What Do You Think Should/Would Happen Here?

[kmo0416]

Imagine this scenario:

A student at a secondary school/Sixth Form was accused of something serious like vandalising property or carrying a weapon and as a result got a week-long detention of 2 hours after school. However, that student was innocent.

The impact of these detentions meant that they were unable to work their part-time job after school from which they earnt £10 an hour.

It is then discovered that they were in fact innocent.

What would usually happen to compensate the student who was wrongfully put in detention and lost money due to a lack of time to work?

Would the school pay the student £140 in lost earnings or could the student sue the school?

If the student sued, would that damage their relationship with the school to such an extent that they would have to leave?

Could they get extra compensation on top of lost earnings due to wrongful detention in general ie a waste of time and deprivation of freedom?

Would these things usually just be resolved by the school apologising and no further action being taken or would the student actually get some form of compensation?

teacher of 20 years. I’ve never heard of compensation (but then I’ve also never heard of 2 weeks of 2 hour detentions)
For anything that serious they would be excluded for between 1-4 days.
Sixthformers seem easier to permanently exclude too. Two have been excluded from my form this year. One for violence and one for bringing in a knife.

The student would be likely to receive an apology, at best. Parents could seek to recover the lost wages in small claims court, but I would imagine the courts would take a dim view. I'd assume there was a reason for the school to assume it was the child in question, perhaps prior behaviour or some other basis. Difficult to say without the details really, but I would be surprised if the school wrongly blamed a student who is well behaved with no prior record of vandalism or carrying weapons.

I don’t think school will compensate the student. And I also think that the battle to get compensation legally will be a long one and will damage the relationship.

That's a very dangerous assumption to make, though - especially as you don't know and have never met the student in question.

Remember: the police often use the exact same "justification' for routinely stopping and searching innocent young black men - they usually cite the supposed 'balance of probability' (i.e. "We are racist") or "He was acting black suspiciously".

If you're innocently you would be stupid to go to the detentions and would go to your job and fight for your innocence during the day.

This. The student needed to fight their corner. Taking the detentions was like an admission of guilt. I don’t think after school detentions are enforcable?

It was probably to avoid getting excluded or something. Generally punishment escalates if you don’t do it.

Yes, this. Everybody would protest their innocence - whether truly or falsely - so they're hardly going to accept your protests of innocence, apologise to you and leave it there.

Frustratingly, it's the sort who do frequently get up to things like this who will be the most vocal about their supposed 'innocence' and the least bothered about defying the punishments.

Plenty of people in a position of authority would just take non-compliance as 'proof' of your guilt and bad character, and would then double down on you.

I highly doubt they'll be willing to pay compensation for the lost wages; but morally, I think they should. I'm sure none of the teachers would happily brush off losing 14 hours of their wages through somebody else's false accusations.

It might not even 'just' be 14 hours of lost earnings, but I also doubt it goes down well with an employer - and your future prospects with them - to just call them at short notice and tell them you can't make it in for a whole week; especially for reasons where it looks like you've done something bad, rather than something like illness.

Why would it be £140 if a week long (5 day) detention. Never heard of any compensation