Sick and tired of this... [sad]

[DemiLee33]

Hello everyone and thanks for listening.

I am at breaking point with my son's secondary school teachers/policies.

For I.E for ridiculous, unwarranted punishments.
Detentions for not having a pen or a shirt untucked.
Most good students in secondary schools are in I.e at least once within their first 2 years of starting. Most students have had at least 10 detentions by the time they have completed year 8.

Once again I have been in meetings, lodged complaints, cried on the phone to them. My son has cried and is so low in mood now because he feels beaten down by them. I have had 2 teachers admit to me that a lot of 'normal' 'good' kids are in i.e or on report.

Their policies are awful! Nationwide, secondary schools are so extreme with their punishments for such ridiculous, unwarranted reasons. Some schools have even started saturday morning detentions!!
I am so tired of not having my voice heard. Anyone else feeling like this? I have started up a fb group to vent about this and it may take off it may not. I have emailed relevant organisations and lodged complaints but these schools are a law unto themselves.

Sorry for moaning
xx

Dear god oliversmumsarmy you are either Michael Gove, Damian Hinds, or just very very thick. How on earth can you not know there is a gigantic funding crisis for schools

The comparison of your friend renting out her driveway is ludicrous.

I say this as a parent, not a teacher btw.

But from what I understand you aren’t going to profit as you need the money for the shortfall.

The school still gets a certain amount per pupil anyway and extra if they have an SEN

I still think that testing children and giving them a few separate lessons each week would help enormously.

Couldn’t the extra money be pooled so that 7 pupils instead of getting a one to one for 10 minutes each day/week get an hour in a group each day/week

Less disruption just having 1 class missed completely by a few pupils rather than the constant getting up and leaving and returning during an ongoing lesson which was what Ds witnessed

Dd in her dyslexia classes liked the fact that she was with others who knew what she was going through and they helped each other not to feel so isolated and gave each other tips on how they worked through things.

Ds otoh did feel like he was the only one with his type of problems but because he was not tested he couldn’t access any help and even the help on offer seemed to be just 10minutes a couple of times per week.

Isolation is a quiet room so no talking.

No, you imagine that isolation is a quiet room so no behaviour conversations can take place. But you have no actual experience of what actually goes on in them.

pupils with SEN attract a higher premium from the government

Nope. Only in exceptional circumstances.

schools should be proactive in...

Patronising. You clearly have no idea what’s going on in schools, you don’t know how the SEN budget works, you don’t know what jobs might involve, you don’t know how much funding schools receive and yet you reckon that schools are bitching about nothing when it comes to funding.

All while sending your DD to a private school where per pupil funding is at least a third higher, so you have zero skin in the game.

The school still gets a certain amount per pupil anyway and extra if they have an SEN

Don’t you think that every kid in the country would end up diagnosed with an SEN if that were actually true?

And it's not that children 'cant be bothered' to bring a pen. How would that even work?? It's that they FORGET. Teenagers forget loads. Especially those with dyslexia. They shouldn't be punished for forgetting.

DD had 2 pencils. Both had snapped leads. She had no sharpener. She got a detention. That does not foster respect and trust in teachers/schools. It just makes pupils and parents think 'what a dick'

People forget. I’m very forgetful. So they need to foster strategies to help. Check bag the night before.
Students need to arrive ready to learn.

DD had 2 pencils

why would you send your kid to school with just two pencils and no sharpener and no other writing implement? Why don't kids ask to borrow each others when they're walking between lessons? Seriously none of this is rocket science. Buy pencil case. Fill with lots of pens and pencils, sharpener, calculator etc.

Less disruption just having 1 class missed completely by a few pupils rather than the constant getting up and leaving and returning during an ongoing lesson which was what Ds witnessed

This must have been a while ago. No funding for anything like this anymore.

And it's not that children 'cant be bothered' to bring a pen. How would that even work?? It's that they FORGET.
They openly tell me they can't be bothered. Are you really saying the same student "forgets" a pen every day?

teachermaths

Well, to be honest, I think every time you forget these things, you should be punished and be denied a break. "But it's not intentional!" you will cry. Indeed, it's not. Make a list so you do remember. Any other arguments are frankly irrelevant.

Now who's to say your pupil has intentionally forgotten their pen? See how unfair this is? Why do we take your argument 'I'm only human ' and not the teen's? They're also human. The only difference is that they can be bossed around and an adult cannot.

I agree with a pp that gratuitous punishments like this erode respect rather than inspire it.

The money they could have made would have been huge if the guy had been selling parking spaces at even just £5 per day.
Would have paid for his yearly wage and a bit more.

Erm. You don't think there might be a few issues with various randoms walking & driving round the school grounds?

who's to say your pupil has intentionally forgotten their pen?

I teach kids who never have a pen. Do you think that they are starting out each day with ‘must remember to put my pen in my bag’ and then get to school and ‘oh no not AGAIN’.

What is in their minds? Do you think they are really unable to accept that they should have a pen and pencil case? Or are they doing it to wind their teachers up? Do they really not have any pens at home? Do they do it to try to get out of doing any work?

Would it be better if they kept some pens at school, if their life is so chaotic?

Oh Purple you just lack imagination. Look at that canteen not being used while pupils are in lessons, why isn’t that being used as a public cafe to raise funds? Classrooms that are not in use for particular lessons could be hired out as meeting rooms.

I think it might be impossible to use school rooms or land for other uses because of safe guarding.

In the past, this was not considered such a problem. And evening classes etc tended to happen when there were no pupils about.

I think some schools do share use of some facilities though - e.g. swimming pools...

Do kids still do textiles &/or resistant materials or did Gove nobble those completely? They could sew mail bags or stamp licence plates or something.

Erm. You don't think there might be a few issues with various randoms walking & driving round the school grounds

The way the car park was set up it was separate to the school.

Can’t think there /would have been any issues with safe guarding as other schools rent out rooms.

May be I don’t know how schools work but when you see an empty car park with a car park attendant wandering round it telling people they can’t park and within walking distance there is a railway station and it’s over flowing car park and being told their is no money to test my child for dyslexia. Even offered to pay myself (school has to say there is a problem to start the ball rolling) but again I was told it didn’t work like that.

After school we travelled to other schools to do ECAs in their classrooms and halls

Ds’s school wouldn’t rent out a square inch.

From someone looking in from outside there was so much untapped potential

Dd might have gone to a private school but Ds did go to a few state secondary’s so I did have skin in the game

I could see how different schools operated.

Friends dds state school was rented out as a film set in the holidays.

FWIW Dd set off for school with 10 pens which she managed to lose all 10 before first break.

Not because she wanted to push the boundaries but because it is part of her SEN

Punishment, lists and training exercises are never going to get her to remember. Part of her diagnosis.

purple Reminds me of that episode of Yes Prime Minister where he’s visiting a school where the kids make stools and benches in DT and sell them to raise funds but then it turns out all the wood was stolen from a YTS workshop.

I teach in a portakabin. There are holes in the walls. The tops of the desks are held onto the legs by ancient chewing gum. You are never more than a foot from a hand-drawn penis.

Please PM me if you would like to hire it as a film set.

you are never more than a foot from a hand-drawn penis

Or a 🐀. Scuttling noisily under the floorboards, or gently & malodorously rotting under them with all its mates if the exterminators have been in recently.

Can't beat a portakabin in June .

Another missed opportunity, you should have trained them to do tricks and formed a travelling circus in the holidays.

Don’t forget teachers are well used to patronising suggestions about how to solve the school funding crisis (without funding schools properly). The governments’ own advisors made suggestions like cutting lunch portions, having massive classes in the dinner hall and siphoning off money raised for charity. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3546753-Schools-told-to-cut-costs-by-reducing-lunch-portion-sizes-and-taking-money-raised-for-charity

On funding, this might be interesting:
schoolcuts.org.uk

And then factor cuts to enhanced services which schools have to compensate for, cuts to social services and early family support so some schools are funding their own family/parent support workers, cuts to CAMHS so schools are needing to employ counsellors or mentors internally (or as the news this morning said, all new teachers should be trained in term mental health because some well meaning graduates having an extra responsibility on a job is totally the same as all the qualified mental health professional who actually best placed to support teens).

Several schools in my region have had their funding cut by over a MILLION POUNDS between 2015 and 2019. Then add that changes in school pension arrangements and all the changes in external services.

And there's still people bleating on that it's unreasonable for students to come prepared to school because some students need some extra support with organisation.

I absolutely hate it when teachers say this, but this thread is leaving me wishing all the people who know it all and are experts on school running and behaviour without having worked in a school tried it for a year or so and then came back to enlighten us all on how to do our jobs better.

Reading this thread reminds me why I’m no longer in the classroom.
School funding is in a mess, if you ever look at school accounts room hire brings in small amounts especially by the time you’ve paid for caretaker cover on top. Using a school car park as an overflow car park, might work some of the time but at pick up/drop off/school events there won’t be room and the local residents complain.

And as for lack of equipment/pens. If I forget my pens, then I’ll hunt some out. If I forget something I use my initiative and sort it. I can’t refuse to teach or go home to get something even if I have forgotten my laptop etc. I never gave detentions to those that had realised they had forgotten and tried to something about it e.g. quietly borrowing from a friend, asking to go and buy a one from our stationery shop, if things were chaotic at home, I’d quietly lend them equipment. (That equipment used to come back without fail.) With pupils who struggle with organisation, our SENCO would work with the parents and form tutor to make sure they had equipment, so we teachers could teach.
It’s the significant number of pupils who just can’t be bothered and realistically detentions are the only means we have. Two lapses in a half term was a detention in the last school I worked.
We only ask in this country for stationery, if we were in other countries pupils would be expected to have their own textbooks and exercise books and remember them. Why can’t ours cope with a pen? Interestingly they never forget their phone.

Now who's to say your pupil has intentionally forgotten their pen?

They do.... Fgs read the thread.

As for writing a list, not going to happen with GDPR. It would also be a bloody long list considering each student has at least 1 side of a4 with tips for best practice with each. I teach about 30 students like this every day.

Tucking in shirts and having a pen is what they need to do at work, it's not unreasonable. Perhaps parents should be stressing the need to be work ready at home. Can you imagine how annoying it is for teachers for putting up their hands "for a pen miss"

stucknoue
But this is the problem and battle many schools have. They are trying to educate teenagers against a societal culture where some adults genuinely (or not so genuinely) think it is unreasonable to expect students to arrive prepared, wear a uniform, be courteous, not talk over the teacher and others giving answers.

Hell, one example of a totally 'unfair' situation from the OP was my DC was just talking to their partner and they were talking about the work... ok so they know the teacher doesn't like them talking lots and in this situation the teacher was settling the class back to the front to listen... But that's not the point my child was talking about the work so I'm not happy with the sanction

Or in simple terms:
Teacher: I want the class silent and paying attention so we can move on
OP's DC: ignores instruction and continues talking
OP: How unfair! I'm fed up with my child being sanctioned for no reason.

Even if you say that schools have a responsibility for reasonable adjustments where there are additional needs and should be held to account over it, people still go on and on about how all these teenagers who misbehave don't know what they're doing, it's unfair to expect them to follow rules and teachers and mean and nasty for expecting basic rules to be followed.
To be honest it's a horrendous view of teenagers to view them as little darlings who are incapable and couldn't possibly be rational and make decisions themselves. It's the sort of view that leads to low expectations of conduct and work output. Yet every day I work with polite, caring, funny, witty, thoughtful, friendly, argumentative (Sometimes good others not) teenagers who think critically, can debate and question and reason and are perceptive. They are the best part of the job by far, but sometimes they make a mistake and need holding to account for that, not because I'm some mean trigger happy child hating teacher, but because I know they're better than that error and want them to do well.