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?

A good HT is the key between a good school and a shit school imo. A weak ht and everything falls apart. A good one and the staff and pupils feel supported even in difficult circumstances

And although I agree with you, I think it is too much for me to accept that the majority of HTs are “shit”. It’s not like I am a lone voice talking about these issues. Teachers are - as we all know - leaving teaching. If we just go “Oh well, must be the HTs”, I think we might be missing the bigger picture.

Several Heads/SLT/executives in Academy Chains I'm friendly with have said this has been a deliberate component of a 'successful' strategy to 'turn around' a failing school and improve results for the cohort that remains.

There has been a study of the effects of "new broom" heads going into struggling schools which have been turned into academies and imposing rigid discipline policies with draconian sanctions, uncomfortable and expensive uniforms with automatic sanctions for minor non-compliance and the like. They tend to show an initial rise in performance caused by the novelty effect, plus chucking out a large number of low performers and children seen as being troublemakers. But virtually every time the school sinks back unless for some reason a pot of money has been thrown at it, notably in schools the government sees as flagships for their policies.

We need to look at why schools abroad manage successfully without the availability of exclusions, and in particular we need to fund education properly. Many of these problems would be massively ameliorated with smaller classes, proper SEN support, and more support for teachers so that they can concentrate on their jobs instead of endless paperwork.

We need to look at why schools abroad manage successfully without the availability of exclusions,

Parenting.

And although I agree with you, I think it is too much for me to accept that the majority of HTs are “shit”. It’s not like I am a lone voice talking about these issues. Teachers are - as we all know - leaving teaching. If we just go “Oh well, must be the HTs”, I think we might be missing the bigger picture

I think assuming it’s all about the kids and parents is also missing the bigger picture.

The biggest reason teachers are leaving is because of Ofsted and government pressure. When you take every issue that a school currently has the vast majority of them are because of Ofsted or the government.

Funding.
Equipment shortages.
Teacher shortages (as in lack of new teachers).
High class sizes.
Paperwork levels.
Lack of intervention services.
Lack of support staff.

All of that impacts on the relationship teachers have the time to have with their pupils, and on the time schools have to have a relationship with their families and that impacts on behaviour and the school-home relationship.

It’s not as simple as sending a child to the HT when they misbehave any more because the HT doesn’t have time for that between paperwork mountain, trying to juggle budgets and trying to get Ss/speech therapy/ed psych etc involved in the cases that desperately need it.

When you add the tinkering with pensions and the likes to the list it’s obvious to everyone, bar the government, why teachers are leaving in droves. And it’s not just because of the kids because teachers in good schools with well behaved kids and good management are also leaving.

The lack of available staff does mean there is more shit HTs than before imo.

jellycatspyjamas
Your good relationships with school sound like our school ones with parents.
Culture goes a long way, but I would say it's easier to teach when you've got the backing of sensible supportive parents who may not agree with everything we do but accept that we can't always have all we would prefer. With a good home culture and the majority of our parebts valuing education we can have set rules that are strict, but haven't had to go down the route of other local schools (similar to the OP's situation). But then the schools I know of that have gone down that route have done so because their students and parents were taking the mick on any and every rule they didn't feel like so school have said 'fine if you can follow things simply, let us spell it out'. It's not my chosen approach where an alternative could work, but I have some sympathy when some leaders go that way.

I'll get a numb bum for fence sitting on the isolation debate. I do think it's more complex than is often made out and people with strong opinions on either side can end up defending their opinion for no other reason than 'but my opinion is the holy trail so everyone else is wrong'

lyralalala

Some of that is true.

It's time schools were put back under the control of local authorities & academies abolished. From what I have seen since ds started school, the standards of education & discipline are poor. Parents are told if you don't like it don't send your child to this school. When schools were run by the local authority they were well run , kept in decent repair, staff turnover was minimal. Since September ds is on his fourth English teacher, his history teacher is off long term sick with stress, his maths teacher is leaving & won't be replaced, this is in the middle of his GCSE courses.

I have worked for academies and non-academies. The thing that made the difference was the parenting culture. I promise.

In one school, if you phoned a parent they had a word with their child. In another, they had a word with your boss. In one school, parents almost never contacted you. In the other, they emailed over the tiniest things imaginable, expecting instant responses.

Guess which two go together? Guess which one I would work in again?

Hercule: schools in other countries don't have the ridiculous amount of testing that UK schools do, nor are they acutely underfunded. And most of them don't have uniforms at all, never mind 'dress codes' that seem designed to cater to creepy old men's 1950s schoolgirl wank fantasies as much as anything else.
Also, soome other countries have less crippling economic inequality...

The biggest reason teachers are leaving is because of Ofsted and government pressure

But this isn’t. I know teachers. They are leaving because of behaviour.

I know teachers. They are leaving because of behaviour

You know some teachers surely?

I know some teachers. Some are leaving, it’s for a variety of reasons. Behaviour doesn’t figure.

JacquesHammer

Fine. The teachers I know who are leaving the profession are doing so because of behaviour.

I won’t be going back until the current climate of a constant barrage of complaint and challenge from parents (to be clear - for ridiculous reasons) improves.

This comment resonated with me very strongly. When I retired from teaching I would have put this first of all the reasons that I hated my job. I also think AIBU plays a small part in fostering some of these appalling parental attitudes.

You are being thoroughly unreasonable - how can a child succeed if their skirt is not knee length!!

A recent and pretty extensive survey showed one of the top reasons cited for leaving teaching is behaviour.

But this isn’t. I know teachers. They are leaving because of behaviour.

You know the teachers you know. Of the staff who’ve left schools I know behaviour is one of many issues. Several who’ve left have been because of the cuts to support staff. All of the support staff I know, myself included, left (or didn’t return after leave) because of the workload and pressure.

And badly managed behaviour is a symptom of all of the other issues mentioned, particularly in the examples you gave of bad school management.

lyralalala

I don’t disagree that bad behaviour is allowed to flourish under bad managers, but all that means is that good managers are compensating for bad parenting.

The student I mentioned above (bum picker): affluent family (Apple watch, best trainers - wouldn’t wear school shoes - out of term holidays), loved, lots of attention. Just not taught manners or respect.

Neglectful parents aren’t only parents who starve their kids. There are neglectful parents in all walks of life.

What we have now is a school system that doesn’t deal with what is needed.

I’m so glad I don’t go to school now. I can see so many cracks where child like me could fall through now it’s frightening. And that’s not because teachers are less caring, they don’t have time.

Schools have always had shitty kids and shitty parents. Always. The difference now is that there’s no expelling then, there’s no referral units, there’s no easy way to involve social services when it gets bad (they are too busy to be involved until it’s really bad)

Schools have always had shitty kids and shitty parents. Always. The difference now is that there’s no expelling then, there’s no referral units, there’s no easy way to involve social services when it gets bad (they are too busy to be involved until it’s really bad)

Which are some of the things that need to change.

Bin isolation. Child breaks the rules, child attends detention (or whatever sanction applies) or child gets temp exclusion, nice and simple.

Child gets permanently excluded, child goes to a residential PRU. No choice in the matter.

I know it’s a very drastic idea, but i honestly think it’s the only thing that will work.

You need proportional punishment for things going wrong.

And mostly you need properly staffed schools. In the first school I worked in one of the Deputy Heads was responsible for discipline. Not in a “once the teacher is at the end of her tether” way either. That was her role so she knew every behaviour card in the school. Which also meant she spotted the patterns - when Mary came back from visiting her NRP, the week after Billy’s mum got paid and got drunk, all those little things that we know impact kids.

It also meant she got to know the parents of the repeat offenders. Whose mum could you phone and get a reply, how did they react, did the kid come to school better or worse the next day...

She also knew the different sanctions and what would work. There’s no effect in giving Mary an after school detention if she’s trying to avoid going home anyway, but ban her from hockey/chess club and it works.

She also knew the ins and outs of the PRU, what other schools had spaces (for after an expulsion), she knew the local social workers. She also knew the local Brownie and Guide leaders, the scouts etc and was able to know the whole picture.

By the time she left she was drowning in Ofsted paperwork, was constantly trying to deal with the issues from the closure of the special needs school and also teaching a couple of afternoons. It’s no surprise behaviour gets worse when everyone is stretched thin and there’s no time for joining the dogs

Joining the dots!

The dogs are fine as they are

You need proportional punishment for things going wrong.

You do. But you also need to know when to draw a line. Second chances are good. Eighth chances aren’t.

Child gets permanently excluded, child goes to a residential PRU. No choice in the matter.

Without going into the merits of it (horrific idea) it would be far cheaper to just properly fund and staff schools

lyralalala

Well, ignoring the debate about the merits of it is a bit rich, given that I have engaged with you over 17 pages! But as you like.