So my daughter is in year 9 at secondary school. She is a typical teen, a bit moody sometimes and can be lazy if I let her, but overall a good, polite helpful kid and she gives me no problems. She does well at school also. I’ve got a couple issues with the school but I want to know 1, how to approach this with the school and 2, if I’m being ridiculously unreasonable and should just leave it…
my 1st issue is they only have 30 mins lunch break. My dd always complains she didn’t have time to eat as by the time she’s qued at the canteen she doesn’t have time to eat it. She’s coming home hungry. It’s a big school, can’t say too much as will be outing but I’ve not heard any other parents complaining about the lack of lunch time, which I find odd as I don’t think it’s enough. She can’t bring in home lunch as she gets free school meals at the moment (she technically lives with her dad although we have her 50/50 she is registered at his address) . So I could send her with a home packed lunch but she’s entitled to it free so I feel like she should get that.
2, they are a pretty strict school on uniform and everything really, which I actually don’t mind, but I have a friend with kids there, and they are the “popular kids” and have piercings where the school says they can’t, they dye hair random colours which isn’t allowed, skive a lot, are just the typical popular kids that play up. I know this as they are my friends kids. My dd isn’t in that group, she does nothing like that, at worst she can be a bit chatty. The other day they gave her a warning and behaviour points for chatting in class, but these other kids don’t get behaviour points for that! Again, I know because I’m friends with the mum of one of those kids. They are far more lenient of the “bad kids” because they can’t control them! Where as my dd who actually wears correct uniform, turns up to all classes gets a punishment for chatting. Seems unfair. She forgot her tie once and had a behaviour point for that, where as my friends dd never wears one and no behaviour points. There’s a lot more examples I can give but this is already long.
basically it seems they are more lenient with badly behaved kids. My friend even admits they let her dd get away with everything there and praise her for just turning up to lessons ect where has my dd has to really work hard for the good points.
i have nothing against my friend or her kids by the way, I love them to bits, my issue is with the school not what my friends kids get up to.
my dd is miserable. She isn’t with any friends in her lessons, where as the popular kids seem to be all together!
she’s so unhappy and obviously I don’t want her dreading going to school. I want to have a chat with the school about these things but how do I go about it? Or is it simply this is school, life dd needs to get on with it? She’s my eldest, but I’ve other children also. I did have to take one of my kids out of that school because they were not supporting his sen needs, but up until recently I thought dd was getting on ok.. but she’s getting herself worked up and anxious about going and it’s not nice to see. But I maybe being precious and sound like a knob ranting about it. Any advice? Thanks