By law does a school have to give a set notice period for detention or is it at their discretion?

[sicily1921]

I had a foggy idea it was 24 hours but is this right?

They could use the payphone. That's what we had to do.

There's no payphone in the school. And they're not allowed out during the school day.

Then they'd at surely be able to use a landline on the school premises - student services or the office.

Detentions did exist before the invention of the mobile phone. And whilst most schools officially ban them, I bet there are very few teenagers who don't have one hidden in their bag for home time! It's long as they're switched off and don't make their presence known to staff then a blind eye is turned.

How are you informed of your DCs detentions Hmm?

The rule in ds' school is that the school will not give notice for a short detention (can't remember if it's 15 minutes or up to 30 mins) but will for a longer one. This is an urban school which makes it easier: anyone who missed the bus could just catch the next one, and the majority of students walked.

It would have caused massive problems for my dd who used disabled transport. Solution fairly simple though: I just told her she mustn't get detentions.

As for informing parents, school did not allow mobile phones in the classroom but you could take a mobile phone and hand it in at reception during the day and then retrieve it and make a penitent phone call to your parents at home time. Not that ds does: he knows that I won't get anxious if he is 20 minutes late; I'll just assume that he has either forgotten to do his homework and is in detention or is deep in conversation somewhere along the road.

I was talking about the school I work in. It's 24 hours notice from the school office to the parent.

My ds hasn't had a detention, so I wouldn't know how his school works.

It's discretionary.

But a good school will realise that keeping a pupil after normal hours can have an impact on the wider family and will work with them in solving behaviour issues. Giving notice of detentions is one way to achieve this - also a conversation with the family can help uncover if there are any unusual circumstances which underlie the transgressions. If your aim is to teach and guide to acceptable behaviour, rather than exercise punitive measures without full context, that is an important step.

One of the conditions for allowing my DD to repeat Yr11 was that i allowed the SENCO the sanction of immediate detention. I have said all they need to do is just text my mobile phone to let me know that DD has been kept in detention and i will arange transport for her.

Those who have read previous posts from me will know that DD despite having an IQ of 138 is STATEMENTED and suffers from ADHD among other things like emontional problems. For my DD this is a good solution in helping her get to grips with her problems and helping her eventually reach her potential.

On a separate issue has it become beneficial for a school to get a statemented pupil to University because after 5 years of lack of help with DD the school are now failling over themselves.

Hmm, so it isn't an issue for the school that you work in. Re. The school the OP works in, we don't know what provision is made for informing parents. I very much doubt that schools will detain a child without having measures in place that allow the parent to be informed either by mobile, payphone or office phone.

I presume our school would let us know since 90% of the kids rely on school buses.

If they didn't let us know then it might be fun not trying to get the kids home...

I agree with clam - if my child receives a detention (and he does ) I want to know why and to make sure he understands why his behaviour is unacceptable.

When I was at school (a long time ago) we were regularly told off for not wearing the correct uniform to and from school and - worse crime ever - eating in public and talking to boys out of school .

24hrs notice has always been given at DSs school, and I have not seen anything written to say that has changed. But we are in a rural area where 70% of pupils are bussed in, so keeping them behind for an hour (or even 20mins) after the end of the school day would be a massive pain for parents. I sometimes wonder who is the most inconvenienced by this punishment - it certainly seemed to put me out more than DS .

In the old days when I was at school, there would have been no notice given about detention and you would have had no way of contacting your parents to tell them you would be late (we didn't even have a land line until I was 13) but then I guess parents didn't panic so much then as they weren't used to knowing where their offspring are every minute of the day.

Where I teach, detentions take place after school on the day on which they are given. This is a fairly recent thing, and has made a difference to the impact of detentions. Previously, when 24 hours notice was given, quite a lot of parents would refuse permission. Now, parents are informed by lunchtime at the latest, by phone or text, and then the students are collected from their last lesson and taken to the hall. It's made a difference because a disruptive student knows that they will not be able to get out of detention by getting their mum to write a note.

That is part of the reason the government made the change. Many schools found that, in many cases, informing parents of an impending detention resulted in parents refusing permission so the child went unpunished. The other reason for the change is that the government believe that a detention on the day of the offence is more effective than a detention a day or two later.

So really, before they phone the police in a mad panic because their pfb hasn't returned home from school on time, parents need to factor in the fact that they might have a detention!

Problem solved!

Surely any parent would phone the school before phoning the police, even putting to one side the fact many secondary aged children don't always head straight home.

Although it's not absolutely clear what the OP's motivation was in posing this question, I have to say that although neither of mine have ever had a detention, if they did, and I was worried, it's them I'd be having a go at subsequently, not the school.

We don't have to get permission to keep them for 15 minutes or less - any longer and parents need to be notified. We don't have to get permission - it is just a notification. I wasn't aware there had been a change from Gove - I just follow the school policy.

We get a letter home with the date and the reason., usually 3 -5. Days notice. Slightly off tack but I object to them giving dd after school detentions, because all it means is I have to leave work to pick her up and drive her home, she loves it, means she doesn't have to get the bus! She's only had 2 but it feels like its my punishment. A lunchtime detention gets her grumpy!

They get notice at DD's school because it has pupils from a wide rural area. Once the school buses have left the premises at 3 pm many children have no other way of getting home.

"Actually I think what worries me more is that DD's school states that they can search children without consent."

It doesn't worry me. The school has found and confiscated illegal drugs from pupils on a number of occasions.