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?

Most schools will make reasonable adjustments with a diagnosis in place.

I’m pretty sure that legally all schools need to make reasonable adjustments...

If we borrowed a pen off a teacher we had to give them a shoe so we couldn't leave with it

What on earth is the punishment if they do something serious ?

I am so glad mine are no longer in school . From reports I have read , and from what I have heard from others it appears that some schools are sucking the life out of these children . More rules do not make better behave kids , I would argue it can make them worse , they need to make school a place where kids actually want to be to learn . Can you imagine if workplaces where run like some of these schools

jellycatspyjamas

Yes, jelly. And when they don’t they can be held accountable, to the standard of what is reasonable. You don’t get to define that. Nor do I.

At the end of the week every child who has brought in their equipment gets a Mars bar. Problem solved! (Yeah yeah, budget, allergies, obesity I know). Seriously though, aren't carrots better than sticks when it comes to teenagers?

I am assuming it's an academy. You know in some towns/areas all the secondary schools are academies - no Local Authority secondary schools provided at all. People say things like "oh you've chosen to send your child there" but what do you do if there is no LA provided school?
I hate hearing about schools with these punishments and uniform obsessions. It makes me sad. Every child will have a reason for not having a pen or whatever - but does anyone actually sit down and talk to them and find out these reasons. No. They just stick them in detentions.

Adoptthisdogornot

That attitude is part of the problem. I would be thoroughly embarrassed if my child needed a “carrot” to take a fucking pen to school. That would be my fault.

Yes, jelly. And when they don’t they can be held accountable, to the standard of what is reasonable. You don’t get to define that.

Actually, for as long as I hold parental rights for my children I do get to define what is reasonable punishment for them.

We do need to get rid of academies, but that’s a different argument!

That would make it a lot harder to focus on the things that matter, wouldn’t it?
Like purple pens and knee length skirts.

Actually, for as long as I hold parental rights for my children I do get to define what is reasonable punishment for them.

Only if you are prepared - ultimately - to see them excluded from school rather than accept that the school has authority to punish students. That’s the bottom line. If you don’t like the decisions made by the school, you should put your children somewhere else or educate them yourself.

I have no experience with the English school system, but reading these threads is horrifying. With all the rules, detention and isolation (this is seriously a thing?) it sounds like what you would expect from Saudi Arabia or a US prison. And all the "respect ma athoritaaaa" attitude from the schools with draconian measures for tiniest infractions. And the other parents here with "its the rules so follow them mindlessly" attitude...

Beggars belief. So glad my children aren't growing up in the UK.

Like purple pens and knee length skirts.

As I have said, I think purple pens are probably silly. Within reason, I don’t care about skirts. But I am not running a school, so I don’t get to make the rules.

If we dont expect our darlings to follow the rules RE equipment and dress we end up with young adults going into the workplace unable to cope. Both my DH and i had our own businesses that employed staff, the problems we both had with anyone just out of school were shocking. Staff that couldnt get to work on time, looked like they had slept in their clothes and the ones that thought work was a place that they rocked up to and everyone else would run after them.
One thought she should have an extra half hour for lunch because the place she wanted to buy her lunch from was a 20 minute walk away ! Another cried because he couldn't tell the time using our office clock, he had a University degree !
Dont raise a self entitled usless young adult and make them see they have to organise themselves

DC1 has been in isolation and said it was one of the worst experiences of his life. It’s a kind of mental torture

Please. Please stop saying that

Why? Sensory deprivation is a known form of torture. If you don't think so, have a look at this report - www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/03/isolation-of-children-at-academies-prompts-legal-action

Sensory deprivation is a known form of torture. If you don't think so, have a look at this report

Sensory deprivation?! Stop. 😂

Isatis

And I suspect that the punishment was used in that case inappropriately. But that does not make it sensory deprivation, solitary confinement or torture. Grips need to be got.

If we dont expect our darlings to follow the rules RE equipment and dress we end up with young adults going into the workplace unable to cope

You see I went to what was by reputation a “strict” school. However they didn’t bother about arbitrary rules surrounding equipment/dress.

I also run my own business.

Go figure.

I would hazard a guess that the schools who are the worst at these idiotic rules, are the ones that are sinking fast and are trying to gather back some vestige of control in the wrong way.

You could try getting on to the governors about it - are you in touch with any other parents who feel the same way? If you write to the Chair of Governors, they have to investigate and respond.
And this is another example of what's going badly wrong with education and the way the UK is being run: people with any kind of power being encouraged to use it in toxic, petty, bullying ways, because the 'lower orders' are all feral scum who need to be punished/starved/scared into abject compliance.
One of my jobs involves working with schools and I see a lot of this sort of shit - along with great teachers being (literally) driven mad by the endless surveillance, box-ticking, government medding and the imposition of stupid targets which don't take into account the diverstity in school intake.

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.

The remedy for that is not to build in problems around something as trivial as pens. Why insist on a particular colour of pen, FFS? You have to wonder whether the school has shares in purple pens. If they don't have any pen at all, use the system someone has described above of saying they have to hand in their phones as security for borrowed pens.

By the time a student is at secondary school they should be able to organise themselves sufficiently to have a pen.

Sure. But some children have dyslexia/autism/executive functioning problems and still struggle with this when they are in secondary schools. Since when did we punish people for being disabled?

Only if you are prepared - ultimately - to see them excluded from school rather than accept that the school has authority to punish students.

The local authority has a legal duty to educate my child, my child has a right to access education and I have a responsibility to ensure my child is able to learn and access the school curriculum, including supporting appropriate standards of behaviour. School exclusion should be an absolute last resort so I’d expect to know there were ongoing issues with my child’s behaviour that were serious enough to merit exclusion from school long before we got to that point and for me to work with the school to maintain discipline and attendance at school.

Isolation is simply another form of exclusion, which according to government guidance should be used for the most serious of behavioural issues so, again, I’d expect to know my child’s behaviour was becoming an issue to the point where they may face isolation and for me to put measures in place to maintain discipline.

If my child were being isolated or excluded I would expect there to have been a process of addressing behaviour, involving me, long before they decide to remove my child’s right to education.

Nothing in this thread suggests a process of engaging children and parents to support their child’s education or a process of discipline - wrong pen = isolation and possible exclusion is lazy behaviour management, and I’d suggest open to legal challenge.

There are government guidelines around the use of isolation rooms of which many schools who use them seem totally ignorant. Additionally, the use of isolation as a blanket punishment with no exceptions for disability is a direct breach of the Equality Act. I never understand why schools think it's appropriate to enforce discipline by showing students that it's OK to break rules imposed by a democratically elected Parliament.

jellycatspyjamas

I find your attitude very damaging. You are all about your perceived rights and there is very little recognition that your child is part of a community, not the only person who matters, and that the school is trying to run a whole system, not just fulfil a duty to your child. If you continued to flout the rules, I have no doubt it would eventually be considered reasonable to exclude your child. Schools have a legal right to implement their behaviour policies.

Also, you tiresome whinyarses who think that this sort of hostile, authoritarian regime in schools is 'preparing children for the workplace', well, yes it is and that's what's wrong with it. We shouldn't be training children to mindless, pointless obedience, or to sneak on their peers, or to obsess over irrelevant, trivial 'rules'. The wingnuts who are currently in charge are very fond of the idea that 'ordinary' people are untrustworthy and need forcibly keeping down - how dare they demand to be treated with courtesy, or paid a living wage? How dare they prioritize food over poor-quality unnecessary 'equipment'?

"erculepoirot2 Tue 18-Jun-19 08:29:10

Isatis

And I suspect that the punishment was used in that case inappropriately. But that does not make it sensory deprivation, solitary confinement or torture. Grips need to be got."

I'm pretty sure 99/100 parents in other western countries would call the use of "spaces in which children sit in silence for hours as punishment for breaking school rules" torture in an only very slightly hyperbolic sense. In the case cited in the Guardian, it very clearly was torture. (Unless, of course, you only subscribe to the US governments' definition of torture, which seems restricted to TV-villian type of torture involving physical pain)