Harsh punishment at primary school complaint

[Kasiapol28]

Hi there, sorry for the long thread...

I am after some advice on how to proceed with the school. My son ( 11 yo, year 6 ) is a bright boy and does well at school, even passing the grammar test for a local school. He has had 2 parents meeting so far this year and at everyone his teacher has praised him on behaviour and his work. No issues mentioned.

His heart is in sport, he plays football out of school and and this year he was chosen to be a sports ambassador at the school ( along with 60 others ) which meant he was able to to go to football tournaments, athletics..e.t.c .

Although the selection for teams is meant to be fair for everyone, the same 6 boys always get chosen and then the spares picked from the rest of the kids. These 6 boys are very close friends with my son.

However since January the school have been excluding him from certain sports events due to 'behaviour issues'.

On both occasions the school did not even bother to contact me to tell me that my son had been excluded from the events and at no point did they contact me to tell me they were having concerns with his behaviour. So obviously I was very taken aback by this. How can I work with him on his so called ' low disruption behaviour' as they called it , if I don't even know it is happening.

I wrote to the headteacher as I felt this was a very harsh punishment, to which he even replied that although he felt my child's behaviour was not extreme he was not following the school values and so the punishment stayed.

The reason he was not allowed to attend the latest event was because he was not tucking his shirt in, had not worn a tie on one occasion, and was causing ' low Distribution in class' year leaders words.

The issue is that they chose to announce who was going to the event on Monday of SATS week and the event was happening on that Friday which was also meant to be a celebration day at the school for finishing SATS with bouncy castles and all sorts. This caused a lot of necessary stress during what is a hard time for him during SATS week.

When my son heard the news that he was not picked and his group of friends were going to the event he was heartbroken. It has effected him all week and he has been in tears and feels left out and will not have anyone to share the celebrations with. I have not sent him into school today as he was so upset last night, seeing him in tears like that broke my heart, he is a good boy, doesn't swear at teachers or hurt kids, I just feel heartbroken for him.

Is it just me or does that seem rather extreme punishment ? Surely missing some lunch/ play or even a phone call to me so I could help him work at it would have been enough for this type of behaviour ?

No he shouldn't need me to relay but I suppose that is the point, clearly there is something going on at school that has caused him to change his behaviour and so as a lot of people have posted on here we should work with the school and the school with us to try to address it. He is a child at the end of the day and will make mistakes and it is my job to relay to him and put his behaviour in check, I cannot do this if I do not know anything about it.

In my experience of having three DC through high school they are very much on top of low level disruptive behaviour and work with the parents to nip it in the bud - which in turns means a more productive classroom and less opportunity for parents to be surprised that their children are being prevented from attending excursions etc after weeks/months of silence from the school. The good high schools do anyway.

As others have said, your son has been at school long enough to know how to behave in class, this issue is why he is choosing to misbehave. That is what you need to get to the bottom of. I am willing to bet that yes, he knew the consequences of his poor behaviour, and that he had warnings about the consequences of his behaviour and attitude .He should have been able to work these out and deal with himself since as you say he is a clever and “good” boy without the school involving you. You need to find out why he is making bad choices.

Don’t be daft - of course schools need to involve parents when poor behaviour is involved. Schools that work with parents (and vice versa) have better outcomes all round.

You’ve been told he causes low level disruption, op.
“He’s a good boy, he doesn’t swear at the teachers” is an astonishingly low bar for behaviour expectations.
Passing the grammar tests is totally irrelevant, not sure why you’d think it makes a difference?

I believe that as a parent I have the right to request that I am contacted by the school if my child is behaving in such a way that may exclude him from an event.

I believe that the school should want to work together with me so that we can both try to stop a possible exclusion happening especially as we know how badly he takes it.

I suppose that's because that's the type of behaviour we have in our school and in his class unfortunately, so when I see children who do behave in such a bad way it kind of makes me feel like his punishment didn't fit the crime. We've had teachers being assaulted as well as children unfortunately.

I only mentioned it as he has dyslexia and so has struggled with certain topics at school but has worked hard enough to get to the top sets which proves to me that he does have some level of good listening and concentrating in class and as I have mentioned previously his behaviour has been fantastic with lots of praise throughout the year up until the last couple of weeks and that episode in Jan.

Talking in class, not answering when he's called in the register and other forms of low level disruption ARE disrespectful though OP.

I would imagine even though you weren't told the sports trip was at risk, that your son was, and still carried it on.

You called it wrong keeping him home today - he just had to have fun with DC that aren't his particular friends. He lost out on the fun, lost out on learning he can have fun even if his friends are off AND you've undermined the school.

Is your son being excluded from the event or has he just not been chosen because of his constant low level disruption?
Perhaps the place was given to another child who, while less sporty, kept to and displayed the school values.

They are preparing him for secondary school. Good on them.

There was no way I could send him in, he had a migraine anyway which was brought on by all the crying and stress, but to be honest even if he didn't have the migraine I couldn't do it to him.

I think had it have been during the year it may have gone down better but I think the fact that it was the end of SATS and it was meant to be a memorable time that he shared with his group of friends who do by the way also at times make mistakes and get called out, it just broke him and it broke me and his father.

Again please do understand I do not condone his behaviour, even if I do think it is low level and I would expect the school to give him consequences but I did not think the punishment fitted the crime and I should have the chance to help him rectify it as the school promised me previously.

I don't think that's disrespectful I think that's just kids being kids. Sometimes they don't hear things or get too excited about things. There has to be some benefit of the doubt. By the way this is not an every day occurrence for him.

@Hoppinggreen yes I agree about detentions and stuff like that. I've said to my own kids look you have to follow the rules even if you think they are silly. Some of the uniform ones go a bit far imo. But this seems drastic for an 11 year old - exclusion from a celebratory day. I think there's a balance and ending primary schlll with this upset seems unnecessarily harsh. He will be gone soon anyway

He wasn't excluded from the celebratory day.

He was excluded from the sporting trip that was happening on the same day as the celebrations. As his friends were all on the sports trip, he would've been at the celebrations without his friendship group, so he stayed home.

OP please feel free to correct me if I've picked you up wrong.

Yes I suppose you could say not chosen, and that is a fair point you make and exactly what happened, my issue is that it could have been my sons place who lives by and excels in sports. If we had known that he was at risk of not getting chosen we could have turned the behaviour around in time and saved all the disruption during SATS week.

If he is upset, then the punishment is having the correct impact and his behaviour will improve.

You can't keep a child off school just because he doesn't like a punishment! That sends a very confusing message. You need to demonstrate consistency with the school, and support for theor decisions.

You are correct, he wasn't excluded from the celebration day. He took it badly as all his friends got to go on the trip and it meant he had no one to celebrate the day with him at school. I know a lot of people will say he could have played with someone else and enjoyed the day but let's be honest it's not the same when all of your friends are away doing something that you love. He felt excluded.

Yes, there is upset and then there is pure distress, anxiety, confidence knocking and that I think is unnecessary.

It's ok if they take a punishment badly. They're kind of supposed to.

I think the point is he expected to be chosen regardless of his behaviour.
I'm sure all the children were warned about upholding school values.
Lots of other children weren't chosen either. It's not personal, he hasn't displayed the necessary standard.
He is disappointed and upset because he
lost an opportunity.
Its not a punishment, he just didn't do enough to get chosen. Not a bad lesson to learn.

Constant low-level disruption is a passive-aggressive form of bad behaviour often employed by bright kids because "they're not really breaking any rules". It is wearing on the teacher, time-consuming to deal with, and prevents other kids from learning. And it's not big, and it's not funny. The very fact that you are questioning the school's discipline procedures suggests that your DS has picked up his attitude from somewhere close to hime.

I'm wondering how you know that his friends behave the same way?

I'm going against the grain and think it's too harsh and too removed from the behaviour - if he's low level disruptive, surely a more appropriate consequence is adjust seating plan, make him sit by teacher etc not take away an important, confidence building outlet like sport. The school themselves termed the behaviour "low level" - taking away such an important thing is very much high level consequence imo.

By not sending him in you have completely undermined the school.
High school is going to beca big chock for him.

Constant low level disruption in the ru up to Sats will have been incredibly stressful for his teacher and other children.

I'm afraid your son has learned a harsh life lesson and is now feeling the consequences of his disruptive behaviour in lessons. You can sympathise with him that it feels horrible to be excluded from the trip but also reiterate that this is the consequence of his behaviour. Obviously his friends who were allowed to go on the trip have behaved better in class, despite what he might tell you.

It's hard to watch them learn a hard lesson. But maybe look at it as that, learning that what he considered low disruption is disrespectful and change his behavior in the future.