Son and detention

[QuaintJadeFox]

Wondered if I can get some perspective please. My son started secondary school on Thursday in year 7.

After his first day he came home saying he’d had a good day, but in the evening when I noticed I had an email saying he had a detention for the next night (Friday) after school for 45 minutes. I was shocked given it was his first day and asked him what had happened. He said that when he went to into his last lesson of the day, which was directly after lunch, as he was walking into the lesson his teacher said ‘you need to tuck your shirt in, that’ll be a detention next time’. He apologised and tucked his shirt in.

He is adamant that this is exactly what happened and the detention is logged as ‘uniform’, as posed to ‘behaviour’, so I’m pretty sure there was nothing else to it.

I sent the school an email on the Thursday evening asking for clarification and told my son to speak to his form teacher the next day. However he didn’t speak to the form teacher (his form teacher didn’t mention it to him either), as he felt too shy and embarrassed and as he had no idea where the detention was and left school on Friday without attending the detention! I then had an email saying that on Monday he had a 90 minute detention on Monday, but no reply to my original email.

I completely appreciate he shouldn’t have walked out on Friday without going to the detention and should have spoken to his form teacher, but he is only 11 and feeling a bit vulnerable at a new school.

Can I get some ideas about how I should handle this please. Thank you…

This is absolutely ridiculous, please can we have an update tomorrow OP as I’m expecting the school to apologise to your son! This is something that could cause real stress and anxiety to someone who’s just started year 7, especially if they’re a little nervous as well. Not a good start for him and completely unnecessary!

I disagree with this. He’s only on Year 7. First day and now first week. He cannot be expected to be proactive. Although I do agree that he should try to be and needs to start to try to do that… My son has just gone into Year 9 and gets on at school, does well, is a pretty confident person etc but he’s not proactive at school. He won’t ask teachers for lost property or if he has a problem or needs help during class. I assume your son doesn’t want to be the one to ask. I think asking his tutor about detention on as second morning would have probably been embarrassing and your son probably doesn’t want to stand out. He clearly won’t be confident or knowledgeable about all the rules. He won’t know where all the buildings and rooms are so probably wouldn’t even know where detection was. For everything else, they’ve got a whole class going to the same lessons together. They work it out together or have help. For one person knowing where to go, it’s much more difficult. He might not even know many people in his class. Maybe one person from primary who he may or may not be particular friends with. So few peers to ask about. And again he’s likely not wanting to stand out as “that boy who got detection on the first day”.

I think you made a bit of a mistake (which you probably have realised in hindsight) but you are new to this too. I think you should have phoned the school the next day to rather than email particularly as the day progressed and you hadn’t had a reply. Reception would have put you through to their Head of Year 7.

i think it’s very reasonable for a parent to get a full explanation of why detection was issued on the first day when you say your son was compliant after being told about his shirt. Say you might not have the whole story. From the comment your son made, it sounds as if he’s got a strict teacher who is stressing he is boss and his word goes from the start. Totally unnecessary about something so minor on day one with a Year 7 in my opinion. I would be asking that it all be scrapped or that he does lunchtime detection. I would be saying that whilst my son knows consequences happen, I would be saying I wouldn’t want him doing 90 minute after school detection for this. I would say if he gets lunchtime detection again and doesn't attend, then fair enough. I bet the teacher has got a reputation for doing this and the Head of Year know this. I would be asking for a bit of leniency in this case.

As others have said a lot of schools are incredibly strict on uniform which includes have shirts tucked in. However you would hope that most staff are reasonable and wouldn’t apply detection on their first day. Even if they are setting the standards! It could be a mistake on their first system. As you say it could have escalated due to a comment or having his shirt untucked again, or there being more to it. You might not have the whole story.

Slightly different, but my son got lunchtime detection once and it was escalated to after school detection. We were struggling to understand why. I phoned school and it turned out that they hadn’t ticked his name off when he attended lunchtime detection so they thought he’d missed it. Once I phoned, the after school detection was taken off the system.

it could be an error too in that it went in the system as lunchtime detection rather than a warning. Could be a new member of staff not knowing the system and clicking on the wrong thing. It could be anything but it seems incredibly harsh for this to result in a 90 minute after school detection resulting after his first day for something very minor (if it was just an untucked shirt) especially if he tucked it in again.

Is there a parents Facebook page for the school you could join? Ask for comments on there perhaps anonymously? There’s a lot of comments on our group about untucked shirts etc. Some shirts come untucked when the kids just stand up and then sit back down if they’re short shirts!

I hope you sort it out. Reassure your son. I’m sure you have but he will likely be worried.

Wow! Way to go school - not! Because a tucked in shirt impacts so much on learning… So glad mine don’t go to a draconian institution like this.

I think you are right to seek clarification on this before he attends a detention.

If it is the case that the school have put him in detention for this then I think that you have to be realistic about the school's rules. Tell him in future that he needs to keep his head down and not attract any attention to himself and to have realistic expectations of his teachers. Look for other ways to work on his wellbeing outside of school. Some schools have very strict rules these days and you can't change them.

Oh, FFS. A school can set expectations perfectly well whilst being lenient on a pupils' first day at school. Likewise, it's literally the job of busy teachers to help Year 7s settle in, and to realise that for varying reasons not all will ask about where they are going. I don't think any teacher can really claim they care about children if this is the sort of starting school experience they are giving them.

i fully expected from the title of your post for this to be yet another teacher bashing thread and usually I would defend the school for having high standards but to give a year 7 a dt in their first week for a small uniform infringement is really poor form. Way to put the kid off school!! Definitely phone and ask to speak to the head of year 7 on Monday. I imagine this will be swiftly resolved.

This sounds more like an admin issue. C was logged and admin team have issued detention, then issued second detention.

op, what location does the dt say? Is it in the teacher’s classroom or a central location like the school hall?

I would tell them outwith achool
hours is not acceptable. What they do within school time for discipline is up to them. Not this example which you should challenge. But moving forward anything else would still be a no. They do not get my child after school hours. My son’s school sent me an email saying they were giving him an after school detention for incomplete homework. I told them no they weren’t. He needs to get the bus home and it’s too far to walk with no pavements in a rural village. So entirely unreasonable and a safeguarding concern if they don’t let the child go home as normal on the only bus that goes to the village. Schools are ridiculous with some of their demands. This seems another example.

So you will have another 4+ years of this shit. Check school behaviour policy and uniform bollocks - usually a warning is given before a detention? I mean at this rate if they keep adding on the hours he'll be taking a fucking sleeping bag and stopping the night. Get on the phone on Monday and find out if computer has made an error or if petty dictator really does start as he means to go on.

Way too harsh if it happened as he says it did. The school should have responded to clarify as well. Those saying he should have sorted it out himself by speaking to his form tutor or someone have forgotten how intimidating it is to start a new school. I have a pretty confident boy and he still struggled to sort these kinds of issues out on his own for the best part of a year after he moved up to secondary amd found his feet.

I'm glad we're out the other side of stupid school rules now. On DD's first week at secondary her entire sports kit was stolen and she was threatened with a detention for not having it 🙄That needed a visit to the school office by DH to sort out as they refused to listen to or believe DD. First of all they just said oh well just pick up some stuff from lost property, but DH said no, this was all new labelled sports kit, and miraculously the school found it all by the end of the day and returned it to DD. No apology though.

DD's friend was threatened with a detention on the first day because their sports socks were allegedly too long. Ridiculous rules that don't have any relevance to education imo.

Better get used to it, high schools rule with fear these days. They hand detentions and impact/isolation out for everything. And they don't like you questioning them either. They have pulled my son aside just before going into an exam and basically told him to tell me to stop emailing because they won't change the outcome of a wrongful impact.

All the schools have roughly the same rules. My kids school were fine with this & only one of my three children ever got a detention, which he had at lunchtime.

too much emphasis on school uniforms, having your shirt tucked in bares no relation to whether you are learning.

So agree, school uniform is not relevant to learning.

All this crap from posters saying, 'choose a different school if you don't like it'. There are no other schools, most have draconian shit like this. We have an education system not fit for purpose - stupid rules, outdated curriculum and no funding. What fucking impact on learning is there with not having a shirt tucked in? You could always sew him in for the winter OP, though he might have a few problems come PE.

St Paul’s Girls has no uniform and is the second top performing school in the country I think.

Camden Girls' School is also very high performing and has no uniform.

The very fact you found out via email and not your child tells you everything you need to know - your child didn’t tell you the truth about what exactly happened. Teachers do not want to spend 45 mins extra with a kid because their shirt is untucked. Come on!

Just to say OP found out I think on the school portal (I may be wrong but pretty sure), she them asked her son what happened. She was confused as to why something minor on the 1st day got a detention and wanted to know the full story from the school. She sent an email to the HOY I think, and got no response. OP has said she'll keep an open mind, as you are right there's the possibility her son is lying or missing bits out of the story.

I’m a secondary school teacher and, as a general rule, I absolutely agree with you. However, giving a child a detention on their first day in school for an untucked shirt (if the uniform is a bit too big, this happens very easily and they’ve got so much else to think about on their first day!) is so over the top, it’s ridiculous. The teacher set the expectation appropriately - ‘next time it will be a detention’ is totally fair, clear and sets the expectations out from the beginning - but has somehow managed to then award a detention anyway, perhaps accidentally / in auto-pilot mode.

OP, I’d follow this up, assuming your son is otherwise likely to be a ‘good kid’ - be careful about how you discuss it with him though and be sure to emphasise that he has got a few things wrong here, which is understandable but shouldn’t be repeated. If you have any doubts that he might end up being ‘one of those kids’, then just think carefully about how you best support him and build a positive relationship with the school to get their support for him to make the right choices from the beginning.

But you wouldn’t go home and necessarily tell your parent that your shirt came untucked and a teacher pointed out to you! Her son was not made aware of the [ridiculous] consequence.

Most secondaries run whole school detentions, with senior and middle leaders taking it in turns to run the detention, therefore that teacher will not personally be spending extra time with the child!

Have a re-read of the post I am replying to. I said earlier that I’d never give a sanction for a minor uniform lapse-and the situation described by the OP would never have happened in any school I’ve taught at.

Exactly! I’m fully prepared to support the school but this is ridiculous as fair as I’m concerned. He’s said tonight that all weekend when he’s seen his blazer it’s made him feel sick with worry for Monday. Honestly that’s can’t be right for not having a shirt tucked in can it! I am going to call them tomorrow! X

He didn’t refuse though, he immediately apologised and tucked the shirt in!

Thanks everyone for your comments and support.

I wish I’d called on Friday but I am going to call first thing tomorrow and will update.

I’m as sure as I can be that he’s telling the truth as I have spoken to him about it tonight and told him to tell me now if it didn’t pan out as he said and he is adamant that he just apologised and tucked it in (to be honest he was so nervous for his first day I find it hard to believe he didn’t). Also it’s not logged under behaviour on the portal, it’s under uniform.

Oh well - we’ll see and thanks so much everyone for taking time to comment! So much appreciated xx