Unreasonable teacher/school

[DontKeepScratchingIt]

My GD (13) goes to a school rated "needs improvement". It's crap. No other schools are in the area, so a different one would mean getting 2 buses, taking well over an hour. That school is already at full capacity.

Yesterday was the last day of term. The shoes she wears split yesterday (it's a 45 minute walk home), so her dad emailed the school to say he was sending her in trainers, explaining why. Her mum sent the girl with a note, too.

The teacher refused to acknowledge those messages, and instead put my GD in "isolation" for the whole day (2 boys were in isolation for poor behaviour) - so she missed any lessons, but also a little party they had for end of term. AIBU in thinking the teacher was very mean and spiteful?

This was my first thought

If "That's Life" was still on, the school would win a "Jobsworth" award. ie. "It's more than my job's worth to make an exception." Instead of using common sense.
I wish it was still on actually. It was good.
"Sausages!"

YANBU it's ridiculous. My son had the same thing a few days before the end of term where he came home with shoes almost completely split down one side. I rang the school and spoke to the receptionist explaining what has happened and that we'd be sending him into school with his smart and completely black nike trainers. They said of course, no problem. Within a few minutes of being in school a teacher clocked his trainers and marched him to the school office, he had to wear a spare pair of very tatty school shoes they dug out of the lost property box and he got a 'de-merit'. He didn't get put in isolation of course but it was very petty, swapping his decent smart trainers for scuffed up shoes. I haven't complained as it's not a major deal for us, but it's just unreasonable.

That is not ok! I'm a teacher, I noticed one of my pupils shoes had seen better days and he told me the Velcro had given up so they kept coming loose when he was playing, so wrote a note in his book to say not to worry and to send him in trainers for the rest of the term (2 weeks to go).

Just imagine if the kids in school could...shock horror...wear whatever shoes they liked and were comfortable in?
All these hours of missed class, inspecting people's shoes and clothing, sending people to isolation, forcing school issue clothing on people, staff meetings with kids and parents, all wasted time when they could be actually learning.
Luckily there are quite a few good schools in my area that don't do uniforms, but it's very rare.
It often seems the stricter the uniform, the more unruly the kids?!

Ay my DD's secondary your shoes could be stolen by bandits or you could get knocked over by an articulated lorry and your shoes knocked into a ditch and you will go in isolation for having no shoes.

It's so that no decision has to be made about whether your reasons are better or worse than the next person's reason. That's where the trouble begins.

That's unnecessarily shitty really. DD2's shoes died about 2 days before payday at the end of a really financially crap month - we messaged school and explained we would replace at the weekend and they were absolutely fine with it - told us not to worry as it was only a month till the end of the school year so if we needed to do it in trainers not to stress.

The crappest schools often tend to be the most ridiculous about uniform though - so it's obviously really sorting out standards while the kids are rioting in the corridors but correctly attired in the exact correct shade of blazer with wanky trim.

Rules and policies only work if they are reasonable, sensible and implementable.

Children should be raised to develop critical thinking skills and to be able to make the right decisions. They should be able to join the dots and make sensible choices.

Blindly following rules does not do this. Rules are in places generally to set the standards and to provide a basis to live by. It doesn’t necessarily mean every single person has to adhere to every single rule 100% of the time.

It’s the last day of the school year and the child’s only pair of shoes have been destroyed. Do you think it’s sensible to send them in wearing the destroyed shoes? Do you think “following the rules” should come before a child’s comfort and safety? Do you think it is such a violation that the child takes with them a note explaining the situation and wears other available footwear?

It might well be that your DGD did turn up wearing trainers on the last day of term only, in which case most schools would probably let her wear her trainers for a day, seems totally reasonable.

But - could it be possible that she's arrived wearing her trainers more than once? You might be surprised how many students do. Like the poster above I deal with this every day, day in day out - students and parents who "just this once" want to wear their trainers/piercings/lashes/nails/ hoodies- it goes on and on. If they take them off when requested- no problem at all, but if they refuse - sanction.

It never ceases to amaze me how every parent when asked always wants their child to attend a school which is strict, has rules/ standards of behaviour (to keep their child safe) etc. but then how many of the same parents also don't want their child to have to follow those rules and standards.

If parents no longer want uniformed schools in the UK they need to start lobbying to get rid of them, and that's fine, but don't sign up to a school with strict standards and then moan about them.

Not school but work. The dress code included no wearing of trainers. I was recovering from a broken foot and could only wear high top trainers which my line manager said was OK. Maybe she should have said no and put me on a warning for wearing them. Teacher was being petty. It was the last day of term and I'm sure they weren't doing a lot. Our last day of term was always a half day.

That is completely insane.

No rational human being, child or adult, is going to wear random shoes offered to them by the school.

YABVU. I have seen this in one school, and it was horrific, children who couldn't lift their feet up all day because shoes were too big, so they had to just slide their feet, children putting on shoes that hadn't been cleaned since the last child had bled in them a week earlier, children getting horrific blisters from shoes the right size but the wrong width, and never mind the worries about verrucas and athletes foot.

This is a disgusting and inhumane practice, and I did hope the school I saw it in was the only one. I resigned from that school having seen a child who had been forced to flee to a refuge the night before being forced to hobble around in ill fitting shoes rather than being allowed to stary in the trainers they had run away in, even for one day.

Barbaric.

I do hope you are from the school that I resigned from, otherwise it means that there is more than one school forcing children to do this.

My children's school would never have done this, thank God, but if this had been the practice, I would have instructed my children not to accept any shoes to wear from the school. I would be failing as a parent to allow them to

My boy's school were draconian about shoes, pens, facing front, no labels, only leather footwear, and they've just been put into special measures, with an absolutely damning ofsted report.

It says the children show little respect for the teachers, and the teachers shoe little respect for the pupils.

I can understand this though, as I'm sure the worse schools have a higher proportion of badly behaved children who are always trying to break the rules and probably need to learn not to do that. In your case OP, the school sounds very mean and unreasonable

Just as an aside comment, My GD's head of year told the class she's bisexual (that's entirely a personal thing and has nothing to do with anyone, least of all a class of 13 year olds)

@missedmyappointment I happen to agree with you actually. I was just pointing out in school that often it isn’t about the shoes that have led to isolation. As it happens we only give out brand new pairs and have hundreds of these. However, I actually think this is a total waste of money and kids should be allowed to wear whatever shoes they like. I’m a teacher and I hate the current way behaviour systems are going.

That wasn't the case with my GD. Parents were unwilling and unable to buy new school shoes for 1 day. She wears the correct uniform all the time.

That really is a completely unreasonable and unworkable suggestion. Of course there have to be rules. I visited a school in Canada which had no uniform, and what shoes children were wearing dominated the whole school day. There were colours and combinations of colours of laces that denoted gang allegiance and far right politics, there were girls in heels that were disabling them for life, there were boys in trainers worth thousands, getting attacked for them on the way home, and the staff spent more time dealing with footwear related incidents than they did teaching, 100x more than happens in a UK school. They changed the rules. It was still a non uniform school, for everything except shoes. Strict rules were introduced about what foot wear could be worn, and school returned to concentrating on learning rather than shoes.

Obviously, there have to be rules about shoes, and where ever you set the bar it will take time and energy to maintain it. But obviously, there needs to be a kind and reasonable policy about what to do when a child's shoe breaks, too

Difficult to comment without full context

Sometimes schools keep a supply of donated spare shoes to wear for the day but kids refuse to wear them.

At my school there were dozens of pupils whose trousers had all split/tore overnight so they all came in with notes about needing to wear leggings ( which are banned). At this point turning a blind eye was not really an option.

Complain to The Head. CC Governors

It's unreasonable, but if I knew the school was that strict, I would've gaffertaped the shoes together for the day tbh.

NO, there really isn't anything more to that.

Among the things happening at that school -

A Head of Year telling the kids she's bisexual
One Maths lesson was 4 sums then "quiet reading" whilst the teacher was on his mobile 'phone all lesson
A couple of P.E. lessons which consisted of the kids walking around the playground again and again for an hour.
A boy (13) being allowed to wear a skirt every day as he "identifies as being a girl"
A boy in the class throwing a chair at a teacher but not being disciplined.

I'm talking about ONE occasion, which was the last day of term

Why would anyone wear shoes offered by a school? Are they even new at least?

Why would parents who can afford school shoes and know the uniform policy buy air force trainers and send them in wearing them? Schools buy shoes and other items of uniform to help out struggling families but also to ensure kids whose parents delight in not supporting school can be in their lessons. Some of these parents refuse to wear school bought shoes but also refuse to buy shoes themselves. Not because they can't afford to but because they don't want to.

In this case the school's seems to have been inflexible and harsh but as a general point a lot of parents do not do what they should to support the school.

You are not doing yourself any favours here. I was very much on your side before, but now I feel like you are just being vindictive.

Head of year being openly bisexual? How is this any worse than anyone being openly straight? Or being openly married, or openly single? As many teachers are, simply by being Miss, or Mrs, or wearing a wedding ring. How helpful to other LGB children to have role models of people being open about their sexuality.

Teacher on phone all lesson? How do you know what was going on? Might very well be teacher trying to deal with IT outage that was preventing him/her access to the lesson they had set up _ I've been in this position many times, school IT can be crap, but we still are required to set lessons up on it. Maybe it wasn't even a teacher, but someone who had other urgent work they needed to be getting on with, but agreed to do it in a maths lesson so that the class did not need to be sent home for lack of teacher - I have been in that position too. Maybe the teacher was dealing with an emergency hospital consultation and a phone consultation can come at any time in the day, and you might have to drop everything and be available to fill forms in and answer questions. I was informed I had cancer during a year 7 lesson, but carried on, and was told to fill in immediately required forms during a year 9 lesson, and would have lost the operation slot if I hadn't. Would you have preferred I took the whole day off to wait for phone calls at home, leaving all my classes without a teacher?

Kids walking around the playground during a PE lesson - well, it depends on the supply teacher, doesn't it. If they are not PE trained, then they would not be insured to allow children to run.

A boy being allowed to wear a skirt? Who is that hurting? presumably girls are allowed to wear trousers. It is normal for either sex to be allowed to wear either uniform, in fact it is likely to be illegal to prevent it

A boy throwing a chair at a teacher but not being disciplined? You have no idea ho that was dealt with, or what the consequences are. It would break GDPR rules to tell you, or your grand daughter.

You seem to have no idea of the problems schools face, and how they have to deal with them. Most schools are chronically under staffed, and most of these situations arise from simply not having enough teachers. Many of these things are going on in many schools all around the country. If you have any suggestions of how to do better, with such a shortage of teachers, I would like to hear them