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?

I don't believe in punishment. Natural consequences yes, like failing a class or having others not want to be around you and having to deal with them, yes. More restorative justice - you stole his cake so he's eating yours now to make it right

Not necessarily.
The specialist school I work in, children do GCSE's, usually a smaller number of 5-6 rather than the standard 9-10, but they feel its better to focus on that and get decent grades. There is a mainstream school next to it, and some children join classes there with one our TA's on a reduced timetable, which they intersperse with therapy/sensory activities in their school.

Proper schooling facilities for children who have different needs to mainstream (for whom mainstream is overwhelming) so that they can learn the way they find easier and so removing children most likely to be disruptive to average mainstream children.

Of the remaining children, removal as soon as they become disruptive to an isolation area. Removing their audience will soon make them bored and more likely to cooperate in a normal class environment.

Zero tolerance for violent children. They go home immediately. For this to happen though better support for parents needs to be put in place for children who might need interventions.

Exclusion for anyone persistently disrupting without any of the above issues.

Only children who want to learn and not be disruptive should be in a normal mainstream class. Obviously support should still be in place for those need it.

The biggest complaint and barrier to learning my own children have found is supply teachers who have no idea what the class should be learning and disruptive classmates.

…so they both end up where they started, with 1 cake each?

My Uncle was head of a PRU, there were many troubled kids there, mainly ones where no school wanted them. He changed the expectation that these kids were likely to spend the rest of their lives in trouble with the police, unable to hold down a steady job, likely to be teenage mums into young people who left school ready for work having had work experience or ready to go to college or into training before getting a job. He had many contacts who were employers & prepared to give these kids a chance, he worked with further education colleges & apprenticeship providers, got kids involved with having taster sessions to find out what they were good at. He had people come into school to show different activities like music, fashion, sport, art, leisure activities to find out just what they were interested in, he fought for & got funding for a school allotment, a music studio, a drama & dance studio, an arts & crafts area, the school showcased what they did holding open days where the kids performed, sold what they grew & made to raise money to invest in more things for the school. The pupils loved him & kept in contact long after they left school, some even turned up to the hospital to visit him when he was ill & came to his funeral when he died.

They don’t go to prison because they were excluded. The kind of behaviours that get them excluded are the kind of behaviours that get you put in prison when you do them out in ‘the real world’. Correlation is not causation.
That being said, these kids clearly need a lot of help and support to get their lives back on track. That support is best provided by PRUs or AP. The tragedy is that, for far too many kids, the only way to access that more appropriate education is by being PEX. Inclusion (without adequate funding) has been a disaster for these kids and, by extension, for their classmates.

Do the school look after the kids after the detention until a parent can get there to collect them?

No, that is true.

But the 'academic school' gets many more applications as it looks more 'shiny', it talks a lot about how many children it gets into the local grammar.

My daughters 'whole child' school is never full as its a fairly affluent area where parents often value academic achievement over a broader education.

However, that wasn't really the point of my post, it was more to share my thoughts around how we need to teach children to be confident in themselves, how to regulate their emotions in a positive way etc, before we push them into strict boundaries of academic learning.

@MumChp @Possiblyfamous
My HoD has four children in her class with profound SEND needs. One is visually impaired to the point where she requires screen reader tech (which relies on our faulty Wi-Fi), one is mute and we suspect suffers from a form of 'locked in' syndrome - no eye contact, smiles, nods, no reaction to any stimulus, able to walk, but will not write or communicate through sign, one with a traumatic brain injury who cannot be allowed to be alone, and must be toileted by an adult, and one who will not sit on a chair, only on the floor, frequently removes all clothing and claws at his skin to the point of making himself bleed.

All mainstream, secondary. She has TA support 60% of the time.
It's complete madness. The parents of each child insist mainstream is the right setting.

In theory yes but in reality this will never happen and never work.

The school I teach in has a completely useless behaviour management policy which seems to consist of the Head taking badly behaved children off for stickers and biscuits and dumping complicated and time-consuming stuff for me to do to support the child on my desk!

Last year I had a 7 year old completely smash up my classroom and lash out all year long to the point that many of the other children in the class were anxious.

This year, I’ve ignored the school's flimsy behaviour policy for the sake of my mental health and the experience of those children who deserve to feel safe as they learn.

It is different when parents work with you to support their child with their behaviour issues but if parents become instantly combative with me, I just send the child out of the room at the very very first sign of messing about. It has worked wonders for all involved.

We need to stop this silly pendulum swing to adults being scared to create strong boundaries. Children without boundaries are never happy.

Well I'm in education and I've seen frankly stone age behavior towards children with sen.. No understanding making things 100 times worse, escalating problems that should have been avoided...

So perhaps we need to start yelling from the roof tops... Give teachers some fucking basic training on what Adhd is. On what autism is. On what it means to be whatever??

Get in at primary school and start to educate teachers and everyone in school about child hood trauma, fetal alcohol syndrome, ptsd, and all the rest.

I have two foster sons, who came to me as young children, and who were at risk of being 'naughty boys' at school. I found that when they were young, if they were given leeway to misbehave they absolutely did so. And were unhappy at school, as they didn't know the boundaries. When they had strict teachers they thrived as they knew where they stood.

At secondary stage I sent them to the school in the city that prided itself on having a set of rules that all students must follow at all times. It set out those rules on the open evening for Year 6 kids so everyone knows what to expect at that school. Things like correct uniform at all times and no arguing back to a teacher. And there is a clear policy of what happens if the rules are broken. Some parents think being so strict is draconian and would never send their kids there but I knew my two needed to know the rules. My eldest is just about to finish Year 11 and has had no real bother. His brother, who was almost expelled in Year 1, only ever has positive behaviour points. I would always recommend the school to people whose children struggle with behaviour, but only if the parents are going to back up the school.

The school has the highest academic results in the city but arguably that could be because more academic children and more aspiring parents are drawn to it due to previous years' results.

Mr Gryce.
Kes.

@MaryMaryVeryContrary

Have to agree, I think there is too much emphasis on this and it is not helping them in the long run

FFS. You have never been in a failing school as an adult. It is fucking carnage and makes lord of the flies look like a gentile game of cricket.

Some kids do not give a shit and have no comprehension of consequences. Let alone natural consequences that are not very, very clearly explained to them. They simply do not care as they have no hope or expectations. You are applying middle class values to a whole society issue.

The only time I have seen anybody permanently excluded is when they held an assistant head by the throat as they were waiting to be suspended they punched the deputy head which led to an immediate permanent exclusion after a significant reign of terror.

i used to send my child into school each day, with both them and I knowing they were probably going to get attacked again, but the reason this girl couldn’t be permanently excluded was that the child was vulnerable (in care) and so there was a greater chance of her ending up in prison if they did permanently exclude so the Scottish government wouldn’t allow permanent exclusion, and the police would charge her with assault which was meaningless.

And I would feel like my child is a human Guinea pig in some kind of crazy social experiment. Please take a kicking day after day and don’t cause a fuss because if you do this child might end up in prison which would cost the Scottish state some money. Never felt prouder of my child taking it. Never felt more relieved when we’d finally given up and removed them. They have never been happier now.

If truama causes bad behaviour then why have we so many more truamatised pupils now than ever before? Why is nobody in government questioning this? Either the theory is wrong, or something is seriously wrong with life in the UK.
Even if truama is behind it, we need to teach children proper ways to deal with their truama without hurting others instead of using it as an excuse for violence. Some people's parenting has changed. Society has changed.
Some people are more concerned about what they are entitled to get, and not what they can offer to society.

I have an asd/adhd child. It is hard. Life is tough at times as it is for everyone. My child has made moves to hurt me when younger. Not recently though. I am working hard to teach her. She knows that I will not accept her diagnosis as an excuse for violence. She is learning via consequences delivered with love, like any other child would.

I never knew that! It’s madness to have that policy. Let’s be realistic: some people just can’t behave

And yes restorative conversations and occasion temporary exclusions was all
the school could use. And it didn’t work.

Ok @HereBeFuckery - so what do you expect parents to do? In most areas, special schools (both the LA maintained and independent ones) are over-subscribed so only those children with the most complex needs would get a place. Where I am, children with the needs you describe here would not meet that criteria. Your post is actually pretty offensive. My dc (with a learning disability that affects all areas of development, and currently working below KS1 levels in most areas, so probably similar level of needs to these children) is going to our local mainstream secondary in September. I could potentially have fought for a special school place for her, but it would not have been easy and probably wouldn't have been successful anyway...and to be honest, why should I put us all through that if the local mainstream feel they are able to support her? But posts like yours make me realise potentially how unwelcome she will be made to feel when she does go there.

I apologise, I thought you meant disadvantaged kids. Oh don’t I know it, the joys of secondary school teaching. Things can only get better…….

Worst behaved students in my class are not sen. And if you had an sen child you'd understand where many of the parents come from, schools persistently fail sen kids abd dying put in place provisions they should.

I'm in education too and I completely agree.

Indeed human guinea pig. Also fed up
of the nice quiet children being placed next to the loud misbehaving children hoping the quiet will rub off.

It doesn’t my child just doesn’t learn as much and comes home complaining that Mercedes gets away with XYZ and got taken out for a gardening session to talk about feelings. Yet she punched one boy at break, told another kid to go die, and stole someone’s lunch… year 3….