AIBU: I am so annoyed by my kids' unwarranted detention?

I think you have to accept that when you move to a country with a different culture, the schooling will be different as well. French schools are very different and French parenting is very different than we might be used to. I think unless they are being actually bullied or mistreated you just have to suck it up really and chalk it down to experience. Presumably you moved there to experience something different. How much do you think you have embraced this? Have your sons made friends with any of the local children? Have you made friends with any of the parents? In my experience it is quite difficult to do this in France, especially in rural areas, they're not that used to foreigners and both parents tend to work full time which means you don't have the chatty school gate culture that you can have in the UK. Harder to get to know people.

There is an element of rough justice that children need to get used to - DC once had a detention for eating in the school building, he took the first bite of his apple as he was going through the door into the playground. Another day or another teacher, it may have been handled differently. I wasn’t best pleased as it meant he couldn’t get the school bus and I had to collect him. The lesson he learned was to play by the rules and to not be given another detention!

With regard to hanging off or climbing on a fence, quite apart from the danger of having an accident, if all the children did that, the school’s maintenance bill would rise which could impact on other spending and perhaps small children, those with SEND or those wanting to truant would use a gap in the fence as an exit route.

I’ve always found those who say bullying isn’t present at schools in their experience, were actually the bullies at the top of the pile. So of course they would think that.

You need to show more support to the school. Each time your children did only minor things, but they were against the school rules. If everyone allowed children minor infractions, do you honestly think it would stop there? The school is nipping their behaviour in the bud, and you are not helping. In fact, you are teaching your children to challenge authority at every turn. Now, if that's how you want them to grow up, that's your choice, but they are going to have many fights on their hands in the future.

Did you really?

Then you're part of the problem.

You either "work in education" but don't teach or are being very disingenuous.
I've been a teacher since 1994 and have also seen a shift. From expecting students to respect others, property and themselves, and expect consequences if these fundamental axioms of society aren't adhered to, to crap like this (the OP) where nothing a student does is ever wrong, and nothing a teacher does to educate that student is ever right.

You don't like zero tolerance? Where do you stand on kids bringing knives into school and upskirting? Hitting teachers? Sexually abusing girls on school premises? Stealing other students' property? Filming teachers and uploading to the web? Taking drugs on school premises? Selling drugs on school premises?

I was at school in Romford in the 8os. Some classes were out of control and it was hard to learn anything. Then along came an English teacher from the north.

She had a list of rules but the first one was no talking when she was talking and she imposed it. Any back chat was met with, 'I'm on this side of the desk and what I say goes'.

She soon had the class under control. It felt safer and we all learned more than we would have done with some of the staff who allowed the kids to rule the roost.

I suppose she would have been sacked now and we would have been the worse off for it.

I completely agree with you, I think highly controlling school environments are really detrimental. If they’d had a warning first that would be different. The school policy is that a warning is giving first. So they are teaching the children that they need to ignore the rules, not question when their superiors decide to ignore them.
I’m not supporting something that contravenes child development and encourages children to unquestioningly accept all treatment dealt out to them, regardless of whether it’s justified. You’re just priming them to live in a dictatorship. And before someone starts banging on about bad behaviour my children have never had a detention because self discipline is a thing

The thing is, your children are at this school, and they have to follow the school rules. If they don't know what they are, they can easily find out by observing what the well behaved children are doing, it's not hard. Children will get into trouble for climbing on fences at any school.
You don't really get a say what the consequences are, school are not run as a democracy, your view really doesn't count, unless you think the school is acting illegally/abusively.
I've heard anecdotally that French schools have high behaviour expectations, and that children are just expected to observe the rules and get on with things without making a fuss. I don't know if that is true, but certainly expectations will be different from those in UK or Czech Republic.
It sounds like a detention is the standard punishment. It is an issue if your child has not done the thing they have been punished for ( as in the sellotape issue) and one would hope that some slack would be given to new foreign starters. It might have been reasonable to speak to the school about that at the time, but if you didn't it's no good conflating it with an incident when they actually were doing the wrong thing.
Your children will have to learn to conform to the school rules, it won't kill them to have a few detentions. If you don't like it, then the option probably is to remove them. But better for them to behave and get to learn the language and culture in school - what a great opportunity for them!

If they’d had a warning first that would be different.

But if it is stated in the school rules, then the children have had a warning first. Parents are expected to go through the school rules with their children before starting school = kids are warned before they start.

@BungleandGeorge I completely agree with you, I think highly controlling school environments are really detrimental.

Don’t send your kids to school in France then.

OP said that the school’s own policy is that the behaviour policy is verbal warning first.
why is the rule in place? Because it may damage the fence or the child. So a couple of adults stand and watch them doing it, don’t intervene, they continue doing it and the next day they get a detention. Yes that’s very logical! It’s very important that rules actually make sense and are not there merely as a way of exerting control

My sons school have listened to me in the past and looked in to the situation and taken off detentions / spoken to the teacher and said that is not fair. So I don't think yabu. We are our children's advocates after all.

The journey is a bit long…
it appears it’s not that a particularly effective method of control given the ridiculous amount of strikes they have in france

That is not how it works in schools. A first warning is by the teacher.

France is a civil law country where the written rules are the rules. So this is to be expected. It’s not open to interpretation or debate like here.

This. I don't expect the year in France for the family was compulsory.

There is some weird stuff on this thread. If you speak French, which presumably you do, having been to school there, then you should know exactly what "je vous souhaite une bonne journée" means in a certain tone, it means, "this conversation is over goodbye". Did the head have that tone?
If you want to contact the parents reps, it's really easy, there will be a poster on the notice board outside the school, with an email address usually.
I have to say I'm mystified as to why you are asking kids about an event from five months ago. Do your kids even speak French? Would they have even understood that they were being spoken to if somebody had told them to get off the fence?

Your boys have admitted they were swinging on the fence when they shouldn't have been, so what's the issue?

fgs, it's an hours detention, not a public flogging.

Everyone you've spoken to has told you to drop it, so drop it.

laisser tomber

ca ne fait rien

They were there for five months at the point that OP “fast forwarded” to this incident. Three months full-immersion in a language is considered standard for fluency. Children learn languages faster than adults and they have a native French speaking parent. The children should easily be fluent in French by now.

Where did you get that little nugget from? It isn't true. I've spent years working with EAL children and have lived in 3 different countries myself. It's a myth. They might be able to say stock phrases and have some vocabulary but they won't be fluent in 3 months. Unless your idea of fluent is very low!

Although I did say I assume they already spoke French - we don't actually know that for sure.

Life is unfair. Even if they were innocent (I wasn't there!) it is often the case that we get punished for things that we deem to be irrelevant and its called learning to grow up in the world. You will likely regret intervening in 20 years when they can't tolerate being told to do something or being disciplined at work.

I'm rather impressed that they are putting in these boundaries. UK schools are weak AF for caving into the complaints of parents. Do as you are damn-well told or go to another school!

That said, I can see why you would be defensive of them. We all dislike seeing our kids being treated unfairly. Personally I'd have told them to get down, cut it out and explain the consequences if it happens again.

www.optilingo.com/blog/french/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-french/

Here’s the very first result on Google when asked, there are thousands of others which corroborate it. 580 hours standard for French fluency. At full immersion in French, that should be within 3 months.

Other people have experience with things too so outlining all your wealth of experience when telling someone they’re wrong (when they aren’t) tends to look worse than just Googling it yourself.