How do you think schools should punish children?

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

A lot of ‘school refusal’ and problems in education is associated with poor behaviour from other pupils on here. Yet whenever a poster’s child is reprimanded they seem outraged and feel the teacher is picking on their DC for no reason. They often think the (perfectly reasonable sounding) punishment is too harsh, or their child should’ve had more warnings.

So I’m interested in how you think schools should actually discipline pupils, taking into account this also means your own DC?

Agree, I’m willing to bet a lot of their ‘anxiety’ is screen withdrawal, hence feeling ‘safe’ at home with unlimited access to their phone

Send them home. Every time. The problem is parents are unwilling to accept their child behaves badly, so until it becomes a problem for the parent this will continue. I feel really sorry for teachers because kids know their parents won't punish them so they can do exactly as they please. If your child is unwilling to learn then they can go home & the parents can deal with them.

You remove them. You fun PRUs and remove them there. There is zero excuse for them disrupting the education of others and assaulting other kids

its so simple. You remove them!

I think it depends what behaviour you're talking about. Running laps for a student who has ADHD and is struggling to sit still for an hour could be an ideal 'punishment'. Sitting in an quiet area and writing out set texts as a way to learn them might be a useful 'punishment' for a child that is paying no attention in their English lesson - but it's not helpful if they're doing that every lesson.

The problem is that there are a lot of children for whom mainstream school and GCSE's are not right. Either because of their SEN or their very difficult home life or because they are so far behind and have so little self esteem that it all seems pointless to them. Instead of waiting for them to fail their GCSE's there should be other options available to them by 14 IMO. They should be somewhere doing something more practical along with just GCSE English and maths or functional English and maths.

Instead of punishing these kids we need to try to get them motivated and doing something that they can succeed in. You will not punish a secondary school child into being good, they'll just stop caring if they haven't already stopped caring years ago.

If it can’t be solved then they can’t be around other children. There should be referral units for this.

Can you? Because most on here don’t seem to enjoy their job, or are unemployed because they can’t find something that suits them. And you can’t confuse a child’s mentality with an adults and the different approach that requires.

I can and have chosen a job that suits my needs, most adults I know have done the same.

And no, you can’t confuse children and adult mentality - adults have developed mature coping mechanisms and have agency over their lives. If anything we should be meeting kids needs because they don’t have the skills to psychologically adjust easily.

But then they never learn adversity or how to solve their own problems. Sorry but I just disagree - life is inherently uncomfortable and unfair in parts and ‘having your needs met’ is a luxury that applies to the minority

My kids have experienced more adversity in their short lives than most will know in a lifetime. Recovering from that adversity is going to be a life long task.

Luckily their schools understand that and do strive to meet their needs - needs, not nice to haves or pandering to snowflake tendencies. Things they need so they recover from their adversity and are able to learn academically and socially. They don’t need any more lessons in adversity.

What happened?

But you see I had to remove my child from mainstream schooling as she was being physically assaulted on a daily basis by a child in care. My child was totally innocent And yet she was getting her head kicked in on a daily basis due to those who said ‘oh but she has a tough home life’ and ‘oh but the child might e d up in prison’. How about them thinking about innocent children in fear of their lives when going in to get an education? You have no idea how disgusting I find this attitude.

We need to start by physically safeguarding the innocent victims of this unwarranted violence. Get violent children out of mainstream schooling.

If a childs needs are not being met in mainstream to the extent they are continually badly behaved, it begs the question of whether mainstream is the right place for them.

I think there is a contingent of parents of children with SEN who think schools/teachers must be prevailed upon to implement surreal levels of exception, intervention & tolerance of unacceptable behaviour, to enable their child to remain in mainstream, at any cost. This is cost both in terms of financial, and in terms of damage to the classroom, the teacher, and the other pupils well being.
Its just not possible or reasonable as an expectation in some cases.

There are DC in our school who get:

• 1 to 1 support for all time in school
• exception from complying with so many school behaviour rules
• special provision at lunch and break including solo access to a room of toys
• tolerance of refusal to participate in almost all bits of the curriculum they don't like (the same bits most of the kids like least - maths, writing)
• special food including being allowed to eat sweets & cakes that are forbidden to the others
• almost none of the consequences that are applied to the other children
• special privileges like being first in line for almost everything, extra music lessons, extra sport
• rewards for even tiny things, that are not available to others

It costs the school a huge amount in terms of time & resource and its not clear it adds anything in terms of educational value in many cases.

It sends terrible messages to all the other children, who see every day that refusing to do things, hurting others, and generally behaving poorly, will result only in you getting special treatment. Hot chocolate with the headteacher because you threw a shit fit when asked to do maths anyone?

@MaryMaryVeryContrary I think you have zero idea of the needs of adopted or traumatised children, nor of SEN.

What happened?

It’s absolutely none of your business what happened, my kids are adopted - they’ll be forever impacted by their lives before adoption, and yes that means they at times struggle with emotional regulation. They still have a right to education though, and one that meets their needs.

Why has behaviour become such a problem in recent years? I don’t remember this sort of thing at my inner London school or at my childrens’ primary or secondary. Low level behaviour issues were a part of life when I taught (not that long ago) but violent outbursts and removal from class was very rare.

@MidlandsWoman good for them to have an opportunity to be good at something

Interestingly - teachers cannot be directed to staff detentions. Making children write letters in detentions just simply wouldn’t work- who would enforce this? Bear in mind a lot of children are in detention because of their SEN anyway. Some struggle with sitting still, some with literacy etc. So who helps them with this remembering that teachers can’t be directed to staff detentions?

Putting all the “difficult children” in one school/PRU is very difficult- in times of desperate staff recruitment and retention- who wants to go and work in a place where they may get sworn at etc on a daily basis? Not many teachers. They usually have a very high staff turnover which then further disadvantages these kids.

Behaviour in schools can be very very hard in your typical comprehensive. Saying that, I have to remember that 95%+ of the pupils I teach are wonderful, it is a small, but very very difficult minority that drains all your time and energy.

But most children don’t fall into these groups.

Well they certainly don’t belong in a school left to run free attacking other pupils or hell the teachers for that matter so yes expel them from mainstream schooling. Ship them off to a referral unit or hell a kind of military school.

My child is not your child’s punch bag or chew toy, nor should they have to dodge projectiles from students throwing things.

So yes he’ll even age 7 send them somewhere else where children just getting on with getting an education are not made to suffer violence.

I think we really need to invest in intensive alternatives for children who are violent with the aim of getting them into the most suitable long term provision. It's completely unacceptable that any children should face violence in school. We'd never accept it in any other workplace.

This exactly.
The well behaved children are also suffering from this. My kids don’t get in trouble at school, even though DS has both ADHD and ASD, but throughout every half term I see their behaviour going steadily downhill at home. I spend the first 4-5 days of every holidays teaching them how to behave properly again, send them back to school being the nice children that they are, and the whole cycle starts again. It’s nothing bad because they have enough awareness to know what is really bad behaviour, just low level. When they have kids hitting, biting and disrupting their class, how are they supposed to learn to behave properly?
I do think that full inclusion is impossible. You cannot expect kids with behavioural difficulties to manage school in the same way as those without, both groups are being dealt an unfair hand. And it’s the poor teachers who have to try and figure out how to manage the needs of all in the limited time they have whilst teaching an overloaded curriculum and without any kind of procedure in place to properly deal with bad behaviour.
Kids need to be expelled (using that term loosely as by expelled I mean put to use doing something worthwhile that they will actually engage with) and there needs to be proper provision in the right numbers to deal with that.

How would you enforce meeting the individual needs of 1000 students? I’m not being difficult I’m just wondering what you genuinely expect is achievable in this regard?

I honestly think screens are a huge part of this.

Ultimately most serious behaviour problems in school are among those kids who really don't want to be there. School is expected to be a place of learning and a place to silo kids during the workday and these goals conflict.

Ideally, the people who kick off and make everything harder for the others would have some other place they might go, rather than be hit, shamed, or forced to do menial labour like so posters here would like.

All this but those children might suffer seeing violence at home. Social services need to step in…

Making children go to what should be a safe place like school to suffer or see violence is no better than the child witnessing it at home frankly. Making 29 other pupils see it, still doesn’t help that 1 pupil.

The hard truth is it's just shitty parenting.

Entire continents (Asia, Africa, most of the rest of Europe), can boast entire schools of well- behaved, engaged pupils that statistically must have the same proportion of additional needs/trauma/whatever as British kids.

The difference is that their education is appreciated and valued. School is often not free to attend, and parents will make considerable sacrifices to send their children. Schoolwork is reinforced at home, parents instill discipline and teachers are respected members of the community. Kids respect their parents.