appealing against a fixed term exclusion

[fiftyshadesofmum]

my son has just been excluded for 15 days for taking pictures/films of general stuff going on in school. Nothing nasty just stupid 14yr old kids stuff. He has never hurt or intended to hurt anyone, nothing has ever been posted online, the school has not been brought into disrepute, he has never been aggresive or violent, he has never placed himself or anyone else in danger and has never damaged school property. This exclusion starts as he begins yr10. Right at the beginning of one of the most important years at school. Other students at the school have had 5/6 day exclusions for fighting/bullying. One other student launched an unprovoked attack on a ASD kid kicking and punching him and only received a 5 day exclusion! I know he has broken the rules and when I spoke to his year head I myself suggested he was put into internal exclusion as punishment but a 15 day fixed term exclusion means that he cannot start his year 10 until 26th September!! How is this teaching him anything? He just thinks he is having a 9 week summer holiday!! I want to appeal but feel so helpless, especially as the school totally disregarded my thoughts and concerns on this. Has anyone got any advice on what to do next?

Are you sure there isn't anything else? Has he been excluded before?

I work in a secondary school and decisions to exclude pupils are not taken lightly.... I bet there is more to this than meets the eye.

Unless parents dig deeper, investigate and ask questions, they will usually only have one side of the story and that is from their child. Who will usually spin what happened to their advantage if possible.

So other children have been taking photos and posting them online with no sanctions at all, while your DS has got a 15 day exclusion? That hardly seems fair.

Apparently at DS's school the only punishment would be loss of the phone (for an unknown period). Phones are banned at the school, although widely covertly carried.

I do not believe this is as simple as the OP is claiming. A 15 day exclusion for taking pictures in school? Pictures which were taken with (largely) the consent of those in them? Either OP is not giving us the full picture, or the school has not given her the full picture.

Being grounded for 6 weeks seems quite harsh too actually, for something which appears to be fairly 'minor' according to your post.

A 15 day exclusion is a significant sanction. Has he been excluded before?

Grounding him for the whole summer is OTT. Don't you think you will cave?

I don't understand the grounding though. If it had happened a few weeks ago he would have been punished for 3 weeks but as it's just happened he's being punished for 9 weeks. As you think the school are overreacting, don't you think you are too? If it's as trivial as you are led to believe I would reinstate his privileges with the proviso that they will be taken away again if more information comes to light!

All the pics/films taken have either been taken during a breaktime or on the way out of a lesson. He does not play with gadgets during lessons and pays as much attention in class as any other 14 year old. No, he has never been excluded before. He was caught during the last period of sports day when another student had his ipod and was filming my DS laughing and joking with a teacher. When she realised that she was being filmed she told him to stop and he did, he then gave the ipod back to my ds. She asked him to hand over the ipod and initially he refused because he didn't know what she was going to do with it.(more scared of me and what I would say than any school rule!) Eventually/reluctantly he handed it over. I then got a phone call from his year head asking if it was mine. I told him on the phone that my ds should not have it in school and to go ahead and confiscate it, trying to support the school. They then went through all the pics/films on the ipod. My DS says some of the images on there he has downloaded from the internet because he thought they were funny, however he has admitted that he has taken a lot of pics at school, like his mates do. I should explain that we have no money and I scraped and saved to buy him an ipod for Christmas. This is the only gadget he has. All his mates have got phones and laptops/ipads and he says he took his ipod to school to show off a bit and for the first time he actually had a gadget like them. One of the films is of students leaving the class room just before the film ends a paper ball is seen coming through the air supposedly thrown at the teacher.My ds says he was actually filming his mate coming out of the lesson and the paperball being thrown happened to be caught on the film. The year head did say to me that he thought it had been set up but having looked at the film myself I only see kids coming out of the classroom and at the very last second a paperball comes through the air and the film goes off.

I do not want to appeal against punishing my ds for breaking the rules as I think this is right and proper, I just do not agree with such a lengthy exclusion. The sad thing is if my ds had just handed over the ipod when first asked for it would probably all have been forgotten but because he was scared of how I would discipline him, he didn't give it to her till he knew what she was going to do with it.

I know some people cannot understand why I am so upset but neither of my kids have ever really been in trouble at school and this is about as bad as it could possibly be for us! I always believed exclusion was for the really naughty kids and ds may have been really stupid but not really bad.

I must admit that grounding him for the summer was a bit of a knee jerk reaction - I was so cross with him for getting into trouble at school. I think I will probably reinstate those privileges but with a curfew so know parties or sleepovers.

I am not sure if I am handling this at all well. I want to do the right thing and make sure ds gets the message but at the same time feel that he is really being picked on by the school and want to see that he is at least punished fairly.

of course it doesn't help that I cannot talk to anyone about this for 6 weeks.

You are in a slightly difficult position because of the change over from one set of guidelines on discipline and exclusion to a new set which come into force on 1st September.
However in both instances if you wish to appeal then you need to request a meeting of the discipline panel of the governing body. It will only happen if you request it. The panel then has to consider the appeal within 50 school days. You do however have to understand what the discipline panel can and cannot do. They can only agree with the head teacher's decision to fixed term exclude or direct reinstatement because they do not believe that your son did what was alleged and it was not an appropriate punishment. In reality the head teacher has very wide powers in terms of the severity of the punishment and unless there are clear comparable cases where the punishment was less, then you will not convince a panel to reinstate. From what you have said in your posts you do not disagree that your son did what was alleged, it is all around whether it was an appropriate punishment. It frankly does not matter that somebody only got 5 days for fighting, it is whether anybody else did the same as your son and did not get the same punishment.
I am not disagreeing with you that 15 days does sound harsh if the photos are as innocent as you say but what you do not know is what else potentially has been going on in school. For instance have there been offensive doctored pictures of staff appearing on internet sites, which the school and staff have taken great exception to, as I would. In those circumstances the school will feel it is necessary to take severe action.
Whilst I am not saying you are wasting your time going to appeal, I would try and get an urgent meeting with the head teacher to establish exactly why they took the action they took. The head of year does not make the decision on when to exclude and for how long, it is the head teacher and the head teacher alone. If you can get a meeting now, that is the best way forward. If however a meeting is not possible till September then I would confirm in writing to the school that you will be appealing. You can always drop the appeal after talking to the head teacher.
Another point that you need to understand is what is going to happen to your son. For the first 5 days, they will be at home and you are responsible for him. However the school have to provide work for him. From the sixth day the school has to provide a place for your son to go to for education, which is not at the school. There is no way that this punishment should be an extended holiday for our son. What has happened over this?
If you feel more comfortable PMing me rather than put it on the open site, please feel free to do so.

I work in a school and my gut feeling is that 15 days is still too extreme a punishment for taking innocent videos and photos of staff and students at school. Even with the added not doing as a teacher requests too (not handing over the ipod initially) it is still exceedingly harsh.

What does the letter say for the reason?

Did you have a face to face meeting with the head teacher regarding the exclusion? If not, that is very appalling. Assuming the school is in the right, you need to be in possession of the full set of facts for your own satisfaction, and in order to help your son get back on track.

The head teacher should be in school for much of the holiday period, and certainly from mid-August. You should seek a meeting at the earliest opportunity - insist on it. Missing three weeks of school at the start of GCSE courses is very worrying, and will have your son on the back foot for many weeks thereafter.

I imagine there is much more to this story, and if you are truly surprised, then there is a major failure in communication.

I really recommend that you don't try to defend or minimalise DS's behaviour in any way, but strive to work out with the school what in his best interests, ie to cut back on the suspension to perhaps one week, or an internal suspension.

What concerns me about some things you have said is that DS will think he has 9 weeks' holiday instead of 6. He hasn't yet got the message.

Admission - this guidance does not come into effect until 1 September 2012 and as 50shades recieved the letter in July does the old rule of an automatic Governors meeting is to beheld of exclusions of 15 days or more?

This has nothing to do with cyber bullying. It appears if he had bullied someone he would have got off lightly. Fifteen days is too long I would appeal.

On the old system if it was 15 days or less then the parent has to request the meeting. If the fixed term exclusion is over 15 days or the accumulated fixed term exclusions come to more than 15 days (ie 16 days) then the GB has to hold a review meeting.
In this case assuming it is 15 days only and there have been no other fixed term exclusions then the parent has to request the meeting.
Another question that immediately springs to mind is exactly what the school rules say on having such equipment in school and what will happen in such circumstances. That is clearly relevant in the context of whether the punishment fits the crime. Could I suggest that you look at the guidance available from the DfE, which is at

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/s/screening%20searching%20and%20confiscation%20advice%20for%20head%20teachers%20staff%20and%20governing%20bodies.pdf
The most appropriate bit would appear to be :-
15. Statutory guidance for dealing with electronic devices

1. Where the person conducting the search finds an electronic device they may examine any data or files on the device if they think there is a good reason to do so. Following an examination, if the person has decided to return the device to the owner, or to retain or dispose of it, they may erase any data or files, if they think there is a good reason to do so.
2. The member of staff must have regard to the following guidance issued by the Secretary of State when determining what is a ?good reason? for examining or erasing the contents of an electronic device: - In determining a ?good reason? to examine or erase the data or files the staff member must reasonably suspect that the data or file on the device in question has been, or could be, used to cause harm, to disrupt teaching or break the school rules.
3. If inappropriate material is found on the device it is up to the teacher to decide whether they should delete that material, retain it as evidence (of a criminal offence or a breach of school discipline) or whether the material is of such seriousness that it requires the involvement of the police.

'Nothing to do with cyber bullying' but he just happened to have video of a paperball being thrown at a teacher, his ipod was being used to film a teacher and he didn't want a teacher seeing what was on it? Yeah right.

I don't understand why you believe his side of the story, given that he lied to you by taking the ipod to school in the first place.

It sounds like it was not the first time he had taken it (and he may have been warned about using it before), that he was intentionally filming teachers and that he was offensive to the teacher who tried to remove it from him.

The other children who posted photos on Facebook (that they have taken in school) probably took them at breaktime, whereas your DS was using his camera in a lesson, albeit at the end of a lesson.

I also think it is a harsh punishment, but one that will be sending a powerful message around the school and I wish that my DD went to a school that took behaviour issues so seriously. I would be worried that he is seeing the punishment as a 9wk holiday, and that you think it likely that he will be quite pleased when he see the Facebook response, as this suggests that he still doesn't understand what he has done wrong.

On balance, I would be more worried about his apparent lack of remorse, as an indication of his attitude in general, than about the school being heavyhanded, and would support the school.

Think the school could have handled it better and explained why there were being so harsh, this is not as bad as bullying.

The point being that the lack of information means that we don't know if bullying was involved, or an intent to use the footage in an unpleasant fashion.
Like when a friend of DS was videoed in meltdown by a group who found his flapping and screeching funny and intended to post it on FB.

A friends son did record a teacher behaving in a very unprofessional way. This was because nobody believed him about the teacher the school excluded him for this I would imagine that's one reason why teachers come down hard on it.

In the same way that the supply teacher who covertly filmed a series of classes behaving outrageously was also barred.

The could contribute to cyber bullying.

The difference between cyber bullying and traditional bullying is how fast and far it travels. One little incident without the intention of bullying can be mailed to hundreds of other students in an instant. It can be tweeted, put on Facebook and YouTube by all of the recipients very easily. It can then be commented on and retweeted with almost no effort.

Before you know it, you have made someone's life a misery (which is a definition of bullying).

That is why schools need to come down hard and why parents need a short sharp shock too.

I imagine that the pastoral leaders in any senior school have to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with cyber incidents. Most of these will take place out of school, where the school has very little control. They have to take action on anything that happens in school, which they can control.

The school's policies will be as much about changing student and parental attitudes, as well as punishing the actual misdemeanor.

I did watch a programme where the children were filmed didn't the teacher do it in secret? The kids were awful.