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...?

I’m with you on this Rabbit.

but then I rarely take excuses like these at face value

Could this be because he thought the girls' lesson sounded more fun so by comparison he felt it was unfair he had to have the boys' lesson?

Did the TA actually say it was a punishment though?

@NImumconfused might be the girls had their period talk... I had mine in year 6 as did my daughter

Sounds exactly as some of us predicted.

Amazing how many posters were ready to go mad at the school though, shows how little trust and respect there is for teachers these days.

Exactly this!

Your update makes absolutely no sense given what you previously said has happened. What does your son say about it?

If the school's story is true, what the fuck kind of school in 2025 decided this was acceptable?!

@htdt, surely you aren't happy with this response?

According to OPs post the TA said her son hadn’t done anything wrong when OP made the query

Why would she say that. It really makes no sense for the TA to allude to a punishment that apparently now didn’t happen 🫤

Nor does it make sense that the girls got the sweats and ice creams but the boys didn’t.
The school sounds terrible

Apparently so. From one of the OP's posts: the TA I spoke to confirmed that the punishment was not meant for him, he just got lumped in with the other boys, as did some other 'nice' boys.

Then you must not have an 11 year old boy because I can quite easily see mine saying this.

It’s obvious their excuse is all a bunch of lies. You only have to piece together what OP could find out last week to see the two don’t stack up at all.

I’ve got three and I can confirm this too!

@Wildflower PHSE puberty lesson is yr 5 these days.

This is the bit bothering me though. If the respect lesson/activities came across wrongly, and as more of a telling off, and the girls also got their SATs reward when separated from the boys... those things could all be genuine mistakes by the teachers and a bit of fuckwittery during a busy week. But if the boys actually spoke up about their perception of the day, and reminded teachers they'd actually had their reward pulled, then they really should have been listened to and the penny should have dropped.

and to add to that
Wouldn't the penny also have dropped when they saw they had 100 melting ice creams and a loud of sweats left over
😱

Well, the back tracking all seems to be by the OP doesn't it?

She seems to have accepted what they said so maybe she just got swept along with the OTT outrage that was whipped up on here the other night.
If she's not angry or upset about it now I'm not sure why strangers on the internet are?

But your son came home upset? And told you all the boys had been told off? And he was punished just because he’s a boy?

But there was actually… no punishment? This isn’t adding up. Is it possible your son just preferred the activity the girls were doing so he’s embellished his story a little to get some sympathy?

We’re all different. Maybe OP feels like she’s making a fuss and doesn’t want to be seen to be rocking the boat.

Personally I feel this is a legitimate query and ultimately worthy of a complaint assuming the TA on Friday wasn’t lying of course and those ice creams and sweats OPs dc saw were actually just a mirage

It is repeated in year 6.

This is the bit that makes it really clear the OP is back peddling.

Maybe there were two things that happened that weren't linked - boys got told off for leaving girls out of football & OP's son wasn't one of these so the TA was right to say he wasn't involved when spoken to.
Then for whatever reason the boys and girls did separate activities for the pm.

The ice creams, well, who knows but it's not that deep if there wasn't a mass punishment issue
Ths might just be a generous teacher / parent buying them out & not communicating that to the other group.

I think it's very likely the 'telling off' and the activities weren't linked.

I don't mean to be back peddling at all, just unsure where to take this now, it's hard to tell someone that there was definitely a 'telling off' when they're saying there wasn't as I wasn't there when it happened. And I didn't mention the TA in my discussion because after all the comments on here I didn't want to end up maybe getting her in trouble!

My son's response has been to look aghast and reel off all the things that were said that he considered a 'telling off', all of which sound awful and I pretty much feel back at square one.

But also my son is much less bothered by this all now he's been back at school and I'm not sure what benefit there will be to pursue it. Although I really would love to know exactly what did happen and was said I'm not sure I'm ever going to.

IMO opinion its not a different point and would paint a much worse picture of the school than we already have.

This whole post is very confusing. Drop feeds of information that are conflicting. We still don’t really know what happened. I think your child overreacted and so did you.

Why don’t you ask some other parents.
Both of boys and girls if you have contact.

That would have been my first port of call tbh