AIBU about school imposing new sanctions?

[BumbleBeef30]

Today DC came home and said they had assemblies today in which they were told about new sanctions for issues such as having your shirt untucked or missing equipment, e.g. a purple pen.

I don’t mind it when a school has a sudden outbreak of enforcing uniform issues or ensuring all children have the right equipment using the original sanctions because, no matter how silly I may think it is to give a child a detention at break for a missing pen, those are the rules which were on the home-school agreement and I signed up to it.

I didn’t sign up to these new sanctions, which seem overly harsh and likely to punish only those children whose parents can not afford to replace items which break or go missing unexpectedly.

An occurrence of missing a pen now gets you sent to detention for three lessons; two occurrences get you isolation for three lessons; three occurrences get you sent to isolation for a whole day; and four occurrences earn you a fixed term exclusion. Theoretically a child could go to school on Monday without a pen and be excluded by Wednesday.

Before anyone says, I know pens are cheap and fairly easy to replace, but some people are forced to live hand to mouth at the moment, and the same new sanctions apply if you don’t have exactly the right type of shoes. Whereas before it might be a phone call to parents reminding them that shoes need to be lace-up, now it’s an immediate detention followed by isolation.

What’s more is that the school hasn’t sent home any information to parents, apart from an email containing the letter they give all new Year 7s about the standards they expect. No mention of sanctions at all - just a basic “we want every child to succeed and because of this we expect skirts to be knee length, all students to have the correct equipment, etc”.

AIBU to wonder what the fuck is going on at that school? Can schools just change sanctions whenever they feel like it? And should they be introducing these new, much harsher sanctions without letting parents know about them?

I accept that one hour of isolation does not constitute torture, but many children and teenagers are being subject to days and weeks. And many of them have prior mental health problems which is why they are getting in trouble in the first place.

But I did not say that was okay. Weeks isn’t okay. It should be moving towards exclusion by then. The point is, like I have been saying, a few hours of being quiet isn’t torture.

I wouldn’t like it. But that’s why I don’t commit any crimes, because it is what would happen if I did - prison. But not for an afternoon.

Forgetting a pen isn't a crime. And school isn't supposed to be a prison, although Foucault does draw some interesting parallels about their development.

Never mind all that. I want to know what the punishment is for bringing in the wrong shade of purple pen!
Detention for violet?
Exclusion for mauve?
A jolly good duffing for lilac?

the point is, surely, that he wasn't focusing on what matters. If he had, I wouldn't have anything to complain about. And no I didn't tell him how to do his job. So it wasn't down to me that he had to be sacked after a damning Ofsted report and a set of crappy GCSEs.

I am not commenting on him. I know nothing about him. My point stands that everyone thinks they know “what matters”, and the tsunami of communications HTs have to deal with on that front cannot fail to be preventing them focusing on what they believe matters.

If you and the HT don’t agree on what matters, maybe your kids are in the wrong school.

MsMaisel

Well, feel free, but I am going to ignore you because you aren’t remotely reasonable.

And herculepoirot2 - isolation booths (where children are forced to sit up straight and stare at a white wall) would not be allowed in prison (you might be isolated in a cell if you continually broke prison rules but you would be allowed to walk around etc). So it wouldn't happen you you, no matter how many crimes you committed. It only happens to children.

SpinsterOfArts

I know forgetting a pen isn’t a crime. I said the reason I do not commit crimes is because I don’t want to go to prison. It is a real possibility that a child who does not learn to follow rules - pen aside - could not learn to follow laws. In that case, staring at a wall for far longer than an afternoon becomes a possibility. I would rather that didn’t happen, so I support children learning how to folllow rules.

I don’t agree with hitting children, for the record.

I wasn't trying to suggest that you agreed with this. I used it as an example of something you'd presumably disagree quite strongly with, to illustrate the limitations of the 'rules are rules' mindset. You don't agree with hitting children. Other parents don't agree with having them sit in isolation for hours. Should a school be able to overrule your standpoint because they've decided it's their rule?

And herculepoirot2 - isolation booths (where children are forced to sit up straight and stare at a white wall) would not be allowed in prison (you might be isolated in a cell if you continually broke prison rules but you would be allowed to walk around etc). So it wouldn't happen you you, no matter how many crimes you committed. It only happens to children.

I wouldn’t set an isolation room up like this myself, but it isn’t torture. A few hours not talking isn’t comparable to torture, and I am not going to say otherwise.

SpinsterOfArts

If schools brought back corporal punishment I wouldn’t send my child to school. I would lobby my MP and so on, because hitting children is against the law.

But at the end of the day, the government could bring back CP. My choice would then be to home educate.

I visit schools regularly both in a professional capacity through work and as a volunteer delivering an activity.

It is obvious right from the start which schools have a draconian and arbitrary behaviour policy, and which schools are more forward thinking.

Anecdotally, the former are finding it harder and harder to get people to visit for seminars, careers sessions, discussions etc because it is simply a waste of our time.

It is a real possibility that a child who does not learn to follow rules - pen aside - could not learn to follow laws. In that case, staring at a wall for far longer than an afternoon becomes a possibility. I would rather that didn’t happen, so I support children learning how to folllow rules.

We're just going to have to disagree there, because I think being taught to follow rules just because they're rules leads to a dangerously authoritarian mindset. I don't think that authoritarian punishments for not following petty school rules helps keep young people out of prison.

Being able to follow rules is important. So is knowing when to question unfair ones.

SpinsterOfArts

Learning when it is appropriate to question authority takes a long time. Actively teaching your nine year old to do it isn’t something I would advise, but your circus, etc.

Part of the issue is that stupid rules just make life more difficult for everyone because more time is spent firefighting than anything else.

The best schools I’ve worked in usually had the simplest rules.

One HT I worked with had quite serious punishments for breaking the rules, but the rules were simple - bring a pen (any pen), look decent in a white shirt or polo and black trousers or skirt and treat your teachers and classmates with respect. It was the best behaved school I ever worked in. The rules were simple, sanctions were clear and consistent (and consistency is a big issue in lots of schools) and there wasn’t hours of the day lost dealing with purple pens and debating if hair dos are extreme or not.

It also gave the kids whose parents don’t give a fuck a fighting chance of still getting a decent education as there was no extra hurdles in their way.

@MsMaisel
"It’s incredibly bizarre and disturbing behaviour and I’m honestly terrified to think of someone with such a visceral loathing of children and such a refusal to look past their own worldview being allowed access to children."

🙄 are you for real

One HT I worked with had quite serious punishments for breaking the rules, but the rules were simple - bring a pen (any pen), look decent in a white shirt or polo and black trousers or skirt and treat your teachers and classmates with respect. It was the best behaved school I ever worked in. The rules were simple, sanctions were clear and consistent (and consistency is a big issue in lots of schools) and there wasn’t hours of the day lost dealing with purple pens and debating if hair dos are extreme or not.

Sounds good.

I hate rules for the sake of rules. My nieces school had this rule about blazers having to be worn all the time. The teacher wouldn't let them take it off and my niece said she felt I'll as she was so hot. My sister complained to the school and said even the teacher just had a shirt on so it was clearly hot but they wouldn't budge.

It is also a weird mindset that children that don't obey arbitrary rules perfectly (or even willfully disobey them) will later not be fit for society. It is called growing up.

Dicipline is in and of itself not a worthy educational goal. I see how it is annoying for schools, because education by punishment rather than actual pädagogics seems to be the easy way out. Just because the punishment is no longer corporeal doesn't make it better.

• pedagogics

and *corporal