To raise a formal complaint regarding school isolation

[HaudYerWheeshtYaWeeBellend]

Last week a group of 20-30 kids were throwing acorns at each other in the school playing field, a child who also throwing the acorns, got hit in the eye which I've been led to believe required medical treatment, teacher asked who hit the child and DS said he believed it was his acorn, and that he was sorry, and did not mean to cause anyone harm.

He was given a days isolation plus after school detention, however on the day with only 10 mins notice.

His head of year called and said as he admitted it was him, they had no choice to follow the isolation process, however admitted they thought it was harsh, however rules and rules which we will adhere to and support the school with.

DS has NEVER been in isolation.

My AIBU is, Ds was made to sit in a 2 by 4 booth, being made to sit upright and face a white wall for the whole of the school day. NO SCHOOL WORK WAS GIVEN AT ALL

He could not tell the supervisor he had no course work as he isn't allowed to talk while in isolation, and tbh nor should even have to ask for course work, its the supervisors role to ensure DS has course work, which is the policy in DS school.

Only one teacher called the isolation supervisor to ask if DS was present, however did not send course work, not one of his other 4 teachers called to ask if he was present.

The isolation supervisor has confirmed all of the above is true his HOY has advised us that they have passed it on to the isolation manager who will be calling me, however even after chasing it up everyday for the past week and leaving messages for them to call me I am still awaiting the phone call.

My own DS ended up requiring medical treatment as he endured a headache with sickness and sensitivity to light, ds has never had a migraine before isolation, which the A&E doctors advised was the cause.

Douglas bader once said:

Rules were made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men

I cannot understand the hoy stating that rules had to be enforced just for her son. A bit Nazi but what The fuck. The isolation manager knew her son had no work so to my mind was sadistic leaving him with nothing to do and barking at him to sit up straight.

What fucking century is that school in? Dickensian times.

The school punished the crime of 'injuring' but not the actions that caused it. So okay to throw things at each other so long as you don't cause injury. School doesn't understand risk management or child psychology. I hope the op doesn't let this slide. The school was wrong on so many levels.

Just for clarification, am not endorsing the acorn throwing but all of them should have been told off, warned not to do it again and safeguarded everybody.

It also does not teach honesty . The punishment ( not sat staring at a wall obviously) was about he lied . The actual behaviour we talked about. Even in a legal court sentence is reduced for been honest

It’s largely irrelevant how many people where taking part as it was your son that owned up to having deliberately hurt another child. Actions have consequences.

Hmmm schools are trying to teach children wanting an education alongside those students who carry knives, are in gangs, deal drugs, cArry out sexual assaults and criminal damage. They have a zero tolerance approach because if they didn’t they would probably end up in special measures. Not too long ago a teacher was murdered by a pupil.

Yes it’s unfortunate your child got a migraine and didn’t feel he had the confidence to say, “I don’t feel well,”. That is the issue, really. Yes he had no school work, he is in KS3 he isn’t going to fail his GCSEs he can do some extra homework to catch up.

People expect an awful lot from FREE state education, unless you are a higher rate tax payer when you can probably say your taxes covered a fair proportion of your children’s education. Be grateful you have this education system at all. The country is never going to be a financial situation whereby we can afford amazing public services. Those days are long gone.

You either put up with it, try and find another state school (is there any point?), pay upwards of £15k per year for a private education or home educate.

I work in a private school, we get a lot of kids who ‘didn’t get on,’ in the state sector the parents failed to see their children’s behaviour was appalling and they probably deserved the zero tolerance punishments. These kids don’t last long, because in a private school if your kid is distracting others from learning or hurting someone they are not put in isolation they are expelled.

Was what happened fair? Probably not but life is not fair this in itself is a learning opportunity. Don’t be a dick at school, don’t be a dick and mess up my education. Be responsible for your own learning journey, cock up school you’ll have to pay for other education later.

It was not deliberate. Good to see more rational responses now the night time trolls have retreated under their bridges. I am always reluctant to go down the official complaints route but I most definitely would in this situation.

Do the people saying “torture” think it would not be torture if there was work? It mainly doesn’t get done anyway.

Do the people saying “torture” think fixed term exclusions are better? Because that is what schools used to do, a lot more, and it caused massive issues in local communities.

Ticket. He was throwing acorns, along with his mates. He was not carrying a knife or dealing drugs ffs

A school will have a zero tolerance to stop more kids getting sucked into knife crime and drugs. If a school shows no strong leAd on discipline then kids will take the piss.

Unless you’ve seen state secondary education from the inside you will have no idea how horrendous behaviour has gotten.

The only thing a complaint will do is create more work for an over-stressed teacher to deal with. OPs child and OP will be subconsciously branded ‘precious’. No one is going to provide a full days lesson plan for a child in isolation.

Walkingdeadfangirl
So you approve of the use of isolation booths? What about for SEN students? That ok too? For days on end?

Schools don't tend to punish children for no reason
Bullshit. Things my child has been punished for in the last six weeks.

Asking for help during a lesson when the teacher asked if there were any questions.
Knocking a bottle (accidentally) off a table.
Not understanding or being able to complete work (due to missing classes because of isolation)
Pushing a boy who spat on him and called him a 'retard'(he should raise complaints with the staff apparently, the other child was not punished as my son was the 'aggressor'
Asking for work in isolation.

Every incident caused a whole day of schooling to be missed. Two in one case when he had a meltown and refused to enter the isolation booth. It has affected my son after the fact.
And to the other poster who said complaining about these punishments because other people are tortured in other countries, does that make the treatment of my child acceptable? Take you patronising opinion and shove it

Bach

Slightly off topic but does your child’s school operate a “ready to learn” policy with a “one warning then next offence gets you sent to isolation” policy?

We do. We’ve made some small adjustments for individual students and it’s been more successful.

I don't think that the teacher should have had to provide a lesson plan, too much extra work. My complaint would be that total silence, staring at a wall, being barked at to sit up straight was OTT. The person supervising the isolation was at fault. Just a book to read would be a start and a couple of hours would have been more than enough. I WOULD complain.

SmileEachDay Yes it does. No adjustment was made until we threatened legal action and the reasonable adjustments are still not adhered to. My son is not the only child who is suffering these difficulties under this behaviour policy and all the secondary schools in our are are academies with the same policy. He has no chance of a decent education.

I teach a number of students and the adjustment is this:

Warning 1 given for whatever

I say “Sam, iou have a warning, would you like to take a few minutes out?”

Sam goes outside and depending on lesson/staffing either goes down to reception to take some time out or goes to learning support with TA.

That’s usually enough to get things bank on track so the second warning doesn’t happen.

It keeps the policy consistent - which is important for the children whose needs require consistent rules- but builds in a safety net.

Maybe next time he will not throw things in the playground. Sounds like a good punishment to me.

YANBU

If I were the parent of the injured child, I'd be wanting to support your complaint. I'd also be considering moving my child to another school. Kids mess about. The only one to take responsibility and own up ends up with a punishment so harsh that the over-stretched NHS has to admit the child overnight and perform expensive tests. I don't care what issues schools have, that is both barbaric and irresponsible (shifting their issues onto the health service too). It also teaches all the wrong lessons (I.e, it's best not to take responsibility).

If I punished one of my children so severely that they required a night in hospital, the school would (quite rightly) report me and I'd have SS at my door. The problems in education should not be solved with state sanctioned abuse (which this is). No one should accept authority without question. If that were "right" working class men and all women in the UK would still be disenfranchised, for example. Rosa Parks should have given up her seat. African-Americans should just accept their lives don't matter because those in authority treat them that way. And so on. Authority should be respected, not obeyed without question. There is a difference.

All those minimising what the OPs son went through to justify their own ideological stance are quite frankly disgusting and part of the problem. So many have chosen not to process what the OP has written but instead just tell her she's wrong. It makes me want to weep.

As an additional note, I was a model pupil at school. Ridiculously well-behaved. But I can also honestly say that a punishment like that for an incident like that would have lead me to become a 'problem' pupil. It'd have had the opposite of the desired effect.

OP you are quite right to complain if a school doesn't follow its own policies. A school can be and should be held to account, not exempt from that concept. Personally, I'd be complaining about the policy itself but I respect that's not your issue and you will probably get further with your complaint because of that.

Isolation for ONE day, not doing any school work, for ONE DAY, won't harm his whole life.

"Maybe next time he will not throw things in the playground. Sounds like a good punishment to me."

@Astars Given that the 'acorn throwing was deliberate, but the injury was accidental, do you think the other 19 - 29 children who were throwing acorns at the same time (including the boy who was injured) should receive the same punishment?

A school will have a zero tolerance to stop more kids getting sucked into knife crime and drugs. If a school shows no strong leAd on discipline then kids will take the piss.

A 12 year old chucking acorns is on the road to knife crime and drugs? How bloody ridiculous. Your posts are completely over the top and lack any nuance.

I am not one of those parents who will leap to my precious child's defence no matter what they have done. I do not automatically take my child's word as gospel without checking the school's perspective.

I have always backed the school even when rules seem a bit unnecessary. My dd is in year 11 and has never been punished in primary school or secondary school because she knows how she should behave. She might be a stroppy madam at home sometimes but hates being told off outside school and is scared by the thought of being in trouble with a teacher.
I'm a primary school teacher and find it infuriating when you try and discuss a child's behaviour with a parent and they either deny it, minimise it or blame other children.

I do think that children who disrupt lessons, are rude to adults or are aggressive to other children should be punished. I think that low level behaviour (eg running and jostling in corridors instead of calmly walking from one lesson to another) should be cracked down on because it creates the wrong atmosphere and implies that worse behaviour might also be tolerated.
I have every sympathy for what secondary school teachers have to put up with. I don't think they should have their lessons disrupted so that they can send work to isolation; there should be revision books down there and children should be allowed to take their own books if they have any with them.

But the punishment was over the top and was administered very badly.

Was what happened fair? Probably not but life is not fair this in itself is a learning opportunity. Don’t be a dick at school, don’t be a dick and mess up my education.
How is learning that life isn't fair a great thing to learn? Surely schools should be teaching that sometimes life is unfair, but you will at least be treated fairly at school. Plus the OP's son (along with the other kids involved) may have been a bit of a dick, but he wasn't messing up anyone's education.

It’s largely irrelevant how many people where taking part as it was your son that owned up to having deliberately hurt another child.
Rubbish. He didn't deliberately hurt another child. He was chucking acorns and said that he thought it might have been his acorn that accidentally hit his friend.

Some secondary school teachers have scoffed at the thought of the OP's son not raising his hand to say that he didn't have any work and that he felt unwell.
I think that they're probably jaded by the cumulative effect of the bad behaviour that they have to put up with and are thinking of how the persistent offenders in their classes would behave.
I completely believe that generally well behaved children who are not used to isolation would feel quite intimidated, would take rules literally and would be too anxious to speak to/try to gain the attention of the supervisor.

@Deafly

Quite frankly yes.

OP, you definitely think you are right, so why not just complain instead of asking permission from a load of randomers.

I think it’s ridiculous to put a child in isolation with no work, but if it hadn’t been for the migraine then all that would have happened is he would have had a boring day and had to go round to his teachers/friends the next day and get the missed work to catch up on, the same as he would for a sick day. I don’t think this is the end of the world as a one off and I don’t think the school could predict the migraine, especially as your ds didn’t say he was ill. Still can’t fathom why he didn’t fetch his bag before going to isolation of get it on his toilet break.

What exactly do people think should have been done?

It was so much easier when corporal punishment was involved. I'd much rather have got the belt than sat in a booth all day long.