To admire the chutzpah of the Bodmin rebel prom?

[Maverick101]

I keep reading threads on here about British school discipline which make my eyes pop. It feels so phenomenally repressive from the outside.
(It's a couple of decades since I lived in the UK )
So I was heartened to read about the Bodmin College rebel prom.
I realise that there will be both supporters and opponents of the school's position here, but I'm interested to see how this sits with those closer to the action (I'm in Oz)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjqqjx9598do

@shieldmaiden7 is it really too much to suggest your daughter learns not to be rude to people? There are ways to communicate.

I wonder how many secondary school teachers are rolling their eyes at this point?
Poor behaviour in school is a PITA for teachers and students who want to learn. I don’t think some parents realise that the vast majority of kids go through school with very few, if any, behaviour sanctions. Willing to bet my mortgage that a kid doesn’t get in trouble simply for asking a question or asking for equipment. There is always their version and they can really make it sound like the teacher has it in for them. Of course teachers make mistakes but repeated behaviour infringements paint a picture those who work in education recognise.
Teachers are leaving for poor behaviour. It is one of several problems in school right now.

I find the whole thing bizarre. My two DD's proms had nothing to do with the school, the parents and girls organised them themselves. Both in private schools, so perhaps that is why??

Good for them. In that college I would definitely rather go to the rebel prom than the official one. If they haven't got enough places for the whole year group they shouldn't be running a prom at all.

Have you put in a complaint to the governors about the prom and demanded your money back?

With your daughter, you should have had a formal letter about the suspension notifying you of your right to ask the governors to review it. Again, I would suggest that you use it. I think the only way to deal with these ridiculous sanctions is to make the school justify every single one. If the governors keep having to be convened about clearly unjustified suspensions like this they might start taking an interest in the obviously poor management of the school.

Wtf , I booked dsds make up months in advance.

That doesn't make me any particular "kind of parent".

ODFOD. It's normal to make a big thing of make up etc for big occasions like this. The very fact that you make massive assumptions about parenting from that one little point is all too revealing about you.

You can see from this thread that schools award behaviour points for utterly trivial things. Why assume they are automatically in the right?

As for whether it's "just" attendance: have you thought about what that means? If a child is prevented from attending because she is genuinely ill, why should she be deprived of something like this? What if the attendance issue is down to disability? Are you happy with schools breaking the law on disability discrimination?

It's often easy enough to check stories like this because the discipline policies are available online, and some schools have far too rigid policies. Plus how likely is it really that 50% of the relevant year group are all lying?

My eldest is Y11, she says she's glad there are sanctions about going to Prom because it means the troublemakers aren't there. I was quite surprised, as a parent I think the celebration for leaving school should be separate from behaviour at school. There aren't many kids that are excluded though.

I’m on a different thread where I shared how I would never have believed the appalling behaviour in my local primary school if I hadn’t experienced it directly. Swearing at teachers, aggression, 8 year old boys talking about Andrew Tate and making sexual references to girls that they couldn’t possibly have understood. So I kind of understand some secondary schools taking zero tolerance for any issues because I can’t see those children being easier in the classroom by year 9.

However this strict blanket approach is just awful and I imagine well behaved and well intentioned children get caught up in it and detentions and dressing down for trivial things becomes quite wearying and even damaging. Does this environment result in better outcomes for disruptive children? Would love the understand the research.

But on this one - good luck to the rebel prom!

Good for them. I hope they have a way better time.

I can't stand one-size-fits-all school rules. A child carer with medical issues of her own had low attendance - so she's penalised for being ill and looking after her ill parent? What point is the school trying to make?

As for punishing children for forgetting PE kit repeatedly – you might as well say ADHD is unforgivable. I thought we'd moved on from the days when children with processing disorders were alienated by school authorities.

Schools have every right of reply. Where do you get that from? If they had a behaviour problem so major that 50%| of the year group were badly behaved or disruptive they would probably have been closed down by now.

These things become counter-productive anyway. If, say, you automatically lose your place at the prom when your attendance falls below 95%, and you have a chronic or serious condition that means your attendance is inevitably going to be below that level, what incentive do you have to try to attend when you can? Likewise if you automatically lose your place after 5 behaviour points, then it makes no difference if you end up with 50 behaviour points and, again, you stop trying.

We as a school have nothing to do with our students’ prom - they organise everything themselves and we don’t have to worry about supervision of underage drinking…
we see photos and have a leavers celebration on their last day, so we do celebrate with them but it works really well.
’rebel’ proms are nothing new but the insane levels of discipline are

Schools have to write to parents with the reason for suspensions. So it's unlikely to be just the child's version - unless, of course, the school itself is not obeying the law, which is hardly a good look.

At any leavers’ event, in theory all the leavers should be welcome if they want to go, with very rare exceptions. For those who feel the exclusion from Prom is justified because this is also about behaviour points for poor behaviour (rather than just linking attendance to behaviour point), I can confidently guarantee that in many cases the school are not going to be looking closely enough at who gets behaviour points for their actions and why.

I don’t know the stats for kids with difficult life circumstances or for kids affected by ill health of other kinds- but I know that kids with autism and ADHD, which are both common, are evidenced to be more like to be disciplined and excluded from school than others. As well as much more likely not to be in school at all.

When we know the Tories have slashed NHS CAMHS and public services budgets in the face of so much unmet SEND need, this means is a whole cohort of children who are being punished or excluded and failed in the UK. These kids are being treated as though they had way more control and choice over their responses to the mainstream school environment and its pressures, than they actually do have.

A UK leavers’ Prom is not a celebration of an American style pass/fail graduation from high school situation. It’s celebrating that all the kids are imminently no longer going to be secondary school pupils. It is a chance for them to try out some adult conventions like dressing up in formal occasion adult-style clothes or perhaps trying a new haircut and perhaps asking someone along to be a date for the night or whatever it is.

With the important caveat that for safety reasons, if there’s an evidenced risk of danger to other people, and there’s no mitigation available, then kids in that category can’t attend. Or if the individual kid poses such a risk of such significant disruption to the event that the young person being closely supervised can’t mitigate that. Then of course then they can’t attend- but that’s going to be extremely rare. This instances should be a very high bar.

These kids are 16- old enough to make all kinds of huge life decisions. School are key authority figures in kids’ lives and when they wield their power badly (I’m not just talking about prom here) that has huge consequences for how kids engage with authority going forwards.

My child is another one in a behaviour and reward based system who couldn’t attend school frequently or even for the majority of the time this year due to EBSA. This year my DC missed out on school trips and other kinds of in-school rewards due to attendance. What does that say to us about how the school feels about my DC’s massive anxiety affecting every part of her life?
She’s one of the lucky kids who has got a formal diagnosis.The school acknowledges that there isn’t sufficient support for her in mainstream and yet the school still apply their attendance based rewards and sanctions.

I see and hear from other parents of kids with SEND about of so many kids with unmet need at local schools who are dropping out or getting into constant trouble at school. This is not straightforward bad behaviour, this is the reality of chronic government underinvestment in public services. So much unnecessary suffering for kids and their families with unmet need, so many teachers at mainstream schools have their hands tied with hugely inadequate resources to cope with kids’ needs in school. There is then loads of stress if the kids do make it to the classroom due to a massively inflexible curriculum. (Thanks Michael Gove for that).

So as their only option, a lot of mainstream schools are looking to their behaviour policies to address behaviour or absence issues, not their SEND support systems because they have so little resources to call on. It’s a political failure of adults in power ultimately and it’s definitely a voting issue come next month.

Staff should give up their own time in the evening for pupils who have sworn at them, spat at them and assaulted them? (as an example of everyone)

Maybe the answer is that school staff should not run proms. If parents /PTA want one then it should be off site and run by them.

No academies in Wales

Sounds like the right idea

Good for those parents - this sort of exclusion is massively unfair

Journalists get a story. It is a bit boring so they make stuff up to make it more entertaining. We have no idea why those kids weren’t invited to the prom. There was a news story about a school I worked in once(not totally dissimilar to this story). Staff were all told that we must not speak to the press and no one did so the newspapers completely fabricated lots of information to fit their narrative. They would have loved us to contradict it because then they would have actual stuff to write about. Since then I am very sceptical about what I read in the news especially on this kind of thing. School discipline and attendance are a popular theme at the moment so the press will pick up stories on them and make the most of them.

Go the Rebels.

My oldest one has ADHD and he has to be micromanaged to not forget things. I can well imagine situations where this goes awry. Last year I had to spend 3 weeks abroad to see an ill family member and as DH (who was holding the fort at home) also has ADHD things became quite problematic with missing PE kit, and wrong coloured socks. I cannot imagine a school being so inflexible that they can't make adaptations for things like that.

I'm amazed and saddened that so many schools appear to be far more draconian and petty than mine was in the 1970s and how little leeway is given for neurodiversity and life challenges in an age where they are meant to be better understood.

We didn't have prom of course but some celebrations on the last day after O Levels.. The girl who had left early to have a baby was invited back (I also remember big efforts were made for her to be able to sit exams) One of the teachers went to collect her and our class photo has her at the centre holding her newborn. Reading the stories on this thread, I wonder if that would happen today in some of these schools.

This whole conversation saddens me so much. I think many of you need to spend a day in a school - I think you'd be shocked by the behaviour. Of the 240 students in my year there are about 25 really poorly behaved. There are many complex reasons why this is so but they still take up vast amounts of the available resource leaving the 215 students who do the right thing sitting there thinking what's the point.

That's a lovely story about your classmate with her baby.

My school (different country) was pretty draconian. On the last day before exams we all came in wearing colourful ties and got told that if they were not removed by 9 am we would be prohibited from sitting our exams at all. It was a genuine threat and most definitely would have happened. And once I got suspended because I drank from a water fountain that was closest to my classroom (40 degree heat) but was allocated for a different year level- they divided up water fountains and toilets by years. This was in the early 1990s. And when a friend of mine was caught having sex with another student SHE got expelled and he did not. I hate to think how much shame they would have heaped upon a girl who became pregnant.

Fuckers.

I was an arsehole, disruptive, disrespectful kid. I attended 2 months of year 11 in total. I was also undiagnosed ADHD, ASD and reeling from unresolved childhood trauma on a level that made the local press.

Our school in 2002 was an early adopter of the UK prom thing- hair, dresses, limos etc. I did go to prom, there was no question of not going.

I remember prom being weirdly formative. The formerly adversarial teachers were now on a adult to adult level. They weren't invested in me any more, they weren't obligated to do anything for me. I was nothing and it was time for me to move on under my own steam. They weren't playing the cat-and-mouse game any more of rebel-and-sanction, they just didn't care what my choices as an adult were going to be.

It was quite a powerful realisation of my place in the world, my importance and of just how much time I'd wasted. It was a real watershed moment.

I'm not sure if I'd have realised that if I'd not attended. That's why I don't like these moments being taken from the kids. Experiences like this are milestone markers.

The only thing I can compare it to as an adult is being made redundant. Leaving a company not under your own steam but because you're surplus, invaluable, no goodbye and good luck card or well wishes or drinks down the pub. It's invalidating and tells you you are worthless, unworthy. That's the last thing that socially excluded kids, or kids already on the margins of society need to hear.