Y2 and group punishments

[Tweefutom]

DS has just started Y2. School seems to be keen on group punishments, so far:

• Show & Tell has been cancelled 2 weeks running because 1 DC (different child each time, not my DS) misbehaved.

• They all lost 25 mins golden time because 2 DC misbehaved (again not my DS).

• All of the boys are missing their break this week and sitting in silence because someone put hand towels down the loo and blocked it and hasn’t confessed(!)

I’m a bit bemused by this as DS has been really upset. Is this normal for primary schools?

Group punish are not effective so are not standard practice in most primary achools. Generally, golden time is earned and any children not earning full amount of time go elsewhere for a certain period of the golden time.
Have you spoken to the class teacher ?

No that's definitely not normal. It all sounds very negative. It's very annoying when children cause mess in the toilets but there are other more effective ways to deal with it than denying everyone a break. More importantly children NEED their breaks and you should avoid denying them as much as possible.

Thanks for responding. I just wanted to do a sense check on MN before having a chat with the teacher. If this is a normal method of improving behaviour, I don’t want to trouble her.

Op, I'm an experienced TA and a parent of three and I've never heard of such punishments in year 2. It's important to be firm and consistent at the beginning of the school year but what you're describing is extremely negative and not really tackling the problem children.

The school should have made available a behaviour policy, (must if it's a regular maintained school), have a look if the punishments meet it, if they do, then whilst awful, it's obviously harder to query as the teacher is just following the guidelines of the school - so you'll need to work to get those changed, as opposed to if the teacher is going rather creative around it.

No that sounds absolutely insane and not normal at all for Y2. The only time something similar happened with either of my primary aged DC was when the entire class (or most of them) was being loud and slow getting changed for PE and they weren't allowed a cake treat that had been planned (they had it the following day instead).

I dont like the sound of that group punishment for the sake of maybe 4 kids.
However that misbehaviour sounds pretty extreme - the toilets etc for yr 2 kids!!

Before you go in, all guns blazing, you need to be very sure that your child is telling you the truth.