Is checking contents of childrens bottles and confiscating them if not water only illegal?

[devonvalley]

New head has instructed staff to do above!!
They get returned 2 hrs later a t lunch, so my son who is working towards water only,has a drink at 8am then not til 1pm ! the idea behind preventing dehydration is to increase a childs fluid intake to enhance concentration levels in school and a dash of good squash or flavoured water which a lot of parents would /are using will be confiscated !!(hs sugar free additive free, natural flavouring dash of squash to take rawness off for time being) all rest of family drink water, but son has food issues,and refuses to drink water on its own.we keep trying,others did convert a t there own pace!(children should be treated as individuals at school are they not??) If it was coke i could understand!
We have to give written consent to many things in school time, this needs our permission does it not?checking, confiscating. We fought two wars in this country to deny dictorial leadership??

silverfrog - x posts with devonvalley, maybe there are other issues.

devonvalley - maybe a more conciliatory approach would work better with the school, talk of "searching bottles" is just ridiculous and is bound to put the head's back up. Have you tried to have a chat without mentioning legal action/human rights act? I'm sorry but I don't understand the rest of your last but one post about the cubes etc.

the staff are sniffing and searching contents and confiscating them til lunchtime if not pure water.
Milk-to keep milk cool those cubes you freeze and pop in drinks to keep cold but don't melt.

ah. I'd love to find a squash with no sugar or aspertame, but don't know if I could get into homemade. I just get it with sugar.

paisleyleaf, why not use a juice and dilute that right down?

that's what I use with my dds.

eg they have cherrygood juice - costs just over a pound for a litre.

that litre does a week, diluted down. dd1 has it in a ratio of about 80ml per 500ml. dd2 a bit less than that.`

Searching/checking possessions and confiscating is not illegal.

Parents agree to the school and it's employees acting in loco parentis when they accept a place at the school, there for they have your implied consent to act in a way in which they deem to be in the best interests of the children at the school.

Even if you withdrew your consent the teacher is not acting illegally - no offence is committed by a teacher who carries out these activities.

There are several reasons why squash is a PITA:

1. messy/sticky/difficult to clean spills
2. bad for teeth when constantly sipped at throughout the day
3. creates division between those who are allowed it (either ny their parents or as an exception by the teacher) and those that don't.

There is absolutely no reason why a child cannot go a couple of hours without a drink. You really need to pick your battles.

As for the "teachers should educate" sentiment, part of the role of school is to teach children to function within society, to accept reasonable rules and follow them without feeling they are entiteld to disregard them at will.

I think that this is a sign of schools losing sight of their priorities. Many primary schools now play down their academic role and over-enhance their social role. Evidence of this can be found in school prospectuses, odd comments like 'spelling tests don't work'/'reading schemes only encourage competition'/'there's no need to learn tables by rote'. In doing this they are losing sight of the main function of schooling - to give children the foundations of reading, writing and mathematics. When head teachers become over-preoccupied with ticking the right boxes, say, to get their 'Healthy Schools Award' they make themselves into little Hitlers.
Balance needs to be redressed here, because I really don't think these policies do anything to enhance the quality of education which our children are actually receiving.Usually the best teachers are the sensible ones who stick to their guns and ignore dictats like this - much to the displeasure of their bosses!

My DS's primary is like this, DS2 has SN, and serious food/drink issues. It doesnt matter HOW strict you are with him, he will not drink water, to the point where I stupidly insisted, he ended up on a drip in hospital, severely dehydrated. Last week, he was obviously dehydrated at school, TA couldn't get him to drink water...the school rang me and asked permission to give him juice! The teachers have now said that it's more important for him to drink than for them to be insistant that he drinks water. He tends to have those sugar-free flavoured water drinks, which are now diluted half and half with water, but it is a VERY gradual process with him. It's only taken the school more than 2 years to realise that I wasn't messing them around, especially when my other 2 (older) dc's actually prefer to drink plain water....

citing

wonders if it was the lack of spelling tests while burying head under blanket...

bullethead I'm afraid it is a role the previous government imposed upon schools not one they chose themselves after all we didn't go into teaching to be social workers or health visitors. Life was far simpler when we could get on and teach.

Ah yes. When I had no idea what they had for lunch or how they got to school.
They just arrived and we taught them reading, writing, numbering and socialisation. With a bit of paint and running around thrown in for good measure.

I don't get this: if your ds has food issues, why not just go in and have a quiet word and ask for your ds to be given special consideration due to his problems rather than getting worked up about human rights issues? My ds is allowed to wear trainers at school due to his weak ankles. I just asked nicely explaining the situation, without trying to claim that making children wear school uniform shoes was an infringement of human rights.

mrz I agree with you but have to check on the chicken.

mrz it would seem that some heads are embracing these rules that are 'imposed' upon them a little too over-zealously - and actually enjoying it!

If the teaching establishment does not like the direction their job has taken over the past 13 years then why haven't they found an effective, unified voice to fight for what they beleive in?

pixie, that is not always the case.

my dd stopped drinking for 9 months. completely. not a drop of fluid passed her lips.

food issues are very real, and can be very serious.

if I had taken the view that she would drink when thirsty, she would have ended up very ill indeed.

bullethead I can assure you most heads are no more happy about it than parents but when faced with the threat of Ofsted failure if they don't comply with every new initiative

It's all been said already, but this talk of 'dictatorship' and 'human rights abuses' is insulting to people who do have to live under dictatorships or suffer abuses of their human rights.

Drinking sugary/aspartamey drinks is not a human right. If your child genuinely has food issues, then by all means try to come to some arrangement with the school. If, though, he's just a fussy eater/drinker who'd rather drink something sweet and sticky than water, well so be it. You're 'working towards water' and the school are helping to speed that process.

Mrz, our school was failing and in special measures, and because it was a small school it was threatened with closure. Our Head has turned it around to 'outstanding' and freely admits that he jumps through every hoop that Ofsted ask of him in order to keep the school's rating up and therefore ensure that it is oversubscribed.

What frightens me about it is the way in which our power to decide for ourselves what our dcs do is taken away from us. I think that is what people find so hard. We had a school trip where the snack the pupils took had to be water, but in a disposable bottle. We were told the night before so dh had to make a special trip to the supermarket to buy some overpriced water in a sports top bottle. Also snack could only be fruit.

This was the Christmas panto 'fun' trip btw.

Why????

Our DCs school decided to supply clear water bottles as people were not able to follow the water only rule which really pisses me off - if they are only allowed totake in water that is it just give them water FGS.

I fought the rule because I had issues with the shite plastic bottles they were providing but actually more of an issue with people who go on about food issues who have to bend the rukes for their own good - your kid won;t die from not drinking during the school day - we only had a small carton of drink at lunchtime and got on with things alright - if he is truely thirsty he will bloody well drink water. I see he drinks it from the water fountain so I really think you letting him get away with having flavoured water is just compounding the problem - he drinks water from the fountain he can have it from a bottle - issues - he is just pulling your cahin!

The new government has promised an end to the nanny state if we believe them ?

I do get that schools need to teach children that following rules is important and has consequences. I do not understand why following rules that are illogical teaches them anything. Nor do I understand why blindly doing so is praiseworthy whilst questioning them is seen as disruptive.

Or has the emphasis of teaching shifted from producing free thinkers to producing conformists?

mrz Then they should have had the balls to fight ofsted - as a unified group. Several private school heads, individually, risked their reputations by boycotting SATS and league tables a few years ago. Gradually there was a swelling of puplic opinion against them after that, and the result has been the abolishing of year 2 sats. Now you may argue that these heads, who stuck their heads over the parapet, are in a priviledged position to do this- but their reputations were just as much at stake as a state school head. Their school would not survive if the fee-paying parents decided to withdraw their children on the basis that they held no position in league tables. The state sector has had years to get their act together against initiatives which (you would have me believe) go against their instincts as educators, but they haven't. In fact, when they went on strike a couple of years ago, it was over pay, and not conditions, which have become intolerable in many secondary (and less frequently, primary schools). Education has suffered because of this (not the strikes, the policies). There are head teachers who go along with it all, without a peep of dissent, and they are just as guilty as the previous government. On the other hand there are many many teachers and heads with absolute integrity. Oddly enough they are the ones who are often ousted because they don't accept the party line.

And what has this to do with sniffing water bottles? Everything. It's about education getting lost in a world of trendy, pathetic, over the top, utterly pointless timewasting initiatives.

"I think that this is a sign of schools losing sight of their priorities. Many primary schools now play down their academic role and over-enhance their social role. Evidence of this can be found in school prospectuses, odd comments like 'spelling tests don't work'/'reading schemes only encourage competition'/'there's no need to learn tables by rote'. In doing this they are losing sight of the main function of schooling - to give children the foundations of reading, writing and mathematics. When head teachers become over-preoccupied with ticking the right boxes, say, to get their 'Healthy Schools Award' they make themselves into little Hitlers.
Balance needs to be redressed here, because I really don't think these policies do anything to enhance the quality of education which our children are actually receiving.Usually the best teachers are the sensible ones who stick to their guns and ignore dictats like this - much to the displeasure of their bosses!"

This is the main reason we went private, however my biggest complaint against the private school is the little ones from age 4 upwards have access to the canteen at breaktime to buy crap sweets, soft drinks etc as the teenagers are allowed to.
This stopped this term thank goodness and they now have a balance, fizzy water with a bit of flavor rather than coke, sprite etc.

pixie, that depends entirely on how genuine the food issues are.

dd1 has free access to her drink all day. it is dilute juice. there is no other way, as she will not get enough to drink otherwise (it is debatable whether she gets enough even with this in place)

talk of "well, he drinks from the fountain so he can drink form a bottle" jsut shows how ignorant people are about food/sensory issues. the one does not follow form the other.