’ve got your bucket. That’s probably all your body wanted - to vomit. If you are really ill we will make sure you get all the attention you need."

JESUS WEPT.

Exactly. I can't believe a poster said, "What about after school activities?" Yeah right. Half of the kids are going to piano lessons and Kumon maths.

With discipline some of these pupils may stand a chance. Latching onto the sick bucket thing and wilfully refusing to acknowledge how chaotic the home lives of these kids is is just putting fingers in ears and is not going to help at all.

Just letting generation after generation of kids fail is not a kindness.

But isn't this kind of strict discipline a road to failure too? The kids are essentially brought up in a Dickensian Oliver Twist-like world where fear of punishment and strict rules are deemed an appropriate replacement for teaching those children respect. And how will this prepare them for life? Obey and you will be rewarded?

It's the beginning of a process. Once the expectation has been set, they will be able to ease off.

I don't know whether the new policies will change anything for the better or not, but one thing is certain : they stand a better chance of working with parental support. If I had a kid in that school I'd be supporting any new initiative because it literally couldn't get any shitter. I don't understand the mentality of those complaining at all.

All this focus on the bloody sick bucket, quite obviously introduced to discourage Liam from smirkingly telling you he feels sick and needs to leave your lesson right now for the umpteenth time

Catwithglasses I completely agree, i will be watching what happens very closely over the next couple of years, i will then be at the stage of looking into high school for my youngest, i hope the whole town improves tbh as as you will know its been left to fall apart, doesnt help our local mp isn't interested in anything Yarmouth tho

Something needs to be done. Trite words, but our seaside towns are beyond crisis point. Just saw that 41% of margate's population has not a single qualification. Manufacturing businesses have left the towns. Tourism has slumped. Large numbers of children are in care.

I don't even think money is the problem- it's lack of purpose. Men are superfluous. They have little earning power and are therefore unattractive as partners. They drift from one woman to another with no sense of responsibility nor onus to provide. Young women follow the herd: they just get pregnant. They get by. They're with their friends and family (older females). Older men try to find a billet with a woman but a lot end up in bedsit-type accommodation living unhealthy lives. It is a big social problem.

Don't know about the school personally, obviously. I do know that GY is a very deprived part of the country with some difficult social and economic issues. It is likely that this school has a very tough intake. Sometimes when a school has a tough intake, they may have to be more draconian in laying down the law than, say, a girls' grammar school which can afford the luxury of trusting pupils to mostly know how to behave and not to take advantage of leniency.

I have no issue with phones being banned outside of lessons. In fact, I think all schools should do this. And isn't it fairly obvious that in this school there is an epidemic of kids pretending to they are going to be sick so that they can get out of lessons and mess about? Kids must think teachers were born yesterday.

I will watch with interest, however, because I'm interested to see how the Michaela model will work in a place like GY.

Michaela may operate with a mostly "poor" intake in economic terms, but we are mostly talking about "ambitious London immigrant" poor--many of whom come from backgrounds where respect for authority is very much the thing and you absolutely do what the teacher tells you. GY is a decaying seaside town with a myriad of very serious social problems, and it is mostly white-working-class. This makes the Michaela model harder to push. Expect fireworks!

For the sake of the kids, though, I really really hope that they can make some headway.

That's how you start Clandestino. Ds1's school has a similarly draconian sounding rulebook. They are strict but in practice also kind and fair. They can be lenient - when necessary - because the norm is that the kids obey the rules and the parents support the school. These pupils need to be in school, in class and listening before they can be taught anything. The last thing they need is less structure or more leeway to make poor choices.

I fear you're right Londoncheapo, and the head may learn that a "deprived intake" in zone 4 behaves very differently to a deprived intake in a seaside town. I sincerely hope I'm wrong though, because these children badly need an education.

For the people expecting that this is an excuse for mass exclusions - the latest Ofsted, under the short-lived 4th head teacher, makes it clear that exclusions were already at very high levels but that there were no real sanctions short of exclusion. It seems clear that the "leadership" were happy to have trouble makers play truant to keep them out of their hair and then chucked the most egregious offenders out willy nilly.

reports.ofsted.gov.uk/index.php?q=filedownloading/&id=2609941&type=1&refer=0

The bucket thing is disgusting.

When I was pregnant I had bad sickness and one week there was a meeting being held somewhere that you had to go and ask for a key to use the toilets. I called the venue and explained my situation and asked if they had a spare key. They didn't. I told the director of of the organisation I work for this and her response was 'couldn't you just use a bin'.

I didn't go. I was not going to throw up in front of room full of other people unnecessarily, it's not fair on them and it's not fair on me.

Children shouldn't be put in that situation either.

The sick bucket is not for children who are really sick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's for children who think that "feeling sick" means they can leave the classroom to piss around with their mates.

People seem to think that they will ease off on the rules as time goes on - no they aren't planning on it. The schools that this is being modelled on are like this permanently.

There is a real lack of understanding of the situation in the original leaked document. You are bad. You will be punished into being good. And you will smile while we do it to you.

But what's in it for the kids? They're told to speak in full sentences because employers and universities will want them to. I'm fairly sure that they won't be expected to when they work down the arcades on Yarmouth seafront. Looking at the results, those kids already in the school aren't going to university. They've had years of crap education, a lot of it in the school and under the teachers they're now being told to trust.

Of coursed, it doesn't occur to anyone that part of the reason this town is full of troubled children is down to it being full of families with no money and no prospects? They've spent decades being demonized as benefit-scrounging scum and told to blame 'immigrants' for their problems: contempt for 'authority' is probably the only type of self-respect they can grasp at.
No, this doesn't mean it's ok for people to neglect their children, or for teenagers to bully, assault and rob each other, but cruelty never works as a way of regulating behaviour without other, worse consequences.

I'm fairly sure that they won't be expected to when they work down the arcades on Yarmouth seafron

That's all they're destined for, so why bother, eh?!

We weren't allowed our phones out either, had strict uniform and no gum allowed too so I don't see why any of that would be shocking.
The sick bucket thing is just mad though! It'd scare me if I was a year 7 feeling nauseous

What's in it for the kids is some aspiration that there lives can be more than working in a sea front arcade on a zero hours contract. That they are not condemned to a life on the margins of society because of an accident of birth. That they are capable of more than a half sentence.

As a child of immigrants i am always saddened at how little aspiration there is for so many working class /underclass children. And how damaging and self fufilling a prophecy that lack of aspiration is.

I think Noble's point is that the motivation that works in Wembley "get your exams, dress smart, speak politely and you too can get a great job paying lots of money" is much more plausible when you live 45 minutes on a free bus from five world class universities and Ernst &Young's global headquarters.

Funnily enough, the whole of Norfolk isn't a cesspit of social depravity and believe it or not there are buses that leave Great Yarmouth all day, every day ready to take its inhabitants to all manner of exciting parts of the region where people can read, write, talk and earn a decent wage.

Ambition doesn't need to start and stop with those in London.

Calman yes, if only people had the ability to move to attend university. Or take up employment.

And yes, I've met kids who won't even consider taking a cross town bus to attend college or for work - it's a common attitude in deprived areas. But that attitude is part of the problem, not something to be reinforced.

People are taking the sick bucket out of context. As a secondary school teacher I would use my own discretion to decided whether a student was trying it on or was genuinely ill, and I'm sure that's what the bucket is for.

Good on this headteacher, unless you have worked in a school like this (I do) you cannot judge. You have no idea how hard some of these kids have it. They NEED the discipline, unfortunately it's very difficult to get all the parents on board but a lot of kids thrive when discipline is strict.

You often find that the worst kids get worse towards the end of term as they don't want to spend long periods of time at home as well.

Good for the head. I worked in a school like that one and it was horrendous. In typical MN fashion, people are flinging themselves all over the place, wailing about the those nasty child-hating teachers...the fact is that some schools are fucking hellish and the kids are out of their boxes, whilst quieter kids are too terrified to learn anything. Many parents are completely unsupportive and will verbally and physically attack staff. SEND kids will benefit from the new regime - those who are upset by loud noise and disruption, those who thrive on order and routine will hopefully find things calm down. If behaviour calms in general, then staff have more capacity to assist SEND students instead of grappling with fighting teenagers and ducking flying furniture.

It's so hard to convey to anyone who hasn't worked in a school like this what it is actually like - the noise, the abuse, the violence, the complete lack of discipline and order and in the middle of it all, staff frantically doing everything they can and being constantly (and often literally) kicked in the teeth by students and parents. Fucking diabolical.

Moaning about sick buckets for skivers? You've got no idea what it's like.

Parents should have been worried there kids were all lazy sods not about the new Head.

School is clearly in a state and needs fixing. Extreme measure that can be relaxed over time much better than softly softly approach for this type of kids.

Sick bucket is obviously for the fakers not actual sick children- cannot believe the hysteria coming from some poster, gullible Fail readers much?

Enough of the sick bucket already. I don't remember anyone at school actually ever being physically sick in class (or needing to rush out to for it).

I don't even think money is the problem- it's lack of purpose
Partly, yes: I've been critical of 'uncaring' parents, but the experience of failing school followed by unemployment and then living long-term on benefits in entirely entrenched in some families- so generations who know no different. Families who will never have even been to Norwich, let alone considered looking for work there.

Acorn I'm out of catchment now but GYHS has always been bottom of the pile and I'd love to see that change.

Yes of course it's physically possible to take out student loans and go to medical school and train to be a brain surgeon wherever you grow up. And any teacher worthy of the name will tell their students that. But there are geographical hurdles in some areas that make it a tougher proposition, and it's much easier to convince your students that it's a worthwhile investment if you can point to ten former pupils who did just that, and are still living around the corner - it's a vicious circle.

Actually I think it's the good non-graduate jobs which are even more important in motivating aspiration.