I'd like to hear your opinions on this letter recieved from school today

[IllegallyBrunette]

The letter is titled 'BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT'

'We have noticed that the children are taking a long time to settle and are concerned at the time it is taking them to begin work.

As from Mon 29th Sept as part of our behaviour management strategy we will be putting into practise a 'do it first time' procedure. This will last for 2 weeks. It is intended that learning time will be maximised with your children reachingtheir full potential.

The children have been informed of this today and now know what will be expected of them as from Monday. It will take the following course.

Any instruction must be followed first time. In the event of this not happening the pupil will be sent directly to the Head or Deputy Head Teacher. The pupil will then spend five minutes under Senior Management supervision before returning to class. Should this oocur three times or more within one week Parents will recieve a letter from the Head Teacher. The letter will ask for your support in this event. We also ask that you discuss with your child why they have been sent explaining how their behaviour disrupts other children.

We kindly request your support in this matter. Should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us.'

I think it is fucking ridiculous, sorry.
totally overthetop and counterproductive, and contrary to good practice too
it is good practice to allow children a little time to process
in secondary school

I'd say it sounds OK. If they weren't addressing the problem, they'd probably have parents complaining about their children being distracted by other children arriving late, talking etc (or perhaps they already have, and this has been one of the reasons for the letter).

I'd imagine that after a few kids get sent to the Head and DH (and word gets round), things will settle down.......

I think it's OTT for infants, particularly reception!

Blimey - some of those children have only just turned 4!!

Our reception classrooms have a 'cloud' thing - all the names are in a 'sun' at the start of the day adn they can move to the dark cloud and to the rain cloud - I think they lose 5 mins of 'golden time' on Friday afternoon if they go in the rain cloud. For most small children just the threat of the cloud is enough to get them moving!

In fact I totally agree with mazzystar.

it could just work though (it won't but there's always a possibility)

how infuriating to have to deal with 30 children all doing things 3rd time

THey're trialling it, it would be churlish not to support it IMV

I'd be if they did this in infants at dd's school. Juniors fine, but zero tolerance in Reception?!?

How about talking to the yr 1 teacher about it, and asking what it means in practice? ie what level of disobedience etc are they talking about?

It is parents evening soon, so I will speak to ds's teacher about it then.

I am fully prepared to support the school on this for now, but if it is carried on for longter than the two weeks I might not be so supportive.

Do they have an Ofsted coming up?

No, ofsted came not long ago.

I agree with Mazzystar. I think the Head teacher will get bored of this after about a week. I prefer positive encouragement, but I am a bit of a softie.

Gah they shouldn't get ANY notice for ofsted, they should just have to submit to visitation immediately, first time, no chances.

Sorry but idiots. It's ridiculous.

I would be very concerned about the long term attitude to school this would give children.

For reception children, it is totally inappropriate and I would tell them so. It is totally unreasonable to ask parents to support something which is bad for children.

if there is as much disorder as they are saying it'll be chaos, with great long lines of kids waiting to go in to heads office to sit for their 3 minutes, and giggling in the corridors... that would be something of a backfire i reckon.

What do any teachers think of the idea? I imagine they are in support of it...?

Don't know why but it doesn't seem to shock me into thinking 'how unreasonable'. If it works, great. If not, at least they tried to do something to stop kids mucking about and wrecking other dcs lessons,abandon it and go onto something else.

sounds like the SMTs days will be wasted with trivial crap. Am very concerned about implications for those children with language and/or auditory processing difficulties - which sometimes can manifest quite subtly.

I think it would be a lot fairer if there were visual cues in addition to the instructions, especially for younger children.

as an ex-teacher:

hahahahahahahahahahahaha nice one!

can you imagine the scene in the school corridors?
a constant stream of kids to-ing and fro-ing to the head's office (who will be tearing his hair out big time after child number 539 comes into his office 'for a 5(!) min supervision)...

hope he has a BIG office

hahahahahahahahaha

Blimey is it a school or is it a Boot Camp?

To me it smacks of teachers not being able to control the class. I think with all the distractions kids have at that age, and the vast amount of children with hearing difficulties at that age - I think doing things the first time they are asked is actually a lot to expect from young children. Bit heavy handed - I wouldn't give my support for this.

Good grief. Mazzystar said it. If the kids are buggering about then the teachers seriously need to look at their lesson plans and their relationships with the children.There are always some who will fall of the edge but you agree your strategies with them and keep on teaching. If they are in the room then they will be taking something in and if the lesson is good enough then they will come round 99 percent of the time.
We have a policy of never sending children out of the classroom- some would just do everything in their power to get sent out!

and all the possible shenanigans they could get up to going to and from the office....
i can picture some of the 'lads' i taught planning all sorts whilst passing back and forth....

not gonna work!!!

Also I can imagine that in practice, it will be extremely unfair. If 6 children haven't immediately obeyed, the teacher will only notice hte first 3 at the most. So 3 will get away with it.

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