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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

that school should offer lunch time detentions?

1000 replies

ljs22 · 02/02/2022 14:40

Regular poster, NC for this post,

Firstly, I completely agree with the concept of detentions. If my dd (15) has done something wrong, she needs to be punished. That's fine. Thankfully she doesn't get them often - just the occasional one, usually for not doing homework on time.

But (here's the AIBU). After school detentions mean that she misses the school coach, which I pay £60 a month for to bring her home. I work 4 days a week and my partner works long and unpredictable shifts, so we are invariably not available to collect her when she has an after school detention. We have no family locally who can help out.

We also live a 40 min drive away from the school and public transport is a pain as we are in the back end of nowhere and she'd need to get 2 (sometimes 3) buses, one of which runs only every hour, so if she misses that she has a really long wait. Hence why I pay for the coach in the first place as it brings her right to the street we live on.

I've been informed today by email that she's been given an hour detention tomorrow for not doing homework. I've contacted the school to request a lunch time one instead in the circumstances.

But .. AIBU to request this? I'm not sure if I am or not, but I honestly don't know what to do. I can't take time off work to collect her from school, neither can my partner, and I don't want her stranded for ages waiting for buses either when I pay a company to bring her home for precisely that reason.

OP posts:
Original poster
ljs22 · 02/02/2022 15:47

@SarahProblem

So you contacted the school before checking the reason? and your daughter didn't think to show you that she'd done most of the work apart from one question?

I received an email with the title "DD's name - lack of homework". Then it went on to explain she has not handed in her homework on time today and has a detention as a result. I assumed from the email she hadn't bothered to even attempt the work, so a detention is fair enough. But I saw the date and time of the detention and knew I couldn't collect her and neither could my partner, so I replied to that effect and asked if a lunchtime one was an option instead. I got a reply that we could change it to a mutually convenient day and time - so we did this. Fine, no further issues.

She's come home and I've challenged her about not completing homework, and she showed me her book - she has actually completed the majority of the questions asked of her, and attempted one but not fully completed it because she didn't understand it. I'm now questioning whether a detention is even proportionate.

OP posts:
ElftonWednesday · 02/02/2022 15:51

YANBU to at least ask. It's also fair enough to have not done some homework because you didn't understand or just couldn't do it. Or I would say, ran out of time, if you had made a good attempt and it was going to take you twice the time that was supposed to be set for it.

DD2 doesn't like doing homework and one of the more reasonable objections IMO is that teachers hardly ever take it in and mark it these days, they just mark it themselves in class.

I'd much prefer less homework to be set but for it to be actually marked.

C152 · 02/02/2022 15:52

I'm sorry, OP, but I think YAB a bit unreasonable. I get why you feel this is your problem to fix, and why you have said that the after school detentions make your life harder than need be. But your child is 15. That's old enough to make her own way home and if she has to wait an hour for the next bus, then she has to wait - she can read or always do the following day's homework during this time! If the issue about paying for the coach is also a problem, then work out what each trip costs and take it out of her pocket money (or if she has a part-time job, get her to pay you back from her salary).

ElftonWednesday · 02/02/2022 15:53

That's old enough to make her own way home and if she has to wait an hour for the next bus

Where we live there is no such thing as "the next bus". Not everywhere has London-style transport.

ilovesooty · 02/02/2022 15:54

So when did she hand in the attempt she made?

RegardingMary · 02/02/2022 15:55

@madlam

Maybe the reasonable option all round would be for schools to employ enough staff to bd able to carry out the behaviour policy they've set without teachers missing lunch. Surely it's expected that children will act up, some more than others.

If forgetting a pen is a third of the way to getting an afterschool detention I'd argue that most of the school will constantly be on the cusp of one and the majority of staff on the edge on the edge breakdown from constantly staying late.

In general I hate the petty shit we punish children for that we wouldn't adults. If I forgot a pen at work I'd go to the stationary cupboard or borrow one of a colleague. Are we raising children in these schools or robots that are never allowed to forget a pen or make a mistake.

PleasantBirthday · 02/02/2022 15:55

She's come home and I've challenged her about not completing homework, and she showed me her book - she has actually completed the majority of the questions asked of her, and attempted one but not fully completed it because she didn't understand it. I'm now questioning whether a detention is even proportionate.

Why didn't she ask you for help?

RegardingMary · 02/02/2022 15:56

@ljs22

Are you sure the homework was done before hand in time and not after to try and escape detention.

If so I'd also question why a detention is being given. Maybe its an honest mistake. Maybe the teacher is being ridiculous

ilovesooty · 02/02/2022 15:56

@RegardingMary where is the budget for employing these extra teachers?

ElftonWednesday · 02/02/2022 15:57

Also a punishment like that would tip DD2, who is just about managing to cope with school on a part-time basis, over into school anxiety again and you'd likely not be able to prise her out of bed the next day, so it's entirely counter-productive. I think schools are far too strict for very minor things these days, there is far too much pressure, punishment and homework, far more than when I was at school 30 years ago.

sicklycolleague · 02/02/2022 15:59

An after school detention for homework is mad - I got a 15-minute morning break detention once for French homework which was the most I ever got. After-school detentions were reserved for things like being caught with marijuana. Our teachers also would just tell us if they’d had a particularly busy day and desperately needed to have a sandwich / tea while we were working away

arethereanyleftatall · 02/02/2022 15:59

I would have absolutely made my dd deal with the consequences. It's literally the entire point. Either buses, and yes, I would have been shitting it, tracking her every second on iPhone, but would consider it a risk worth taking at 15. Or, if I was really nervous about it, it would have been a taxi out of her own money.

ElftonWednesday · 02/02/2022 16:00

Also for that staying in at lunch would and giving her help to finish it would make much more sense. Not even framed as detention but just "Grab a sandwich - see me later and we'll go through it."

OnceuponaRainbow18 · 02/02/2022 16:01

Parents request this at my school, and if there’s a good reason we allow it, they usually spend lunch in the isolation room which is staffed during lunch any way.

No harm in asking

RegardingMary · 02/02/2022 16:01

@ilovesooty

I'm not saying there is money.

Just that if seems pretty ridiculous for a school to have such a strict behaviour policy but not the staff to ensure it can be implemented in a way that doesn't put children at risk of being run over or sexually assaulted.

If things are so dire they should probably consider toning it down a notch. An afterschool detention for not answering 1 question is ridiculous.

ElftonWednesday · 02/02/2022 16:03

And if you get detention for something that minor where do you go after? Exclusion? Expulsion? There has to be some kind of scale otherwise you'd may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

JustLyra · 02/02/2022 16:05

@ljs22

DD has just come home and shown me the homework she "didn't do". She's basically answered every question except for one, which she attempted but then gave up as she found it too hard. I was led to believe that she hadn't done it at all. I think in these circumstances it's even more ridiculous!
If you’re sure your DD hasn’t done that between getting the detention and getting home I’d challenge that.

99% of the time I’m totally behind the school, but sometimes they make mistakes or some staff are too harsh. If your DD is telling the truth this is one of those occasions.

Original poster
ljs22 · 02/02/2022 16:06

[quote RegardingMary]@ilovesooty

I'm not saying there is money.

Just that if seems pretty ridiculous for a school to have such a strict behaviour policy but not the staff to ensure it can be implemented in a way that doesn't put children at risk of being run over or sexually assaulted.

If things are so dire they should probably consider toning it down a notch. An afterschool detention for not answering 1 question is ridiculous.[/quote]

Completely agree! I'm thinking I'm going to contest this detention completely now I've seen her attempt. It doesn't seem proportionate at all.

OP posts:
RegardingMary · 02/02/2022 16:07

@ElftonWednesday

Exactly.

I remember being at the same school my son is. An afterschool detention was RARE. I never had one. They only took place once a week.

My DS got one for forgetting his planner one day, then his PE kit a week later than a week or so after that he was unwell and wasn't there when homework was set so didn't know to hand it in. Yes he shouldn't be forgetting things, but he's 11, a few weeks before his school life revolved around 1 classroom and they wore kit to school on PE day.

I think you must get 50 lashes for actual violence.

Original poster
ljs22 · 02/02/2022 16:08

*If you’re sure your DD hasn’t done that between getting the detention and getting home I’d challenge that.

She says she did it last night.

OP posts:
SarahProblem · 02/02/2022 16:10

We don't know enough to say the punishment is excessive such as whether this is a pattern of behaviour or what state the homework was when it was submitted (vs whether OPs DD did the work afterwards as a means to mitigate for the detention when she got home)

OP has mentioned that her DD doesn't do work for certain subjects, goes by what DD says and doesn't know how to tackle this as a parent.

OddSocksSparklyDocsandDungaree · 02/02/2022 16:11

'I'm now questioning whether a detention is even proportionate.'

@ljs22 Of course it is!

It doesn't matter that she completed the majority of questions, she should have completed them all! If she didn't understand something, she should have guessed Hmm

OddSocksSparklyDocsandDungaree · 02/02/2022 16:12

Smile even. Wrong emoji! Smile

JustLyra · 02/02/2022 16:13

@ljs22

*If you’re sure your DD hasn’t done that between getting the detention and getting home I’d challenge that. * She says she did it last night.
Do you believe her?

I’m really firm with my kids - if they’re wronged by school I will back them to the hilt, but if they lie to me and make me look stupid then a one off detention will be nothing in comparison to the loss of tech/privileges that will occur when it tumbles out (which it always does).

Did she hand in her incomplete effort? What did her teacher say?

You need to know all of that. If it is a detention for one question attempted then left then not a chance would one of mine be doing it and I would flag it up because I’d assume that was a mistake on the teachers part. And mistakes happen in busy classes.

deeplyrooted · 02/02/2022 16:14

Our school doesn’t do detention. They put a huge amount of work into building the school culture, supporting the students, providing extra help for struggling students, find all the positives and involve the parents as much as possible.

Strictly speaking there is a mechanism for detention, exclusion and suspension but they do everything they can to avoid getting to that point.

Getting a black mark in your journal that has to be signed by the year head and parent is the first step.

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