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?

Requiring a purple pen at all is nonsense, fed by rubbish about ofsted and effective marking. As a teacher I wouldn’t, if there were any alternative, work in a school which required them or send my child there. They are symptomatic of all sorts of things, which this over harsh sanctions list backs up. Apart from anything else, keeping those records will be impossible so the system will collapse, taking with it children’s respect for discipline.

You've missed your own point there. Not having equipment can be symptoms of disengagement but you don't solve disengagement by massively over reacting to the symptoms. If anything this will make students more disengaged.

I entirely disagree. Not having a pen is a symptom of not having any respect for your education. Coming down on that shows that it is unacceptable. Having a pen is about being teachable. If the students are allowed to make themselves unreachable, the teachers will leave.

*unteachable

Has the school given any indication of whether they will relax these requirements for children with disabilities? Otherwise they will be guilty of disability discrimination - which isn't exactly a great example to be setting.

Do you really think teachers are leaving because a couple of children don’t have the requisite colour pen?

Around here there is only one shop which sells purple pens, it closes at 4pm every weekday and regularly runs out of stock. Not having a purple pen immediately to hand is not a symptom of having no respect for education.

Someone with little concept of what our town provides decided that purple was a reasonable colour to expect parents to find here. Red would be a lot easier. At least you can buy red pens in the tiny supermarket we have as well as the general store.

Isatis, no one has said anything about that. As far as DC are aware, the rules apply to everyone.

These rules do seem pointless and over fussy.

But without concerted objection from parents, the school can do what it likes.

Do you really think teachers are leaving because a couple of children don’t have the requisite colour pen?

Nope.

Do you really think teachers are leaving because a couple of children don’t have the requisite colour pen?

Yes because this is indicative of a wider issue - an apathy and reluctance to engage with learning. If just 1 student doesn't have the correct equipment, that can waste up to 5 minutes of learning time. For the whole class.
How can a student expect to participate in a lesson if they don't have the correct equipment? I find it unbelievable that parents are not supportive of schools putting measures in place to ensure their children's learning is not disrupted. I agree with everything @herculepoirot2 has said here.

As an ex teacher and deputy head, I’d suggest that the children keep a very close eye on their teachers and report them if they come to lessons without a working board pen or if they forget their photocopying.

Would hate to work with you. Disgusting attitude to have.

Suck the joy from life and make sure kids start to hate education? Sounds like a plan.

School have probably reached their limit of bad behaviour and cracking down on the little things makes the big things easier ...

There are online stores as well ..

That sounds very harsh. Ds3 has ASD/ADHD and can leave the house in the morning with 3 pencils (he writes in pencil) in his bag and has mislaid them all by lunchtime. If they don’t have a pencil they can get one from the teachers desk for which they hand over their phone. When they return the pencil they get the phone back. They don’t lose too many and I would imagine it wastes very little time. Detentions are for persistent flouting of the rules and exclusions are reserved for very bad behaviour. Ds3 is my youngest. My other two have both been through the school and none of them have ever had a detention.

this is indicative of a wider issue - an apathy and reluctance to engage with learning

Exactly and you don't solve an apathy and an unwillingness to engage in learning by putting children in isolation because they lost their purple pen. That really is barmy and no one can genuinely believe it will work.

The local failing school near me implemented similar policies (not about pen colour but a no tolerance policy for very petty infractions).It was massively unsuccessful particularly for students with ADHD and ASD and other learning issues who were not exempt from the "no tolerance" policy. It now has a ludicrously high number of lessons being taught by temporary staff and there are parents remortgaging their houses to pay for the (not even particularly good) private school instead.

The aim of these kind of ridiculous policies is not to engage difficult to reach children any idiot can see that that wouldn't work, it's to get rid of students who are more difficult to reach to other schools. Children with ASD/ADHD. Children who have less engaged parents (who will buy them a huge stack of whichever stupid pen colour they now require). They'll be out of the class room not receiving an education and after too long in isolation will leave the school.

I agree that these sanctions sound worrying. I would write in to the school if this was my kids' school.

To the people saying not having purple pens is indicative of a larger reluctance to learn, I disagree. As a child, whether or not you have a purple pen depends only on whether your adults got you a purple pen. Why should a child be penalised for something like that?

There are online stores as well ..

Which will be more expensive as will either have to buy in bulk or pay delivery. So once again disproportionately punishes children with parents who are skint, or who have parents who don’t give a fuck

Not having a pen is a symptom of not having any respect for your education.

Or of having parents who don’t give a shit...

You can go to any number of easily accessible places and pick up a black or blue pen cheap. Purple is a whole other story.

It’s another hurdle put in the way of children who already have more than the average number of hurdles. Which combined with a time where social services and intervention services have been cut to the bone just disadvantages the kids who have nothing even more.

Kids should be able to turn up to school with a pen and access their education. Not be jumping through hoops for the right colour of sodding pen

Getting hold of a pen in school is not hard. Before I counted out every purple pen they went missing on a regular basis. Lack of equipment is an issue. We had students failing to bring calculators to their GCSE maths exam.

By the time a student is at secondary school they should be able to organise themselves sufficiently to have a pen. That may mean seeing a teacher before the lesson to ask to borrow one. It may mean asking a friend to lend you one. Lots of schools sell pens for 10 or 20 pence. Hardly extortionate. My son's school expect them to have a very well stocked pencil case. Last night at 10pm he asked me for a compass. Unfortunately I don't have spare compasses lying around so he's gone to school today without one. If he'd asked me earlier in the evening for one I would probably have been able to buy one. His fault he didn't think to do this and he's the one who will have to take whatever punishment the school consider necessary. He'll survive and in future I expect he'll be more likely to remember his equipment.

and schools wonder why so many are turning to home education,kids are not even allowed to fart these days with out permission or punishments

ridiculous rules all the time

our local primary are now punishing the kids by keeping them in at play times if they dont get at least 8 out of 10 for spellings and this is ks1 so y2 at the most

so glad we are out of the system and my kids are free to breath with out asking and develop naturally

Can I ask the teachers - what on earth has changed over the last couple of decades, since I was at school? We were expected to be generally smart but didn't wear blazers, or indeed ties if you were a girl. Pens could be any colour. Rules were fair and sensible. Detentions were plentiful but suspensions and exclusions were very serious and not awfully common. I'm almost certain we didn't have isolation. Mine was an ordinary secondary school in an average neighbourhood with a mix of kids from different backgrounds. We did ok. Teachers seemed happy, kids mostly behaved.

What went wrong?

@fadinggently
In a word?
Ofsted. The fear of being forced to become an academy, lack of autonomy and heads running scared.
On top of the challenges of An increase in poverty, poor behaviour becoming more acceptable, low expectations and starting points. Increased unemployment, children not ever knowing a family member having worked and an increasing lack of respect for the education system.

Purple pens are stupid, definitely. I can’t argue with that.

I can say that the expectation that children will come to school with a pen is one that all but the very poorest of secondary school level teens can meet.

What went wrong?

I think people just don’t value education enough. They see it as a burden, a set of rules and expectations to comply with, rather than a gift.

Generally any loaded with a high loss of staff, school of otherwise is indicative of it being a bad place to work. I would doubt most teachers find kids unreachable due to lack of specifically purple pen(I'm pretty sure this isn't a standard necessity in teaching practice) and shirts which are untucked).
Staff leave often from poor management and staff morale. Perhaps the heads treatment if children is also indicative of that towards staff. It certainlyxwoildng he the first case.
There is such a thing of coursexasxa disciplined school, but reasoned discipline. My nephew goes up an extremely highly disciplined school, however staffing is consistent and teaching is very good.Reflection (as detention is named there🤔) happens after school so lessons aren't missed and you loose the privililefge of your own free time.
I would say you,along, if possible with a group of other parents should make a direct point that this is hindering the childrensefucationg for potentially unintentional errors (I spent my school life with my uniform shirt unturned as I was do tall it didn't stay tucked in.what realistically would they propose- it's not like I wasnt wearing one). Suggest red underline or green with teachers marking in purple or green. DS has to go all underlines in red. You need to garner power in numbers to make your point but suspect the problems at school are running deeper than just the colour of the children's ink.