After school detention

[Lonnie]

My 12 year old has just arrived home with an after school detention.

Now putting aside any personal issues I have with detention (I dont believe they are a good way to deal with these things but stikcing a pin in that)

My daughter goes to a school that is 20 mins drive away the school bus leaves the school at 3.05pm the detention ends at 3.30. I do not feel it is acceptable that the school expects me to be able to collect her at a time where they have not checked that I am available (as it is I am not on this day because I have 2 other appointments that I am at a stretch to make as it is) the only other way my daughter would have to get home would involve her walking on her own for 20 minutes and then taking the train having to change once again not something I am comfortable with my 12 year old doing on her own.

the other issue in this and that is actually what grates me the most is the reason she has been given a detention is because she has not done her home work (it says in awful almost non comprehensable handwriting even after extention) now usually I would be very well why didnt you do that but in this particular case it is over a piece of computer homework that was saved as a pub file. We do not own publisher in our home it is a £150 piece of soft ware that we have not felt was in our means to buy. Upon telling the school this the first time they simply said they would look into it, nothing was done the 2nd time we told dd1 to get them to print it out for her so she could get it home to do she got told go to the libary, libary says that they cant print out A3 pieces, leaves dd1 again to go to her teacher whom printed out some but not all and dd1 did some of the other stuff on the school computer however you can only book 2x 15 mins sessions of this time and it was not enough for her to get it finished.

now am I unresonable in feeling

1 the detention is wrongly given and that the school is in the wrong?

2 that it is unresonable to expect me to be able to rearrange my schedule (something I cant for that Thursday) to come and collect her (They do lunch time detentions too)

and lastly 3 to out right feel that once the school bell goes at 3.00 then the school has no say in what happens to my child.

It was a bit of a durr-brained question, madhairday.

That's a good point, Riven.

Does Open Office (free) have a 'version' of Publisher?

We have open office and don't have publisher and it does play havoc with formatting.

We have the student version of office, the one with publisher was more expensive and it is a basic version.

'we used to have microsoft word but no longer do. No idea how it vanished though. Way too technical for me.'

That has happened to us as well riven you'll probably have the discs to reinstall it somewhere that's what I had to do after it was fixed last time.

i really don't think i could say as i don't know that your dd's teacher isn't an unreasonable tw@t. i do know that there were plenty of 'good' children who failed to get their homework done due to prioritising time spent gossiping with their mates - 12 year olds have alot going on in their lives at school concerning friendship groups etc so didn't always get hw done for various spurious reasons.

i cannot believe there is not a single teacher in that school that would not have helped sort this problem out so that she didn't get the detention.

i think it is far more LIKELY that she didn't get herself sorted out.

i do think that a publisher hw is a difficult particularly as she doesn't have access to it at home.

so, really unhelpfully, i don't know if yabu or not

i agree that hw should be acceptable done in pen/paper but schools are under alot of pressure to show 'ICT across the curriculum' SNORE so the teacher may only be doing what she/he is told iyswim.

First is the detention acceptable?
Possibly not, if the publisher issue is true - but what did other children do? If they managed to complete the homework and your DD didn't then detention is correct IMO.

secondly - it should be after school to make it a genuine punishment - but you could probably ask the school to change the day.

Most schools do outline their policy on homework and detention upfront so you should have been aware of their position.