Aibu or is school, regarding discipline?

[Imustbemad00]

Would like any information anyone can give me regarding secondary schools and discipline procedures.
My child’s secondary school is strict. I knew it was strict, partly why I chose it. However, in reality, it is causing so many problems. My child has changed so much since starting there, unhappy, suffering with mental health and has developed a bad attitude problem and I will admit is being quite naughty at school and at home. Im worried.

This brings me on to the school rules and discipline. The school penalises children for looking out of a window, or anything viewed as a drop in concentration or messing around. Even dropping a pen. They have to move through the corridors in silence and not make eye contact with anyone and can’t even mess about at break time. They have to sit and chat and be sensible. It’s like they can not have personalities.

The sanctions for bad behaviour are extreme. My child has spent a lot of time in isolation, which means out of lessons. Not learning. Not talking to another person all day. Not great for a child already struggling with mental health.

The school also give them double detentions, meaning my child is was in school for 9 hours and 45mins today without talking to another child or being in any lessons, arriving home at 6.30pm.

I try to work with them as I know my child’s behaviour is the cause of punishments, but honestly feel they are way over the top and their approach is making things worse. They say that those are their policies and that is that.

I’m thinking of moving schools but worry my child’s behaviour could worsen if boundriers were relaxed. But equally they could flourish if not so unhappy and stressed.

So Aibu to think the schools policies are over the top? Is it normal?

I wouldn't be averse to going further and having actual cells for bad kids to be sent. That would soon improve behaviour in schools.

Good God SunShades!

If you want any sort of relationship with your kids, do not lock them in a cell!

I seriously hope you don't work with kids. How would you like it if you dropped a pen and were sent to a cell for the next ten hours? Actually, maybe you would, since it isn't such a long period of time for you.

SunShades what a great idea! And let's bring back the cane!

Are you for real sunshades?

I'm a strict teacher who does my best to support all students to achieve. Nothing you say comes under the realms of firm, fair and friendly discipline.

@MaisyPops

Discipline shouldn't be friendly. It should be extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable so the DC won't want to repeat the experience.

There appears to be a grey area in between "friendly" and "extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable". Whatever happened to doing things in stages?

If they are put in internal exclusion for dropping a pen, what is the discipline for throwing a chair across the room? And please don't say cells, because that will make you sound at best, Dickensian, and at worst... let's not go there.

Time for you to remove those sun shades of yours. The world is a lot different from that in the 19th-century novels you appear to be stuck in, Sun.

Discipline shouldn't be friendly. It should be extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable so the DC won't want to repeat the experience.
Discipline should come from a place of warmth. If I discipline a student it's because I care about them, want them to learn from the situation because as reasonable individuals they can learn to make positive choices because they understand the need to follow rules (even if we don't like or agree with them always).

Discipline should never be about being unpleasant to someone. It should never come from a place of 'proving who's boss' or point scoring or trying to have the last word.

I want young people who learn from their mistakes and learn about how the world works (including following rules you may not like), not young people who learn to follow rules but only if the person asking is scary and unkind to them.

Teachers who aim to belittle, upset and be unpleasant to students may get conformity but they never gain respect.

The best teachers are strict but firm and fair and students understand that the teacher cares about them.

Good luck OP, t sounds a difficult situation and your son probably just needs the right environment to bring out the best in him.

@yawning801 I absolutely guarantee the OPs child would not have been put in inclusion for the sole reason of dropping a pen. It was be a culmination of that and other low level disruption, including the challenging authority that OP described

ShawshanksRedemption

I would never send my child to anywhere that said "Correction" or "refusing to SLANT" - they sound totally off the reservation.

However, if that is the home-school agreement then I agree, none of this can be a total surprise!

“Bravo for a state school being rigorous about behaviour and paying attention. It’s good to hear.”

All 3 state schools my kids have been in have been rigorous about good behaviour etc and do very very well by their pupils.

They have done it by promoting mutual respect, being firm but fair, promoting values of kindness, appearing to take an interest in tne young people they educate and not treating them like feral animals that must be trained. None of this boot camp ethos.

@yawning801

Don't be ridiculous. Police stations have cells for criminals. Much of the behaviour perpetrated by arseholes children in schools would be criminal anywhere else. Why shouldn't schools be able to react similarly?

@Bibesia you keep referring to unlawful fixed term exclusion procedures. 'Persistently breaking the school code of conduct' is a perfectly lawful reason for exclusion.

But that isn't the scenario I was responding to, user56. I was responding to the poster who said that the only alternative to internal exclusions would be external exclusions. Self-evidently if a school is using internal exclusions the disruption can't have reached the level where a fixed term or permanent exclusion is justified, therefore it would be unlawful.

Schools aren't able to use cells because it's false imprisonment and against the law. Full stop. There are all sorts of procedures and safeguards around the right of the police to put people in cells, and they certainly can't lock children in them.

@Bibesia

Children can be locked in police cells.

My mistake, SunShades. It doesn't change the fact that there are all sorts of safeguards around the process, notably the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and associated Codes of Practice, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which states that:

No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.

As stated, a school locking a child up in a cell would be breaking the law in a big way.

@Bibesia at OPs admission her DS is persistently breaking the school code of conduct, whether she (or you) agree with the school code of conduct or not. Therefore the school would be well within their right to fixed term exclude, and hence not unlawful. It's very inclusive of the school to have presumably avoided this so far.

Secondly I'm not sure whether you've ever seen an inclusion room before but they are not cells as you describe (and again throw 'law' at). Yes they are often arranged in booths (similar to what you'd see in a library I suppose) but cells, with a slop bucket and a jailer brandishing an enormous bunch of clinking keys, they are not.

I work at a primary school with this sort of strict discipline. It is awful and the children behave out of fear. Take your child elsewhere, for his sake.

user56, if the school is using internal punishments self-evidently it hasn't reached the last resort and therefore exclusion as an alternative would be unlawful.

I really wish you would stop misrepresenting what I post. At no point whatsoever have I suggested that an inclusion room is a cell. The reference to cells was, very obviously, in response to another poster's suggestion that pupils could be locked up in them.

Because they're children, SunShades. And this is a school. If the school wants to lock the children up, they should call the police. You know, the people who can actually lock people up?

@Bibesia they've used internal sanctions extensively, fixed term exclusion would be perfectly lawful. Enough now.

@yawning801 they're not 'locked up' in insolation

No-one has said they are! Surely it was obvious that yawning was referring to *sunshades• post above!

How ridiculous. Fixed term exclusion for the things we’re talking about. Utter madness. To be permanently excluded you need to of done something quite serious. Goodness if children were excluded from schools for the things we’re talking about there would be hardly any children in school. Not sure how we have gone from talking about a child laughing or giggling during a class, forgetting stationary, missing a detention, answering a teacher back ect (general, not my child) needing a detention, to talking about permanent exclusion.