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

So many of you here have clearly never worked in a school. Having uniform rules allows kids to rebel against the small stuff.

It’s not just that though, teacher. These things tend to be the thin end of the wedge. So you could have fewer and less rigid uniform rules, but you need to enforce the ones you’ve got and there should be consistency between how those rules are enforced between teachers and between pupils.

Agreed re consistency of approach regarding current rules.
Uniform policies are usually written in response to the unreasonable end of the scale.
For example our policy stated shoes must be black... This was fine until students started wearing black trainers. So we changed the policy to include specific types of shoe with pictures.

Another example was the leggings/jeggings epidemic about 4 years ago. Uniform policy "students can wear black trousers" had to be changed to say not leggings or jeggings. Quite frankly no one should have to see that many camel toes or see through bums through leggings.

Neither of those adjustments is unreasonable or unrealistic in terms of uniform expectations.

Oliver 'And the poster who said dds employer wouldn’t be very impressed if Dd rocked up in her brothers paint spattered trousers
She does have her own cement spattered ones (been tiling all day) which she had on when she left the house this afternoon.

Employer has' sorry, copy fail! You went on to say that her required clothes were on site for her I think.

So - that's fine. She's expected to wear certain clothes for work & does.

If she turned up in plastering trousers to wait tables, or whatever she's doing in a LBD & heels OR turned up frocked up to the nines to knock a wall down, that would not be appropriate.

Likewise in school. Sensible smart comfortable clothes are appropriate, & often a uniform is the simplest way to ensure that's what is being worn.

I am 100% against expensive blazers & nasty over priced logo'd gear as an expectation - fight against that & as a teacher I'll be right there beside you.

But once a sensible uniform is in place, it saves everyone time & angst.

My school has a particular check shirt you can only get from the on site uniform shop, plus skirt or trousers again supposedly from the shop but in practice any navy ones of appropriate cut & length - costs less than £20 for both.

We run a tab, so if you've forgotten your PE kit, say, you can go & get shorts & shirt & be billed (about a tenner all in - my kids end up in this situation at least once a year!).

Honestly, it's so refreshing not to be endlessly arguing with kids about uniform. It's easy, it's sorted, let's get on & learn.

Teachermaths
That's my experience.

Schools who have largely reasonable parents who support the school and the rules can draw up a set of rules and only a tiny minority of parents will be the sort of parents who undermine the school thinking their precious darling doesn't have to follow rules. Most parents, like staff, know and accept that students will push boundaries, need warnings and sanctions and when it comes to it they'll back school. In those schools the parents kit their children out for school, expect them to have their equipment etc and then any unturned shirt, bracelets, rolled skirts etc are part and parcel of having teens.

Then there are other schools where a sizable proportion of the parents, usually because of their own silly chips, see the rule 'black school shoes. No trainers' and think 'but my child can wear trainers because I think the rule is stupid so I'll spend £80 on branded trainers and kick off if school sanction for uniform'. Or 'of course the school policy says plain black school trousers. No jeans or skinny trousers or leggings' and they think 'by my DC wants to wear leggings and I don't see the point in uniform so I'm going to send my child to school how I feel like it and again will think I'm clever by saying but it doesn't affect their BRAIN!!!'. Their child was talking I've the teacher but it's ok and not disruptive because their DC said it was about work. Or their DC got removed for only asking for help, because if course a student being disruptive would never selective spin events. Schools get fed up with hearing from parents how their child is exempt from X Y Z rule that they remove flexibility for staff and parents because clearly some people have such a chip on their shoulder about rules that the dominant culture of the school is driven by those parents who fine and rage becayse their DC was expected to bring a pen to school, wear the uniform properly and shut up so the teacher can teach.

I love working in the first type of school. The latter is an exhausting place to be and I wouldn't choose to go back any time soon.

The problem comes with all these rules when you have children with SEN who can’t remember them all and keep making mistakes because they are not capable of remembering. Not because they want to push the boundaries.

I have a Dd who will forget she has a glass of orange juice in her hand when she goes to take a biscuit.

Ed Psych has said she won’t get any better and no amount of repetition will make her remember

Give her more than one thing to remember and it all goes out the window.
If someone told her to go to the HT and tell him something her mind would be so focusssd on the message, the fact you can’t walk down a corridor a certain way or the fact will be forgotten.
Ds if he is looking in the other direction won’t hear a teacher saying to not talk or stop what he is doing so gets detentions because if they let him off they have to let everyone off.

All these rules just don’t work for children with SEN.

Some schools take the uniform rule too far and their is no sense to it.

Friends Ds broke his ankle. He had to spend the time in isolation because the big grey plastic nhs boot was not school uniform.

His mother pulled him out and she sent him to another school.

The school did apologise but only when they realised they were losing their brightest pupil.

Oliversmumsarmy
But that's when schools have a responsibility for reasonable adjustments.

There's no point designing a behaviour system from the perspective that it's unreasonable to expect 1500 students to tuck their shirt in and have their equipment for the 15 who might need a helping hand.

I expect students to be prepared. I expect them to be polite and follow the rules. I expect them to wear the uniform properly. The kids who have additional needs and arrive from PE looking a bit bedraggled, shirt untucked etc I give a reminder to, help do their ties. I have spare pencil cases for those children who are prone to leave their equipment around school. I keep post it notes in case I need to write a note for them to leave class and they've left their planner somewhere. We have set routines for entering class, getting attention, feeding back, packing away. The calm structure is great for having a calm classroom but is especially good for children with additional needs (and often what is good practice for SEND and EAL in terms of running a classroom is good practice full stop).

I still sanction students for not following the rules, but I would say I give out maybe 3 detentions a fortnight and they are break/lunch. I've not needed to give an after school detention to anyone in my classes for months. Students understand the rules. We have a calm and friendly and orderly environment.

When I started teaching there was a culture of endless excuses and where sanctions would depend on the child, you might get support from leaders but you might not. If you've got badly behaving boys then you need to reduce your expectations of them. If a child has SEND then give them a much easier task and that ticks differentiation (and if you have 6 different tasks then even better).
Over time I came to the conclusion that that culture is well meaning but flawed. It's not unreasonable to expect children with SEN to behave Well, they just might need a bit of support to get there. I don't want to set the bar low for any child. Sometimes that means a sanction is required.

LolaSmiles But that is you and your school.

Not all schools are the same.

Ds who concentrate so hard, tries to make sure he gets things correct because he knows he can be messy, he doesn’t hear very well in one ear and it makes incredible effort all round managed to get 10 detentions in one week.

Oliversmumsarmy
Yes, so the issue is with schools not making reasonable adjustments, not having a robust behaviour policy.

That's my point.

The behaviour policy shouldn't be written from the starting point that 15 students out of 1500 might not be able to follow it so it's unreasonable to expect everyone else to arrive prepared for school. It's wrong to say, hypothetically, that students shouldn't be sanctioned for ignoring instructions just because 11 students with ADHD might need instructions chunking down and breaking up to help them follow instructions.

Some students require additional support to meet the standards. Some students may need different standards in specific areas. Most don't. It's wrong to lower the bar for everyone else based on a minority.

👏 Lola you've explained behaviour policies perfectly here.

Olivers you've clearly had one bad experience in one school. I don't know why you think all other schools are the same?

Teachermaths I have no time or respect for schools that don't make reasonable adjustments and would harshly judge the leaders of those places. When I was last on MN I used to PM parents who needed to rightly complain to schools about issues where school was failing.

But having a strong behaviour policy is separate to that.

Olivers you've clearly had one bad experience in one school. I don't know why you think all other schools are the same

Not just one bad experience. 3 separate schools. If I had left him in those schools I don’t know how he would have turned out.

I probably have ADHD so can sympathise with Ds and Dd.
In the end if you try really hard to get things right and people still find fault then you just give up.

Why put the effort in if the result is the same as if you hadn’t bothered

I'm one of the parents who genuinely does think that having an untucked shirt will make absolutely no difference to my DCs' GCSE results. However I also realise it takes two seconds to tuck your shirt in, and it's not the hill I'm going to die on (I'm quite happy to die on the hill of sexism eg girls' legs being on show leading to a "lack of self esteem" according to one of our schools )

It does annoy me to spend a few seconds saying "tuck your shirt in" when I personally couldn't give two fucks about it, but it makes me feel sorrier for teachers having to say "tuck your shirt in" twenty times to different pupils because the school requires them to say this. Let's make their life easier at little expense to ourselves. Likewise the Constant Missing Pens, it drives me demented saying "have you got a pen?" but the teachers have to say this over and over. Have a bloody pen, it's not rocket science and get used to it, like you have to get used to remembering your keys and your bus pass! It's a life skill you need after all.

I could never be a teacher in a million years and genuinely respect the 99% who are great teachers. Why wouldn't I want to make their lives easier if it doesn't cost me anything? Apart from thousands of pens

I also think the best teachers genuinely realise themselves that an untucked shirt or navy shoes instead of black doesn't affect exam results or lead to a lifetime of rebellious debauchery I once had a great conversation with my DCs' teacher asking me to impress on DC they must have their shirt tucked in as appearances matter while we both avoided the giant elephant in the room of my shaved head and pink Mohican PS I mended my ways and remind regularly about shirts

Pick your battles and you can still instill in your DC we can think some rules are daft but sometimes we have to follow them, in society as in schools. The whole point surely is that we are educating our DC to have some sense and some morals and know right from wrong and which battles are worth fighting and which aren't. I will stand my ground on boys legs being acceptable while girls aren't, but don't see a problem with coming down hard on remembering essential items and being kind to teachers by not causing them stress over minor things which really aren't worth fighting over.

Young people are great but they have an inbuilt sense of injustice about pretty much everything so our job as parents is to guide these feelings and what is worth "rebelling" over and what really isn't.

WeBuiltCisCityOnSexistRoles
I sort of agree. Personally some uniform features I can take or leave. I don't mind non uniform either.

I do think that whatever rules are set have to be followed and it's easier having a shirt untucked or a bracelet as a chosen method of pushing the rules than anything else (because kids being kids will always push, we all did anyway).

I think your point about learning which battles are worth fighting and which aren't is key. It always surprises students when I say that I have worked in non uniform school and that there have been rules or procedures in every workplace that I don't agree with. I always tell them that placed have rules, some you like, some you tolerate, some you begrudgingly follow and others you challenge. It's a useful life lesson.

I feel for you oliversmumsarmy..

Firstly whoever thinks other schools are different you are simply wrong.
All secondary schools, at least here within the east and the midlands are extremely and ridiculously strict. The focus is far too much on petty things and not enough on the well being of the child. And anyone who wants to argue with me, go ahead, it won't make a difference to my opinion or hundreds and hundreds of other parent's opinions.
stastisctics
results
and extreme high expectations on uniform
ARE what the secondary schools are far too high in expectation on.

My son's pen broke. He was ill equipt for another black pen (yes, his fault) but it was a one off and should have been a warning/nudge. Not a punishment.. end of!!

I’m in a similar location to you OP, totally agree that all the schools seem as cruel as each other.

Firstly whoever thinks other schools are different you are simply wrong.
And yet until 1 trust came into our region none of our schools were as you describe and now they are still very very much the minority. Same in the last region I worked in.

The only schools in our area that have gone down that route are ones that prior to being taken over had been letting children down for a while and had large cohorts of parents who felt their children didn't have to follow rules they didn't like.

So if you mean 'near me the secondary schools seem to have subscribed to a particular approach' that's fine. But save the rhetoric of all secondaries love ruining children's lives over a pen and a detention is going to traumatise them nonsense.

All secondary schools, at least here within the east and the midlands are extremely and ridiculously strict

I teach in one. They really aren't.

stastisctics
results

You have the government to thank for that.

It sounds like a MAT school. I really dislike them and am so pleased my children went to a school that was much more child focused. Is there another school you could send him to. I know these days often all schools are like this though.

MATs are the work of the devil and sum up everything that is wrong with education.

No argument with that, Disorganised!

Large corporate style MATs are disorganised. I've even heard rumours of them not wanting to take over schools where their methods might not work, presumably because it might suggest there are many ways to run a school so to speak.

Smaller MATs feel almost no different to LA schools in my experience. Despite my ideological objection to academisation, I've got to be fair and say that not all academies are large corporate types.

Yes Lola I must admit I was on a bit of a rant there. I should have made it clear it is the large corporate ones. I agree with you about the smaller ones and also with remaining ideologically opposed to them!

DisorganisedOrganiser
Large corporate ones are also, by all accounts, not very nice for staff to work at too. I've heard some horrible stories from staff.

I know some schools that have gone down the firm 'zero tolerance' (hate the phrase) route and still had strong pastoral support, positive relationships are, but none of them are members of large MATs.

Then again, I know somewhere that was doing a bad job (usual challenging school with a strong parental lobby of 'rules don't apply to my child... they're not leggings, they're treggings' types. A medium sized MAT took it over and whilst in not in love with all their approaches, they certainly took much less shit on behaviour and parents/kids arguing. The school has improved.

It's a tough one being in schools because I see things that may not personally align with how I would choose to do things but then I'll give them credit when it's working well (setting aside all my millions of objections to academies as a thing). Equally, there are views on MN that I used to sympathise with until I went into teaching and actually the more time I've spent in schools, the more my opinion changes.

It's an interesting area with probably multiple solutions for different contexts.

Well this seems the opposite of my DD's school. Half the class dont have a pen and have their shirt untucked and nobody says anything. A kid walked out because the whole class ( part from dd and few friends) was bullying him!