How do state schools deal with discipline incidents?

[ChalkyC]

Sorry a bit of a strange question. Background is that my 4 yr old niece attends a small girls Independent school, and is in a reception class of about 18 girls. There has recently been two occasions where she has had a mini melt down and in temper pushed another child and most recently pushed her teacher. On both occasions she was removed from her class (fine) and then sent home.

Does anyone have any experience of how a state sch might deal with things like this - my sister has a meeting with the school tonight and I think needs some perspective on how this sort of behaviour is usually dealt with. She is understandably upset and worried that her daughter is being sent home. My son is at a state primary and I just can't imagine him being sent home - they seem to deal with more serious things at school.

Anyway - if anyone has any advice or can point me to any good practice discipline procedures I would be really grateful.

Pushing a child and a teacher would result in the child being sent home.

I think it varies between schools. Obviously there are things the school can't do like physical or other excessive punishments. As I understand it, it's expensive for a state school to exclude a child so they try to avoid it if possible.

if they sent a child home it would be an exclusion.
With paperwork and hopefully a plan to avoid the same situation arising again

piece not at 4yo it wouldn't. Not for a first incident. At any rate if that had happened then there would be several (including my ds) who would have walked in a pushed the teacher to be sent home.

My ds was like that in year R. This is what happened to him generally if he's pushed someone.

1. Taken away from the situation-usually he'd be taken inside to the library with a teacher/TA.
2. Explained why it was wrong and that it upset the other person.
3. Let him have his say-there was always something leading up to it, and although he was always wrong for pushing, sometimes the other person was at fault too.
4. Discused what he should have done.
5. Taken to apologise
6. Draw/write a sorry card.
7. I would be told at the end of the day.

What we did to help: He had a behaviour book. The teacher would write in at different parts of the day:
Am: Sitting on mat-a bit wriggly
Before break-lovely maths-well done
Break-all well
After break-didn't want to do his writing, but did eventually
Lunch-pushed child
After lunch-really helpful Thank you
End of day-nice sitting.

I could then talk it through with him and be pleased or "sad" depending on what was written.

Very quickly we saw a pattern. Issues were almost always lunch time (not every), with Thursday afternoon another flash point.
The thing was he has glue ear, so he couldn't hear properly with a lot of noise, so he found lunch very frustrating. I think the Thursday afternoon was just tired.

He's now year 3, and when I asked his teacher (new school) if there were any behavioural concerns at parents evening she looked totally blank and said "no" in a "why are you asking" kind of way.

Thanks for the replies. I was surprised she was sent home but was not certain if there is a protocol for how to deal with things like this. She is a June born reception child so still little, and quite feisty and confident. When she has been picked up she has always been calm apparently - sending her home just seems to serve no purpose - I understand that she should be immediately removed from the situation though.

It does seem a bit counterproductive. DeWee's experience of that school procedure sounds excellent.

DS's school would react similarly to DeWee's post. Now he's a bit older, he might be sent to the head teacher, depending on the circumstances.

Sending her home seems a bit odd - if she really didn't like being at school, they've just given her a cracking idea for how to get mummy to collect her early haven't they? Works every time.....

What you need to understand is what the guidance for exclusion at state school says. A pupil can be excluded permanently for a serious breach of the school's behaviour policy. That could easily be for a one off incident such as attacking a member of staff. For some schools a serious push would be considered as an attack.
Having said that the code is clear that this should be a last resort and that the head teacher is required to take into consideration contributory factors. In this case, they are 4, they were tired, it was a 4 year old pushing an adult etc. As such it would not be usual to permanently exclude but one could see a school wanting to draw line in the sand and come up with a short fixed term exclusion. Which you could consider as the equivalent of a private school sending home a child.
I think that you need to accept that the school are not overstepping the mark here and that worse will follow if daughter's behaviour cannot be improved.