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?

Really it was a friend of my daughter. Even the isolation staff sent her back

Why did they send her back?

If you are an inspiring teacher, passionate about your subject and able to engage your students and help them discover and think and challenge themselves then you haven’t got a problem. Teacher who rely on “easy” lessons using worksheets without properly explaining (or sometimes themselves understanding) the topic is a major issue

Everything else you said was fine. Not this. I rarely use worksheets. However, even as a very competent teacher, I had “a problem”.

If you are an inspiring teacher, passionate about your subject and able to engage your students and help them discover and think and challenge themselves then you haven’t got a problem.

Completely and utterly incorrect. And I am amazed that given the latter anecdote about windows, rules and a deputy head that you have failed to conflate to two.

I'm bloody good at my job. In fact I've been nominated for awards for it. I get good results. I know my stuff.

And even then I still have behaviour problems.

Funnily enough they tend to be with the kids who misbehave all over the school.

It doesn't matter what any staff member does. Including the head. Nothing changes. And these kids carry on disrupting my (well planned and pitched) lessons.

Really it was a friend of my daughter. Even the isolation staff sent her back

So hearsay from a friend whose DD's peer group could get in to trouble for a webpage about the school.
Sounds like a solid group to believe.

The new system seems to be working ... as long as the aim was to increase numbers of children in detention. Just under half of DC’s year group ended up in it today.

Writing a single sentence to explain why they are in detention over the course of three lessons really keeps children engaged, I’m sure.

This is my son’s school. He has been anxious all week despite being a straight A student. I’ve emailed to complain.

Apparently there have been 500-600 kids in isolation each day.

Very lazy strategy from the head in my view and another reason I have pulled my ASD daughter from mainstream education before she got to this school.

BumbleBeef30

The thing is, if half the kids ended up in detention, why is that? There is not a chance that half the kids can’t afford a purple pen, or have SN that prevent them from organising themselves. I get what many on this thread have been saying, but perhaps we could all think about that for a moment. Half the children have chosen to break the rules. Why?

When I was teaching coming to lessons without equipment was often a deliberate act of defiance to disrupt the beginning of a session. It really needs cracking down on. The OP has admitted her children take pens and so on to school but she would be unhappy to find their education was being held back by the start of every lesson being disrupted by ne’er do wells.

When the equipment problem is solve by an enforcement policy, she can confidently expect that the disrupters will move on to another tactic, ‘banter’ in class, say, or infringements of uniform policy.

There is also the separate problem of being seen to be the parent who supports the disrupters. It doesn’t help your children to be that parent.

This is ridiculously over the top - and the bit about exclusion is possibly illegal childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/school-exclusion/ - I would be complaining to the local authority and also to Ofsted

HappyRoots
At the start of implementing any new rule/sanction (be it changing expectations, isolation changes or centralised detentions or anything else), there's usually a spike where students try to see if school really mean it, or whether it's a rule on paper but not in reality.

Then the number sanctioned for something tends to dip as the majority realise that's how things are done now. Then there is a much smaller spike after half a term where a few people just test the water to see if the rules still apply. Then you end up with the same few students being sanctioned and you can explore if there's support needed or if they're just being rude and defiant.

or whether it's a rule on paper but not in reality.

In my experience, this is where the problems occur.

If it’s a rule, it needs to be a rule. On paper, in reality, with sanctions to back it up.

If a rule doesn’t matter enough to be worth enforcing, it shouldn’t be a rule at all.

When I was teaching coming to lessons without equipment was often a deliberate act of defiance to disrupt the beginning of a session.

And yet so many people on this thread have given examples of when it would be entirely out with the child’s control to have certain equipment. I know for me my parents would have refused point blank to provide me with a purple pen for school, I was always the child with no school tie (too expensive), a maths set (too much faff), homework not done (house way too chaotic to study). In the OPs school I would have been pretty much excluded for the whole of my secondary education for things that I had very little control over. As it was, I was constantly pulled up for not having the right thing at the right time - by teachers who knew me to otherwise polite, cooperative and academic. I’d have hated them to think I was being purposely defiant.

Then you end up with the same few students being sanctioned and you can explore if there's support needed or if they're just being rude and defiant.

By which time those pupils in need of support have spent the best part of the term being disciplined for things out with their control. By that point I’d be pretty rude and defiant tbh.

jellycatspyjamas

It is really really difficult, isn’t it? Without the rule (NOT purple pens) you have one set of problems and with it you have another.

I think you have to trust to the discretion of the staff sometimes.

I was Betting Shop Pen. I wouldn’t have had a chance of taking a purple pen to school either because, if there was a fiver in our house, it was earmarked for Carling and a portion of chips.

What gets on my wick in schools is the trend towards marketing revision apps to the kids. “It’s ‘only’ five pounds times ten subjects“

Yes, and some students are more likely to go the moon than their parents are to give them money for revision materials.

Drives me nuts.

But we still have to have rules, and sometimes - however much we try to avoid it - the wrong people are going to fall foul of them. We do what we can.

It’s very difficult- I think that’s why I’m in the “as few rules as possible, well enforced” camp - because the wrong kids will always fall foul of the small things that don’t actually impact on learning. If the rules that are there are absolutely essential eg around safety, respect for staff and pupils, it’s reasonable to look at sanctions to enforce them and reasonable parents would struggle to argue that keeping precious Jonny safe wasn’t a worthwhile cause.

It’s the “uniform has to be exactly just so, books all need covered in X, homework diaries must be bought from Y, three different coloured pens to write an essay” stuff that disproportionately impacts on struggling children - and because it’s a rule, and they’re not following the rule, the starting point is that they’re defiant.

I know the betting shop pen well btw

It’s the “uniform has to be exactly just so, books all need covered in X, homework diaries must be bought from Y, three different coloured pens to write an essay” stuff that disproportionately impacts on struggling children - and because it’s a rule, and they’re not following the rule, the starting point is that they’re defiant.

I couldn’t agree more.

I suspect we would be able to argue all day about which rules are the important ones, though!

Shall we do dream rules?!

Shall we do dream rules?!

I think the HT I mentioned earlier got the rules spot on -

Bring something to write with
Wear a plain white or black top and black trousers or skirt (regularly referred too by the kids as “Mrs Y doesn’t want to see bums, bellies or boobs, but otherwise isn’t fussed”)
Treat your classmates and school staff with respect.

Bring something to write with
Wear a plain white or black top and black trousers or skirt (regularly referred too by the kids as “Mrs Y doesn’t want to see bums, bellies or boobs, but otherwise isn’t fussed”)
Treat your classmates and school staff with respect.

Well, there’s merit there. There are issues that would have caused trouble in schools I have worked in.

“This is something to write with.”

“That’s a crayon.”

“Ah but the rules say something to write with - they don’t say it has to be a pen!”

“Why are you wearing a boob tube, Paul?”

“It’s white, isn’t it?”

1. Respect - does that mean following instructions, or not?

My rules:

1. Treat your classmates and teachers with respect.
2. Do your best with your work.
3. Do not prevent others from learning.
4. Mobile phones, if brought to school, must not be seen or heard.
5. Follow instructions given by teachers and other staff.
6. Do not bring expensive items to school.

Uniform:

Plain unbranded black leather shoes
No boots or trainers
Plain unbranded black trousers
White polo shirt unbranded
Branded jumper/cardigan
Plain socks or tights
No logos
Plain stud earrings - single piercing in each ear
No other jewellery
Plain unbranded coat

1. A couple of kids tried that and gave up when they found it wasn’t as funny as they thought.

1. As long as the boob tube doesn’t affect Paul’s learning then she’d ignore it. The kids quickly got into the way of it because they knew the school could get as petty as the other school locally.

Now they are a mix of kids in full uniform inc ties and blazers and kids in just plain polo shirts and trousers.

Somewhat amusingly for Mrs Y blazers have massively increased in popularity among the kids since being made non compulsory.

1. It does, but it also works both ways. There’s much less conflict since the rules were re-written (with the kids involved). It’s also a school with sanctions when they are deserved and being sent to Mrs Y still has the ‘sent to headteacher’ effect that used to be the big thing. There’s just been a complete removal of the daily clashes over hair, shoes, pen colour etc.

Also I’d say the big thing about the way Mrs Y works is that there’s much less conflict in the school which makes work life better for the teachers. There’s more teacher run post school/lunch activities than any other school locally. There’s not the same staff turnover as other schools and the kids know their teachers which humanises them and in turn leads to more respect from kids to teacher.

It’s not a perfect idyll - no school ever will be - but the lack of daily battles over hair/shoes/blazers means the SMT have the time to deal with the bigger issues that arise because they’re not busy dealing with shoes/hair repeaters.

lyralalala

It’s an interesting approach. It relies - at its heart - on the HT being in charge. A coterie of PITA parents could derail that.

I think we broadly agree on the important rule tbh, maybe we should run our own school

I’d like to one day!