advice needed from Junior school teachers/parents please!!

[sleepingsowell]

My DS (8) has come out of school upset yet again and I would love some of your perspectives on this.
DS has some SEN and school is hard for him and he's historically been very anxious about school although not an anxious boy about anything else.
Since Sept when he started year 4, his class are being shouted at alot as a group, and kept in as a group - around 3 times a week, DS will say he missed some of break or lunch because the whole class were kept in because 'they' were noisy or naughty.
This makes DS anxious and fed up and cross which as an outsider, I can completely understand.
Is keeping the whole class in a 'valid' technique? because it seems very silly to me. It seems a good way to lose the good will of the good children - what is the point in being good and quiet if you're kept in anyway?
DS usually adores his teachers but he has already lost his bond with this teacher.
BTW due to his anxiousness DS is never naughty or noisy at school and his teacher states this to us so we know he is not being kept in bcause of his own actions.
Anyone any ideas as to the rationale behind keeping whole class in? Because I'm struggling to see it. Would value other thoughts!

This is something which my DC's school council brought up last year. It went into a kind of school/pupil guarantee that no child would be punished for another child's wrongdoing - precisely to stop whole classes being affected by the behaviour of one or two children.

My ASD son pretty much has a melt down when they do this - teacher soon learnt it wasn't a good thing to do

Thank you - really helpful. Indigo in some ways I wish my ds could have a meltdown about it but at school (not at home!!!) he is the most compliant child and would simply not be able to let himself go enough to have a meltdown! But he was flushed and I could see he was holding back tears when he came out today. Purple and Beer thank you I hadn't thought that I could check the behaviour policy - I will do that now!

I would write to the Head ccing the governors and ask for an outline of the policy and your grievance, I have done just the same thing because my son was called 'dipstick' by his teacher who then asked the whole class to repeat it.

OMG Posie! That is quite incredible. Good luck following that one up!!
Have to zoom out for a bit but will check back later thanks for replies so far. x

Yes I see you had to address honesty, Euphemia - but it still seems to me there are better ways that punishing the group for the actions that only 1 of them took.
Surely it would be better to put different procedures in place rather than punishing kids for something they didn't do? Such as ensuring that the fruit is kept somewhere the children don't have access to. Not being trusted to have the fruit available is a natural consequence I would think and doesn't involve unfairness.
But I'm no expert - not a teacher - but haven't heard a justification yet for group punishment I don't feel.

I don't use it as a strategy, but one of the arguments I've heard for punishing a cohort for the actions of an individual is that the teacher is trying to use peer pressure and peer disapproval to ensure that the culprit has more than the teacher's irritation to contend with.
So the rest of the class will keep an eye out, report infractions, and that the guilty party might choose not to do something similar next time.

thanks goblin...I had heard that as a justification for it too but again I don't get the sense of that either. The teacher should be able to have strategies to deal with individual misdemeanours without using the 'good' children to do the job for them, I would think?

All ds other teachers have managed it anyway!

IMO, if group punishment is used sparingly, as Euphemia said, I don't have a problem with it. I also think like Goblinchild, that group pressure is far more of a deterrent to an 8/9 year old than the teacher's singular disapproval. I would put money on the fact that a large number of the children in Euphemia's class knew who the culprit/s were. They were either showing loyalty, self preservation or conformity - real life unfortunately.
Noise and naughtiness are something different. You know who is being noisy and naughty - and they should be dealt with in the agreed manner individually. If it was the majority of the class and only a few who behaved, do you think the punishment was given to make the few still part of the group? It might ostracise the few even more if they are the only ones allowed out at play time?