New headteacher wants pupils to 'Superwalk'

[RhinestoneCowgirl]

New head at our primary has decreed that children should walk along corridors with hands clasped behind their backs at all times.

Possibly he's striving for Outstanding Ofsted, but it sounds bonkers to me (and I'm usually happy to back the school in most things).

Something like this, I think.

patient.info/doctor/elbow-injuries-and-fractures

www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/landing-and-falling

Hope I didn't derail the thread.

Surely if they are practicing being at university they also need to walk around glued to their phones?

It's a prison walk.
Appropriate, possibly, if you have numbers of people moving about who don't have good self control, and may kick off.
I dislike it, but have to say I've encountered secondary classes where I can see the attraction.

In primary, it's either completely inappropriate and control- freakery, or, is appropriate because this school is just about out of control.
Either way, I'm looking for a new school to move my DC to.

The Head of a primary I used to work in decided one day that the children had to walk in silence on the left side of any corridor they walking down. From Reception up to Y6.

Good luck with that. She was such a twat.

If there isn’t a huge staff turnover by the end of the year, I would be astounded. This is the sort of hair-brained shit that power-crazed new heads who don’t know what they’re doing and will never admit it, and are too stupid to realise their own limitations which is how they rise to the top seemingly inexplicably in the first place, come up with to ‘make their mark.’ So fucking awful.

YY re risk assessment. Good way to fight this sort of nonsense- make the head think about the safety implications of this and create a paper trail. Of course it's stupid for primary aged children to be made to walk in a way that removes the possibility of using their arms to break their falls if they trip. Nothing wrong with encouraging better posture, but that doesn't require children's hands to be behind their backs.

Also if this is about emulating university students, will they also be required to be hungover?

@OnionShite

I would post ours if it wasn't so outing.

The children can easily put their hands forwards.

"removes the possibility of using their arms to break their falls if they trip"

No.

He needs to fuck off. The DC's school was academised last year, now they have to enter the school in silence and facing forward. Great for yr 5 and 6, pretty much impossible for yr 1.

bunbunny DD 10's like that! She doesn't naturally put her hands out to stop herself falling. Do you know why?

LostForNow DS2's bag weighs an absolute ton. He's 6.

Reduces would be a better phrase than removes, then, I suppose.

The reality is though that if hands are behind back, there's less time to bring them to the front of the body in the event of a trip than they would be if they were by the person's sides or in front of them. Not much getting round that one, no pun intended.

There's also a realistic possibility this new head hasn't bothered with a risk assessment yet, so would be worth OP asking simply on those grounds alone. I must admit I'd be very curious to read a risk assessment from a school implementing this!

(Obviously respect your desire not to be outed strangeevents so want to be clear I'm not asking you to do it, just saying it would be interesting).

DF's an ex-teacher, and very cynical about the introduction of posh uniforms post-academisation. He says it's to keep the sink estate kids out.

Also if this is about emulating university students, will they also be required to be hungover?

I love that one.

Emulating university students is, of course, bollocks from these schools. No university students I have ever encountered walk around the campus in any such a way. Nor do they wear a uniform of any sort until they hire their gowns and mortarboard caps for graduation day.

N.B., I am not against school uniform in principle, just when it is enforced to ridiculous levels.

FFS.
I don't actually trust myself to say more than that. There are so many things about schools at the moment that make me fucking livid.

My DS once fell over and didn't put his hands out to save himself as he didn't want to hurt his hands. instead he face planted the floor, knocked a tooth out, had enormous swollen bloody lips, I had to chuck his coat as it was covered in blood, and he couldn't eat for a few days. My kids know not to stick their hands in their pockets/inside their coats etc when walking.

How about the school concentrate on the actual education of children rather than bringing in pointless rules about how kids walk.

We had up stairs and down stairs at secondary. You couldn't use the wrong stairs, even in a fire drill we were still made to go down the down stairs.

Obviously it made all the difference to my gcse results.

Wowsers, I think this has been my most posted on thread on MN (and I've been here since it was all fields).

Word on the playground is that it's very unpopular with staff already. And quite honestly it's not really the walk I'm bothered about, more the indication of new head's leadership style

I think it's very cargo cult like - a kind of emulation of what people think private schools look like. Private schools get good results (or that's what appears to happen), private schools have some weird discipline habits and stripey blazers, therefore we should do the same....

100% agree

Poor DS namechange! Yes we too were always told at school not to walk with our hands in pockets for that reason.

I’d fall over, plus as a large breasted women (who was a large breasted teenager) it would make me feel quite exposed I imagine as it would almost push your chest out more.

Saw this is a primary school so that probably wouldn’t affect any but maybe the oldest girls

My husband was walking like this in the supermarket today because he had awful backache and it seemed to
help. It looked weird.

Yy to whoever said 'cargo cult' and aping private schools. That's exactly it.

Never mind that private schools have bigger budgets and are teaching incredibly privileged students, whereas 1 in 4 of pupils at our school are living in poverty.

I went to prep school in the 80's (gulp) and we used to have to walk like that. No broken noses or smashed teeth. I wouldn't have a problem with my kids being made to do it.

I agree with DancingLedge who said it's a prison walk. Outrageous.

Why do you have to walk in silence unless it's in a solemn ceremony or you are being punished? I don't think it's a great idea to impose that in prisons either but as I've never been in one I'll confine myself to school, where I have.

The more I hear, the more I appreciate my headteacher and his staff. My secondary was a big school and the first years were let out 20 minutes' early in the first term to give them a head start to the station because the head sensibly realised that little 11-year-olds from small primaries would be overwhelmed by hulking teenagers.

But in the new year, everyone was expected to cope with leaving together and as far as I know they did. That was because we all mixed in classroom changes. There was a tower block of five floors with two wide staircases - blue for up, green for down - and though I suppose it must have happened, I don't remember anyone deliberately taking the wrong staircase. Not because all the pupils were angels, but because you couldn't fight against the tide.

Shockingly, we were allowed to talk and there were no rules on where we put our hands (unless they were on other people, but the head didn't feel the need to spell that out) while transferring between classes.

The only rules were that you didn't run - generally not possible - and that the big sports bags that some boys liked to carry could not be slung over the shoulder because you could bash someone's face in a crowd.

It was definitely noisy but what's wrong with that as long as pupils are quiet in lessons? Writing that makes me realise that we could have a five-minute changeover where we could all jabber like mad and then get down to learning. He was pretty sensible, that head.

No broken noses or smashed teeth.

That sounds like a hardcore prep school insomniac123

I've used the London Underground for 30 years and have never suffered such injuries even though it gets a bit crowded at times.