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?

DisorganisedOrganiser
Formal written complaint to governors (if the previous conversations weren't formal) and then escalate to LA/MAT/Ofsted beyond that.

Ultimately what it will come down to is whether it's considered an educational standards issue or a difference of opinion. There are a few schools near me that I wouldn't work in because I don't agree with their behaviour policy and management, but I wouldn't have grounds to decide their policy isn't fit for purpose or should be changed just because I disagree.

E.g. I personally wouldn't choose the OP's school's new approach. I think there are better ways to achieve the same high standards but that would still involve sanctions for uniform and equipment issues. No higher power is likely to tell any school that they have to change their system because I personally don't like it. Equally, no higher power is going to be terribly bothered by parents saying (for example) we don't like break detentions for things we consider minor or we don't think are a problem.
But with actual concerns about provision of education then the formal route is the way to go.

Thanks, I suspect formal complaints will be made. Complaints have been escalated to the MAT already. They are not particularly responsive and tend to send the same corporate replies to anyone who complains about the same issue . Not sure what they are saying for children with SEN who are struggling as support for them seems really questionable at the moment. I think it will be considered a difference of opinion rather than a lack of education being provided to the children. Time will tell, and pupil numbers in the coming years if this goes on. Certainly many year 5 parents are rethinking things for the future now.

Large MATs tend to be quite corporate in their approach. It filters down to how they treat staff too from experiences I've heard.

Because they report directly to the DfE at a certain point a formal complaint to ofsted is the way to go. To do that you'll want evidence that you've previously followed school and trust complaints procedure and they've not adequately resolved or explained the situation.

A lot on the SEN front will depend on context. For example (trying to write this to be useful by suitably vague has been hard), one school I wouldn't work in due to philosophical difference on behaviour is regularly complained about by some parents for their rules. But actually they put a huge amount of support in, which I didn't expect. Their support base is rather comprehensive, they have mentors/counsellors/ parent support teams and they have enhanced pastoral support. I still have my disagreements with their behaviour approach, but talking to people who work there changed my view on some of the criticisms.

e.g. Lots of assessing for literacy and SpLD to put a lot of support in for them, results in more SEND diagnosis. If a student refused an instruction on entry to class and told a teacher to fuck off and have had their parents in kicking off because 'you can't do...' then that child with a minor SpLD need is in isolation/exclusion but it wasn't the school failing to meet their needs, it's a situation where parents have systematically taught their child that they don't have to behave. A situation where a child with ASD ends up being sanctioned for a meltdown triggered by the class teacher ignoring everything in their personal statement and the failing to make reasonable adjustments would be an utter failure of SEND provision. Both would count under the SEND statistics but they are not comparable.

Thanks Lola

DisorganisedOrganiser
Happy to help.
There's a good journalist called Warwick Mansell. He's freelance and does some interesting work on MATs and their governance structures.
It might be of interest to you.

Interesting, I will check out his work!