School withholding food as punishment

[catgirl1976]

DS is due to start high school in September.

I’ve just seen a highly alarming thread about the school in a local Facebook group.

Massive disclaimer : Obviously people can write any sort of garbage on social media and it may well not be true and I will of course be speaking to the school at the earliest opportunity to gain clarity before taking any action but enough people have confirmed the allegations to make me a bit worried.

The issues raised are

1. Toilets are now pretty much all gender neutral. I can deal with that - I know enough about the law to be confident I. Challenging and ensuring sufficient single sex provision is in place so whilst I’ll be challenging if true I’m confident in my ability to do that.
2. Kids are getting a detention for being one minute late. I can live with that. Late is late. Important lesson.
3. Classrooms are 29 degrees (new building has thermometers in each classroom) and kids cannot have water during class or in the playground at breaks. Seems a bit mad. Willing to listen to the rationale and alternative arrangements if this is true.
4. This is the big one for me…kids are routinely being denied lunch as a punishment for bad behaviour. I am totally fine with appropriate sanctions for bad behaviour. E.g. mess about in the lunch queue eat lunch in isolation or miss break. But actually not he allowed to have lunch? To be denied food? Surely that’s illegal? I would have thought this was nonsense but at least 10 people have commented that their child has been denied lunch. No other arrangements or food just no food. So breakfast at home and nothing to eat all day. Surely this cannot be legal?

as said before I’ll check with the school about the truth of this and points one to three I can deal with but if point four is true and good is being withheld as a punishment…what would you do? There’s a transition evening coming up where I will have chance to ask questions and I’m gong to email the school asking for their response to these comments but surely a school can’t deny a child the opportunity it y to eat as a punishment?

Even googling I can’t find any incidences of this. It seems barbaric. AIBU or is this a thing?

@LolaSmiles Are you saying detentions are given for wrong shoes, no pencil case or 5 minutes lateness? Also, what is isolation? It used to be a prison term, what does it look like in schools?

Private school won’t be any better. My friend sends her daughter to one of Britain’s most prestigious boarding schools, yet she just had to go out looking for her daughter (who’s 13!!) because she’d been meeting up with a 19 year old boy in a nearby town.

@user9630721458 my daughter used to have a pass That meant she could leave lessons if she was struggling due to anxiety panic attacks, PTSD, that kind of thing. And basically she would end up in isolation with the kids that have been naughty. So what happened is it ended up being a bit of a party. And kids would indeed to try and get sent to isolation where they could all hang out and have a jolly good time instead of doing lessons. They’d usually be unsupervised or the pastoral care person would be in there with them who is usually a Right-on type person who would let them talk about all sorts of inappropriate subjects and Generally a good time was had by all.

What on earth has her daughter’s behaviour at this time of night got to do with the school ?

I presume because it’s boarding ??

@3BSHKATS So it's a group activity? I imagined isolation meant they would be on their own in a room with a teacher. Sounds very strange, like a group detention where they socialise.

No excuse for not adding air conditioning to a new school in an area that has times of hot weather.

Are there actually any state schools in the UK that have air conditioning? I find it very unlikely.

I'm afraid some schools definitely do use isolation for minor things like lateness and forgetting things.

Some new builds, I worked in one

If as @3BSHKATS states isolation just means you can skip lessons and hang out with your friends in another room, how is it a punishment? Or is it just to make the classroom more manageable, by removing the troublesome ones.

@LolaSmilesAre you saying detentions are given for wrong shoes, no pencil case or 5 minutes lateness? Also, what is isolation? It used to be a prison term, what does it look like in schools?
It depends on the school behaviour policy so I wouldn't like to generalise.

Some schools give more leeway than others on 'smaller' infringements.

For example one school I worked in would overlook a uniform issue if it was corrected there and then if possible, if not then the next day. If there was an actual reason, such as school shoes broken, then a note from home was enough for a short grace period.
In another school I worked in there was a very poor culture with parents arguing against every single rule, deliberately buying non-uniform items, and in the end the school took a more zero tolerance approach. They started issuing detentions for uniform issues on the spot. It was a busy few weeks but the message was sent very clearly what was expected. This school still had adjustments for students with sensory processing needs, medical adjustments and so on. They just had a zero tolerance for parents buying £100 trainers, then the pupils telling staff to "fuck off" when told that the trainers aren't school shoes.

It's not necessarily the case now large academy chains are running lots of schools, but often the schools that have historically had less leeway were the ones where leaders were trying to turn around schools with a lot of issues.

Isolation is one name for a setup where a pupil isn't given a fixed term exclusion, but they are not in normal lessons. Usually it's a classroom supervised by staff where students are given work from class to complete in silence unless they are asking for help from a teacher. eg if a pupil has maths lesson 1 then during lesson 1 they complete maths work from the lesson, then RE lesson 2 etc. Students in isolation will usually have their lunch times and break times separate from the rest of the school population.

In my kid's school, the isolation rooms are usually packed with kids - they each sit in a booth and write out lines, and aren't supposed to communicate with each other or anyone outside the room all period/day (however long the sentence is).
They are overseen by an isolation supervisor.

My kid's school is very draconian on discipline, zero tolerance on everything, kids must be sitting properly and looking only at the teacher at all times, no mumbling, no slouching, no fidgeting. Roll calls every morning to inspect uniform and equipment.

@LolaSmiles Thank you, I really thought isolation meant solitary.

@cyncope Yes, that's more what the term isolation conjures up.

@LolaSmilesThank you, I really thought isolation meant solitary
It does sound that way. I thought the same when I first went into education.

It's more isolation from the main school cohort.

This is the most likely scenario. So maybe they don't eat because they don't like what's left but that's not the same as being refused food.
I'd also check about the water issue. My DD is allowed water at any time apart from in the science lab. Given how bloody hot it's been lately this can't be true. All the children would have been sent home sick
I hope you get a satisfactory answer from the school

I don’t agree with telling teachers to fuck off under any circumstances. It blows my mind the three of the richest people I can name of the top of my head go to work in jeans and Trainer’s. There’s absolutely no justification for making children get dressed up like penguins any more.
I honestly think teachers would get more out of children if there was justifiable rules rather than pointless, updated ones. It also boils my piss the children are punished for things that are out of their control, at end of the day If your mums happy to buy you £100 Trainer’s because that’s what she want you to be seen in rather than a pair of school shoes when you’re 13, it’s not a lot you can do about that.

And what is your experience of this?

3BSHKATS
I don't entirely disagree with you on the uniform front.

The issue is that the sort of students and parents who will read a very clear uniform policy, deliberately buy things that clearly aren't in it, then argue about it are the same group of students and parents who will cause a huge amount of disruption to many children's education.

Tale of two schools.

School A.
A pupil forgets their pencil case so hasn't got equipment. They know they can ask their tutor for some to borrow and the tutor provides it, or they lose a pen during the day and the class teacher has a pot of pens that everyone can borrow if they need it. Students borrow what they need and return it most of the time.
In the event a student is persistently without equipment school will call home to see if there's a reason and if there's any hardship school will provide some for the student.

School B.
A pupil hasn't got any equipment with them, rarely brings equipment, and half of the class haven't either. They remember their phone/fags/vapes/make up etc but no pen. The tutor lends out pens for the day but somehow by lesson 1 the students don't have a pen. Teacher 1 has to see what they can find because all the pens they handed out yesterday have been smashed or not returned. The start of the lesson is delayed for 10 minutes trying to make sure everyone has equipment, by which point another behaviour issue is starting. The teacher asks students to write the date and title down and complete the task on the board. Another 5 minutes passes and the teacher asks a student why they haven't started. The student loudly shouts to the crowd "because I ain't got a pen!" and acts up to their friends, who stop the work to laugh. The teacher asks what happened to the pen they just gave. The student shows them the crushed pen and ink everywhere. The class is now disrupted. The teacher issues a warning and follows the behaviour system, the student is then verbally abusive because "you can't give me a warning, oh FFS. They're giving me a warning for NOT HAVING A PEN!!! Are you fucking kidding me! I would do my work but I HAVEN'T GOT A PEN HAVE I? You daft cunt"
This happens several times in the day. A parent meeting is called to let them know their child will be in isolation.
The student sits there laughing at the senior member of staff as their parent says "I think it's a bit unreasonable for you to put my child in isolation for not doing the work. How are they meant to do my work when they haven't got a pen?" (And then probably goes on all the socials to moan about the school being awful and no wonder the students can't learn when staff are putting them in isolation for no reason).

I've seen both situations first hand and didn't believe School Bs existed like that until I worked there.

School B ... As a teacher I can confirm this is absolutely spot on.
Well said. And thank you for taking the time to explain it to those who believe everything the kids say.
I can add that no pupil in their own eyes ever admits to themselves and others that they ever did anything that merited any sort of consequence...it's always about the teacher not liking them , or over reacting etc etc.

God. Thats so accurate. I work in school B. We are spending a fortune of our tiny budget on pens and other equipment that get destroyed.

along with kids in nike £100 trainers or £200 mallets but cant possibly afford £13 asda shoes for school.

I can assure you, teachers absolutely know it is the parents fault.

My local school.

Yet here you are, disbelieving something with zero evidence that it's not true. In fact OP says there have been at last count, 10 parents who are saying it is true. Yet nope, you are saying that's false. Despite not having any idea which school it is or even which county they're in 😂

Wow.

You really, REALLY dislike children, don't you?