School where children must smile all the time, follow whistled commands and never glance out of the window

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/parents-slam-school-rules-always-24451911

Sounds horrific. I'd home educate a child rather than send them to a place like this. I can't help thinking one of the responses on Twitter I saw may be right - are they trying to drive out children with additional needs who might pull down the GCSE results? My daughter is an adult now but she would have been destroyed by an environment like this. She's very bright but on the autistic spectrum.

Parents have criticised strict new school rules which include "always smiling", never looking out the window and even asking permission to pick up a pen.

Natalie Teece, the newly-appointed headteacher at John Ferneley College in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, has drafted the guidelines ahead of the school reopening in September.

The new rules were delivered to parents in an e-booklet, along with three videos explaining the research and the reason behind them.

Ms Teece said that when 11 to 16-year-olds students return to class, they will be expected to "always smile" and learn to respond to a series of whistle commands given by staff.

They also must enter the classroom in single file, "never forget to say Sir or Miss", always sit up straight and must thank their teacher as they leave the classroom after a lesson.

Walking in a group of more than two people and looking out of windows in class are also banned.

Turning around "even if you hear a noise" is forbidden and pupils have to maintain eye contact with the teacher whenever they are talking, the rules say.

Kids have to wait to be told they may pick up a pen or ruler and if a teacher says hello to them they should make sure their reply is "upbeat".

.......

One rule about lining up said staff will be using whistles to direct kids, with five sounds meaning they must move to their line up area, and one indicating pupils should be silent.

Another about "tracking" the teacher said: "You don't pick up your pen or your ruler, or anything else, until your teacher gives you the signal.

"You never turn around - even if you hear a noise behind you. You don't look out of the window. You don't lose focus."

A rule on sitting up straight said: "You never slouch. Be sitting up straight you are demonstrating physical respect. [ ...] No exceptions. No excuses."

And another said: "You always smile. You are polite and welcoming. When you greet somebody you smile, when a teacher says hello to us in the corridor you reply with an upbeat 'Hello Miss!' or 'Morning Sir!' and you smile."

The guidelines inform students that they are "extremely fortunate to be in a school that is very popular" and must walk around the school only in single file or pairs.
*

As others have said, surely there's a middle way here. I'm all in favour of fostering a calm, orderly atmosphere in schools, having clear rules and not too many of them, making it clear that teachers are in charge, sensible proportionate sanctions for breaking rules, etc etc. But surely there also has to be a lot of common sense and humanity. Forced smiles and sanctions for looking out of the window?

It's so good to see that those who made up the lockdown rules are finding meaningful employment elsewhere.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - don’t you think these rules would be implemented with common sense and humanity.

I give teachers credit for making sure they’re workable.

I don’t believe the head came up with them in a vacuum as well. I imagine she involved her leadership team at the v least.

@igelkott2021

The pen thing- I’m not sure it was an official rule, I don’t think it was but it was very common for teachers to tell you to put your pen back down if you lifted it before they were done speaking. No one got in trouble for it though, we just put out pens back down

I don't remember whether my school had this as a rule. But how interesting that they just said put your pen back down and you put it down and they moved on. Nowadays it would be a detention and a concerned call home to the parents.

Really?? How sad. Detentions in our school were hard to achieve. We had detention points. 10 points got you a detention. 20 got you a Saturday detention. A point would be given for forgetting to do a homework, wearing nail varnish or make up, forgetting PE gear. It was and still is an excellent school.

We had rules like standing up and saying “good morning Mr Smith” when another teacher entered the room. Often the teacher would say “don’t stand” and let us off with it. Other rules like always walking to the left hand side of the corridor. Makes sense to me and it’s one I find ingrained in me now as an adult no chewing gum in school. No phones in school which changed to phones off and out of sight- if caught with it it will be confiscated and returned at the end of term. Which they absolutely followed through with. One asshole teacher actually went through a girl’s phone, her texts and contacted her mother to let her know she was texting a boy

@igelkott2021

The pen thing- I’m not sure it was an official rule, I don’t think it was but it was very common for teachers to tell you to put your pen back down if you lifted it before they were done speaking. No one got in trouble for it though, we just put out pens back down

I don't remember whether my school had this as a rule. But how interesting that they just said put your pen back down and you put it down and they moved on. Nowadays it would be a detention and a concerned call home to the parents.

Yes, it wasn't an official rule - we didn't have many of those - just an expectation of courtesy and respect. As MotionActivatedDog says, we'd be asked to put it down, and would do so.

Some children will make a performance out of not putting it down. "Miss, miss, don't you want me to do any work? How am I going to work without holding a pen? Miss doesn't want me to learn!" etc, etc... which takes time and attention to deal with, at the expense of the other children's learning. Then they will go home and say "Miss told me off for holding a pen" and then the parents will ring the school and complain, which takes up more time at the expense of lesson preparation and marking. Far better to have a nice clear rule in this case, with the reasoning behind it explained!

The problem I have with schools with this ethos is that they operate on an assumption that all teenagers are intrinsically bad. It's very
guilty until proven innocent. And that's unacceptable. At my (overcrowded) secondary in the Netherlands lesson changeover was chaotic because the school was very full, but everyone got to their lessons OK. If you misbehaved, you got thrown out of class and sent to your head of department - detentions were same day. Bullying was tackled effectively.

But there was no enforced silence or smiling, nobody was told they were not allowed to pick up their pens (we were expected to take independent notes from Yr7 in any case) and there was no enforced eye contact. Middle ground.

@araiwa

I would guess the school has been an absolute mess, hence the change

It's actually not bad at all. My sister (now in 6th form elsewhere) went there and it's always been highly achieving and pleasant. Their former pupils are slightly shocked at all this change

I think there's a misprint, this should be the Melton Mowbray in North Korea, not Leics.

@MotionActivatedDog

Someone saying line up isn’t going to let 1,200 children on the school field know that lunch time is over, a whistle will.

The bell usually lets kids know when lunchtime is over.

Most fields don’t have a bell.

Some children will make a performance out of not putting it down. "Miss, miss, don't you want me to do any work? How am I going to work without holding a pen? Miss doesn't want me to learn!"

Simply would never have happened at my school. No one would have done this and if they had the other pupils would have told them to cut it out.

Most fields don’t have a bell.

School fields, where children are at lunch time? They are in the school grounds and can hear the bell. What fields are you thinking of where school kids are at lunch time that can’t hear the school bell?

[quote GonnaBeYoniThisChristmas]@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - don’t you think these rules would be implemented with common sense and humanity.

I give teachers credit for making sure they’re workable.

I don’t believe the head came up with them in a vacuum as well. I imagine she involved her leadership team at the v least.[/quote]
I hope so.

20+ years ago I read an early Ofsted report on one of our local secondary schools. It was utterly damning. The children were roaming around the school in lesson time unchecked, even while a full inspection team was in school. I think the %age of children passing 5+ GCSEs was about 3%, one of the lowest in the country at the time. The school was shut down shortly afterwards.

If this school was like that, I could understand drastic measures being taken, but a PP has said from family experience it isn't.

Low level disruptive behaviour must be tricky to sort out, I do grasp that. When I was a school governor and a parent helper I spent quite a bit of time in my children's primary school and it was a real eye-opener how good at wasting time some children are. Dispiriting when it affects the other children, and even more so when parents don't back the school up when they try to tackle it. I always remember a parent who begged her daughter's teacher not to move her from her best friend as they would be upset. Both girls had been warned repeatedly that they would be split up if they didn't stop talking in class. What amazed me about this incident was that the begging parent was herself a teacher in another school.

@MotionActivatedDog

Most fields don’t have a bell.

School fields, where children are at lunch time? They are in the school grounds and can hear the bell. What fields are you thinking of where school kids are at lunch time that can’t hear the school bell?

What bell did you have at school? There is no way we would heard ours at school, in my five years there I never heard it from the field. Not only was it inside a double glazed brick building, by being on the field we were nowhere near the building itself.

I use school facilities to teach a sport, I’m yet to hear a bell on the field or astro and I’m yet to come across a school that doesn’t use whistles to signify the end of lunch.

Going to play devils advocate here. I see a lot of kids with permanent sneers on their faces, who make a point of not paying attention, who dont make eye contact and do whatever they want, when they want. Seems like these rules are partly trying to redress basic standards of polite behaviour. I agree that smiling constantly is a bit OTT, but I think the underlying idea is not a bad one, that kids know what polite behaviour looks like.

@Imapotato

Good luck with getting 11-16 year olds to always smile!!

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when it all goes to shit!

Good luck with getting them to smile at all if they're anything like my 16 year old DS at the moment

What about ordinary neutral facial expressions?

What bell did you have at school? There is no way we would heard ours at school, in my five years there I never heard it from the field. Not only was it inside a double glazed brick building, by being on the field we were nowhere near the building itself.

You want a brand name? it was school bells placed all over the school grounds inside and out. What secondary school only has one bell inside?

I use school facilities to teach a sport, I’m yet to hear a bell on the field or astro and I’m yet to come across a school that doesn’t use whistles to signify the end of lunch.

How odd.

What happens if a child hears a whistle command behind them? Do they turn around to respond and be punished or ignore the whistle and be punished?

If you don’t respond to the whistle command you don’t get your treat and called a good girl with a scratch of your ears.

My ds would probably start wearing a mask rather than follow this always smiling bullshit.

I wonder if the head teacher got the idea from this :

There is a school near me that has similar rules and has for an number of years.

It is oversubscribed, behaviour is so poor in other local secondary schools parents are desperate to get their kid into the “insanely strict” school.

Behaviour in many secondary schools isn’t great. Low level disruption affecting others learning and widespread (pupil on pupil) sexual harassment.

Personally I’d pick the stricter school over a more liberal one for my kids.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

As others have said, surely there's a middle way here. I'm all in favour of fostering a calm, orderly atmosphere in schools, having clear rules and not too many of them, making it clear that teachers are in charge, sensible proportionate sanctions for breaking rules, etc etc. But surely there also has to be a lot of common sense and humanity. Forced smiles and sanctions for looking out of the window?

Yes, I think a lot of this is down to the way it's being reported. "Detention for glancing out of the window whilst thinking about the next line of your essay" vs "perfectly sensible expectation that you are not staring out of the window for a prolonged period of time, apparently totally ignoring your teacher's explanation of a key concept"

The other thing is that if behaviour at the school isn't brilliant, and there is lots of low-level disruption, you need to be REALLY clear about your expectations, so these can be communicated and put in place effectively. Once there is a calm and orderly atmosphere in place, then it is likely that things will shake down to a middle way, because people will have those habits of listening to the teacher, walking on the left (me too! ) and generally not being an arse.

The low-level indiscipline is so detrimental to learning and the psychological feeling of safety in the school. It leads to your child coming home saying "I'm fed up of the silly ones always making noises when I'm trying to work". It leads to your child being scared to use the school loos, or not wanting to because they are left in such a vile condition. It leads to your child curtailing her ambitions to become a vet, because her chemistry teacher is never allowed to finish an explanation. It leads to your child not wanting to explain or ask something in class, lest they be laughed at, or being scared of walking down the corridor, because of big groups of much bigger children barrelling down them.

If your child's school isn't like that, then of course this seems like overkill. But this process is about getting to the point where you can have that middle way.

If you head over to the school website, you’ll find this behaviour policy

It’s an enlightening read, compared to the click bait headlines. No fixed grins all day. A sensible solution to getting lots of children in after break times. A focus on learning, good manners, everyone being able to get the most out of lessons.

There is also a comprehensive SEN policy which includes reasonable adjustments (in fact, one of the articles that has slated the school even mentioned this - can’t recall which one).

Might be worth a read for everyone comparing it to Gilead/a prison camp.

They will have all their lives once they leave school to follow any number of arbitrary and largely pointless rules. I wouldn't send my children to such ridiculous places. It stamps out any spirit and character. It's depressing that people think such regimes are a good thing. I'd imagine that they are soulless, rote-learning factories.