Parents should be forced to stay at home when their children are suspended from school

[Caligula]

Blair's latest big idea

He he he. This made me laugh.

When they say "parents", do they mean "mothers"?

Slightly worried what your definite image, there is probably more than a grain of truth in it though!

Hmm, difficult one. But how can any of us make sure our kids behave when we're not present?

I guess by ensuring that the sanctions, values, expectations etc, are the same in each of the environments they move in. And as you rightly point out, that may not be the case. I live in dread (as I'm sure many people do) of my children having to go to a school where the behaviour standards are lower than those I expect at home, thus undermining my parenting. People are well aware of the problems of nightmare parents undermining school discipline, but less aware I think, of the problem you've pointed to, of badly managed schools undermining parental discipline (which is one of the factors in why so many of those who can afford it, go private - but that's another thread). I think you've just done a pretty comprehensive list of problems and solutions, but things like involving the whole community will never happen as long as the whole community is being told that what everyone has to do, is go to work. And the govt. are never going to properly tackle house prices or class numbers.

I think school management has a huge part to play as well - it's generally recognised and been shown over and over again, that even with unpromising raw materials, a really good headteacher who is focussed on what they want, can really change the culture and values of a school, sometimes in as little as a year. And a good head can manage the parents as well as the staff and the children - and obviously, needs to!

Home school communication is a biggie, some schools in London have been trying to increase and improve home school communication with graet results.

When I took on a new form I would phone or send a letter home introducing myself so that I had initiated contact with parents and hopefully broken down barriers. On a friday afternoon I would call a parent from each class to inform the parent how well their child had been doing. I would see it as a bit of a failure on my part if the first time I made a call home was on a negative issue.

My new career has shown me how intimidating teachers can be, and how hard parents can find it to go ito school. This difficulty or just nerves can come out in aggression so any chance to remidiate a problem has got off on a wrong strart.

I have reservations about children's centres but maybe they could build the bridge that is needed between home and school. For example in one local primary school which has some difficuties with kids and parents I run a mother and toddler group and many of the staff from the school are given time to come down to the group to meet prospective parents, chat to them even make them cups of tea. Tis isn't rocket science but it is breaking down barriers and I think, hope, will have long term effects.

I think you can make it more likely that kids behave when you are not present by disciplining your children by teaching them about responsibility and consequences rather than fear which is what I suspect may have been going on in this boys family. Because once that fear has gone away there is no need to behave.

Agree. And of course, in the old days, the fear was backed up by fear in school as well. As we don't do fear anymore, that doesn't work now!

Dawn, can you please explain to me how we are expected to make children behave in school when their parents will not, say, allow them to have detentions?

How am I supposed to make sure that boys do not bring knives into school? I can't search them I have no right. How am I supposed to get children to behave in a class of 30 when their parents cannot make them behave in a reasonable way at school.

We have a school of 1300 children how are we to make sure that they all stay in school? Are you aware that if they run away we are not allowed to put a hand on their arm to stop them? How are we supposed to keep them on site? Please give me some ideas, they will come in handy the next time a yaer 9 decides to leg it.

What an entertaining discussion! Ds1's behaviour deteriorated when he got to secondary school and he found you could get away with it. I was horrified cos I thought he comes from a good home, taught responsbility, etc. Finally he was suspended for throwing a firecracker out the bus window.

After much deliberation, we decided to hit him where it really hurt. I took him to the hairdressers and had his much loved long hair radically cut. I told him that I'd shave it off next time and, if that failed, I'd come with on the bus and stay with him all day at school. We also spoke with a psychologist who suggested talked to him about his responsibility for his actions and why he felt the need to behave in the way he did in school.

We were lucky, he decided against carrying on in the direction he was heading.

If kids can't behave in school how can they be expected to behave completely unsupervised whilst excluded so any sensible parent would supervise their kids in these circumstances. However, it would be more to the point if these kids were educated in a place more suited to them rather than excluding them from the education system. It would help the teachers in mainstream education too.

Maybe it would make a few parents work harder with their kids?

Not sure how I feel about this, certainly I think that you should be able to prove you have put some kind of childcare in place and have not just left them at the arcade, but it would hit the single parent's hardest again I guess.

Give the excluded kids compulsory FULLTIME community service.

yes, I would probably agree with that