School's punishment of all boys in year 6

[htdt]

My son is in Year 6 and has done SATS this week, today was meant to be a fun day for them as they've finished all the papers.

But my son came back from school really upset as the teachers had separated the girls and boys and he says the girls got to do fun activities and given treats but the boys got told off and given a lesson on respect.

He's taken this badly and has said things like 'I must be bad because I'm a boy'.

It's such a shame because he's worked really hard and was otherwise enjoying SATS week, but now feels horrible about himself, the teachers who told them off and the girls getting rewarded when all the boys were punished.

I feel like I need to speak to the school next week and find out what's gone on and why. I also feel like making a complaint. But I'm not sure what they are going to do to make things better even if they did agree with me that it was not a great way to deal with some boy's bad behaviour and also very bad timing so should I just forget about it...?

Jog on then

just I'm a teacher & I felt a bit shit with the "lazy" remark, that's all

It’s not teachers that are lazy. It’s a large chunk of parents.

As I said kids are in primary for 7 years. The age bracket 9-11 includes the summer before year 6 and year 7 when the majority get them. Those that get them before in primary are also quite heavily monitored.

Loving the way primaries are expected to sort out all the pressures of the world whereas high schools are “ doing their best”.😂

oh jaysus @Riaanna step carefully here 😆Can we all just agree it's the kids?

To be fair teachers that don’t unpick, just punish entire groups and don’t even bother speaking to parents over something so serious are being lazy.

It's not the kids fault they are being given access to the internet by their parents, it's also not their fault that they are being raised with so much toxic masculinity around them that interventions like this are needed.

I think this should be part of PHSE - teaching them about the dangers of this behaviour. It's terrifying to think of these young boys being radicalised, I have a son who is so loving and respectful at the moment, I have taught him about feminism and equality and men's role in that, but it's so addictive to be angry and blame others and driven by peer pressure.

It sounds like he attended the ‘life’s not fair’ lesson. Everyone’s been there. I got detention for not finishing cross country within a certain time, despite injury. I negotiated my way out of the class detention with the teacher. Teach your son to have adult conversations when he feels he‘s been wronged. And teach him about being judged by the company you keep. Clearly, a significant portion of the boys behaviour fell below the standard expected. They all needed a lesson in respect. He can hold his peers to a higher standard if he doesn’t like it.

He’s going to secondary school in September, and will likely get the odd detention that’s unfair.

My comment was aimed at lazy teachers who cba dealing with issues, it happens in all schools.

Not all teachers, which is why I made a point of not saying "all"

So if you're not one of those, then please don't feel shit.

Worth factoring in that exclusion-by-gender works both ways at this age. One of my sons was / is a quiet gentle personality who doesn't like football at all. He struggled a bit socially in Yr 5 / 6 because almost all the boys were off playing football, but the girls just wanted to hang out with girls (he would have happily hung out with them). It never entered my head to demand they be punished though, and absolutely not collectively.

Also football leads to plenty of exclusion of boys. My youngest (Yr5) often feels left out because it's dominated by a small clique of boys who are very into it and have zero patience with kids they perceive as less good.

Boys do not hold the power at primary school. Primary school works in favour of girls, boys get significantly worse results than boys throughout education. Something is going very wrong for boys at school. Coupled with appalling mental health and suicide rates in men later on we are failing boys somewhere down the line.

I'm defiantly not a NAMALT person, but we are talking about CHILDREN, mostly prepubesent children. If we teach boys that they are inherently bad because they are boys, we can't be surprised when they then grow up to be bad. The attitude of some people towards young boys is part of the problem, just look at all the gender disappointment threads on here, they are always about boys.

But we don't know for sure that it was an actual punishment. It was a lesson around respect for women and girls by the sound of it - why is that a bad thing? I wouldn't complain if my son attended and he's nothing like that.

We also don't know for sure that the girls got treats and fun activities as OPs so wasn't there, so until we know more facts, I don't think we can say the boys were punished surely? At the moment it just sounds like they were segregated to teach a lesson at school.

Oh god this was a discussion earlier adjacent, no drama, let's all be cool

Look everything is awesome.. let's Lego the shit out of it!

If I knew for a fact that my son hadn't been involved in the reason they were being punished, and it seems you've had it confirmed, then yes I'd by speaking to the school and explaining you're really not happy about the approach they took. I've never agreed with whole group punishment when only a few are the culprits, it's very unfair.

Does anyone genuinely think it was an effective lesson though.

Nah I'm too lazy for lego 🤣

🤝

We don’t know that it was a lesson around respect or that the boys weren’t punished- at all.

It’s a bad thing when kids have been pushed to the limits for the good of the school for several weeks and then miss out on the reward purely because of their sex, even when they haven’t done anything as voiced by school staff.

don't stand on it just sing "everything is awesome"

Also primary schools are pretty much entirely staffed by women.

We don't know that is actually what happened though, do we?

Maybe the OP will come back next week with full details once she's spoken to the class teacher/Head.

But your comment about "turning on the water works" is insulting, quite frankly.

This!

Wasn’t my comment. Quite frankly some of the comments on here re boys are insulting.

I don't know what was taught so I have no idea.