To object to this punishment ?

[School99]

My son is doing his GCSEs at local secondary school. They give lunchtime / break time / afterschool detentions for misbehaviour (ranging from not wearing a tie to constantly talking /disrupting class) which I support.
They also do a thing called internal exclusion which is where pupil has to sit in a different room all day with no lessons and nothing to do. My son has been told he has to do this on Monday for what I think is not a serious offence. Apart from thinking the punishment is not appropriate for the crime, I actually think this punishment is not at all appropriate in any circumstances- surely missing out on lessons when doing GCSEs is just setting them up to fail ? How is that teaching them to behave according to the school rules ?? I would object less if they were isolated but got their normal work given to them but they don’t even do that. I’m not really happy about the punishment - is this standard across all secondary schools ? I’m thinking of contacting the school to voice my views/objections but not sure if there’s any point ??

For dropping a pen? for waving at a fellow student as they enter the class slightly late? For turning in their chair when they should be listening to the teacher? For zoning out and not knowing what to do, so asking a fellow student?

These are all examples of 'low level disruption' that can lead to the Hub at DD3's school.

I have no concerns about my children. One was so dysregulated by being there that she had to leave and is now on an EOTAS package from the Local Authority, and my other DD is being very well accommodated by the SEN team, although out of school because she can't cope with it. However, that's my point, really. Both girls refused to go to classes, left classes part way through, etc., but because they display their SEN in quite a polite and passive way, they will never even get a behaviour point, let alone a detention or the Hub. Other children may have exactly the same needs, but because they displace their anxiety and display behaviours that are seen as 'low level disruption', they get Hubbed.

Some children are Hubbed, refuse to go back to school, then go back to school and because they have additional needs can't comply with the behaviour code and get Hubbed again. So their whole education is reduced to about 20% of school time.

I was a SEN school governor for over 10 years, across primary and secondary special schools, and mainstream infant schools. I would love to get in to DD3's school and analyse the Hub statistics. I bet it would show a disproportionate rate of boys and children with SEN being Hubbed. They advertised for governors recently but I can't bring myself to apply because I know that such analysis wouldn't be welcome by the HT and the SEN governor should already be asking those questions.

All schools clearly state their behaviour policy when you join. Schools without consequences would be fairly awful places to try and learn in. Most people expect consequences to be severe when their child has been wronged in some way and lenient when their child has done something wrong! Schools use internal isolation as step before fixed term exclusions. They also allow schools to discipline kids who don't attend detentions or who won't follow teacher instructions. As a previous poster explained unless the OP chose a school who gives isolations for dropping a pen - most unlikely! Her ds has done something wrong and she should be supporting the school. Maybe it is just a troll given she has not come back on the thread.

You've very carefully not mentioned what he actually did.

In my experience, internal exclusion like that is for pretty serious misbehaviour, or low-level behaviour that hasn't responded to the less serious punishments.

If he misses a day of learning due to his own choices, that's a him problem.

I object the pupils wrecking the learning of my year 11 child in their most important year. If they carnt behave by year 11 they deserve to be removed. Why should all the other suffer due to one pupil. Good luck applying for colleges, they look at the behaviour records.

Our school is the school you mention. We didn't 'choose' it. There is precisely one school we are eligible for given our location. If you live in our area, you go to this school, or private. It isn't a 'bad school', but I would argue that the HT has 'independent school' aspirations and at this year's certificate evening he referred to someone 'scraping a pass in their GCSEs', knowing that there would be students in the room that had worked extremely hard to achieve a 4, or indeed failed a GCSE or two.

Although dropping a pen isn't written, it was given as an example at the parent presentation we attended. Imagine a child with ADHD or ASD, then look at the sanction list.

Whatever he’s done, he’s gcse, he will have a ton of revision guides, notes, flash cards etc. He’s got a day of revision, make sure he goes prepared.

Yabu to start a conflict with the school so close to him leaving anyway.

You signed up the school contract when you enrolled him, yabu.
Rules are rules. Stop teaching him they don’t apply to him.

More teacher bashing. We have no idea unless we know what he did. And even then there will be other versions of the truth.

Lougle
Imagine what lessons would like without consequences. I know many kids with autism and adhd thrive when there are clear rules and consequences. Yes there should be adaptations for individual students but most of the things on the referral to the hub list do not appear that unreasonable. Kids do not feel safe and able to learn in classes where kids are swearing, shouting at the teacher and refusing to follow instructions. Referral to the hub means taking the child out of the lesson where they are clearly not accessing learning to another place where they can calm themselves. How is that bad for them or for their peers?

In any case I am not sure why we are talking about kids with adhd or asd. The student in question is not said to have either of these conditions so far.

@cansu the trouble is that behaviour policies often do sound reasonable. Unfortunately, individual teachers then apply those polices and there comes the inconsistency. The terms on the policy are so vague that it is for the teacher to interpret and action.

This child may not have any SEN but the general discussion was about internal exclusion, which disproportionately (IMO) applies to boys and children with SEN.

If a child is struggling with the content or difficulty of their work, then displays low level behaviour as displacement (this is often recognised at primary level with 'it's boring') how does it help to remove them from the lesson, isolate them, and instruct them to copy from a random textbook?

Often, homework is linked to class work. If they've missed the class work, they don't understand their homework...more detentions and hub time.

They get to a point where they just don't care about school or have any respect for their teachers - even more sanctions.

It's hard. My children don't do well in disruptive environments, so the hub is useful in that respect, but thinking about wider society, I think it's harmful.

Taking the prison analogy, we know that people have a higher rate of offending after then before. Collecting groups of students who aren't behaving ideally and bringing them together must promote worse behaviour.

Yep, there’s plenty of time to catch up on missed lesson. They can ask each teacher what the lesson was, then go home and spend their own time catching up.

It’s very unlikely they won’t have work to do. Additionally, why should the rest of the class have their learning to disrupted?

I actually think this punishment is not at all appropriate in any circumstances- surely missing out on lessons when doing GCSEs is just setting them up to fail ?

It gives 29 other students an opportunity to learn without disruption from the excluded student.

I have never heard of them not having work to do, either given by each teacher or some generic work in the exclusion room.

Quite often it is something like comprehension exercises that are useful in all subjects.

Or it can be reading.

Why doesn't he just stop twatting about and behave properly in class, then he won't get internal exclusions and won't miss any work. It's really not very hard....

He should be doing work during his internal exclusion.

That is the point I would be focusing on. Hard.

Given that you purposely didn't tell us what he did I suspect he deserves the punishment.

Depends on what he did. My son went to a boisterous single sex school and faced so many disruptions from others during class time and during exams, if a child doesn't want to learn why should they be allowed to disrupt everyone else? I wish my son's school had clamped down on it more.

Lougle
Not all kids who misbehave in class can't do the work. Some don't want to do the work. There are probably all kinds of reasons why they disturb others including trauma in their early years but they are in a class of 30 in most cases where the needs of the 29 others to learn and feel safe are important. A teacher can spend all their time trying to coax a kid to work or they can teach everyone else and let the pastoral staff do their job. Many kids especially those with send in fact get very anxious about being in classrooms where poor behaviour is tolerated or glossed over.

I also think we need to consider what we mean by low level disruption. Shouting at the teacher, refusing to follow instructions and swearing is not low level. I would agree that swinging on your chair is not an isolation event in most schools though!

Will the op ever come back?
Will we ever find out what the child did?

I'm on the edge of my seat.

Internal exclusion tends to be when a student has been exited for repeat disruption or insolence, or if they have been involved in something which is an obvious breach - fighting/altercation, vaping, vandalism.

They'll be sat in the behaviour unit/isolation room and are usually sent work to do from the teacher of the lessons they are now missing.

Highly unusual they'd be sat in isolation all day just to reflect on their behaviour. Might be the case they have to wait for the work, cannot complete it themselves, finish it early or a teacher is off/forgets. But a whole day? Nope.

Don't hold your breath

Unless the school has told you he will be sitting doing nothing I'd take that with a pinch of salt.