After School Detentions

[hippppy]

Please do not come in on the attack!

My son is at a secondary Free School, they are in temporary accommodation and tucked away. They have no bus route and are not near a train station.

The days are very long already. They HAVE to stay for an hour of clubs every day. Unfortunately these clubs do not seem too much fun... Juggling, Magic club, textiles.. (thats another story!)

My son recently has been labled G&T, and now G&T underachieving and SEN (because he is G&T) his behavior at school is getting out of control, he is rude and cheeky to teachers and is very bored in class.

He is grounded at home, no internet or phone. I have constantly tried to work with the school, I am in no way letting him off for his poor behavior at school!!!!

I have told the school I am going to remove him and put him into a normal state school. Unfortunately this will take up to 10 school days and I feel this has upset the Head.

He was suspended on Wednesday for being rude to teachers and the Head insisted I collected him. I do not drive and my son comes in a car share. I am a single parent on a very low income with two children and all week I have not been able to go to work. (self employed) A taxi back from the school is £30.

A couple of weeks ago the head insisted he came in on inset day, this resulted in two trains and a taxi. After this I wrote the head a long email stating that I simply cannot send him in taxi's home and I thought the school had accepted that.

He was naughty on Friday (I AM NOT TRYING TO EXCUSE HIS BEHAVIOUR!) and the Head rang me very late in the day saying he was going to KEEP my son and he would miss his lift home. I tried to explain I do not have the money to put him in a Taxi but the Head was very firm and insisted I would just have to find him a way home.

He is only 12, I do feel uncomfortable sending him in a taxi with a stranger. I had to ring four taxi companies as everyone was booked up and ended up putting him in a car with a firm I am not familiar with (CRB checked etc) He didn't get home until 6.45pm)

I do not think this school is the best place for my son. He is very unhappy there! I have spent hours on the phone trying to move him somewhere else. I have had many worries about the school but as it is new I have tried to work with them but its all getting out of control.

I do not have the money to put him in a taxi and i'm worried that this will end up costing me my job. This is costing me a fortune!

10 days left (ish) Can I refuse to allow the school to keep my son after school? Or can I home ed until he gets a place in the other school?

Thank you in advance

My impression is Free Schools have tighter home/school agreements but LEA schools charge ( quite correctly) the parents any costs incurred through a pupil breaking rules. OP, your son was treated extremely leniently, although it does make me wonder whether the alarms had a direct link, but I would find his behaviour worrisome.

Home school agreements are not contracts in law and are totally unenforceable.

Hippppy has never come back to explain the distance, so i would guess it is something perfectly walkable like 8 miles or something, and she doesn't want to say, because it would show she was making a fuss about nothing.

£30 in a cab = not walkable you silly woman. Why even bother posting!

Thank you happygardening ad evyone else that posted helpful comments.

This thread has just got stupid now. So I will not be posting again and will just leave it to the handful of strange folk as a place to air their oddness!

:)

I do like that "8 miles is perfectly walkable" stuff. Assuming the OP is not too keen on her 12 year old child walking 8 miles on his own after school in an area which is clearly pretty isolated, that requires OP to walk 16 miles to collect him and bring him back. 5 hours' walking after a full day's work. Really?

And I want to know what cabs charge £30 for a walking distance journey, so that I can avoid them.

Actually the bonkers poster whose name I forget said that 20 miles was a reasonable distance for this boy to walk home. Not all bad, though, because it has allowed the OP to focus on that particular insanity and ignore all the reasonable and helpful suggestions and advice others have given.

Don't be ridiculous, Ici. It's perfectly acceptable for a 12yo to walk 8 miles home, along country lanes and dual carriage ways if they're lucky. And I for one would be devastated if my child was only working at L7 in his first year of secondary school.

I hope things improve at your son's new school. Fwiw at ds's school, we get a couple of days at least warning of an after school detention. A lot of the students live in villages and the only bus is the school bus.

Children can walk 20 miles occasionally. Children can walk 8 miles regularly. It is what our bodies are evolved for, not-walking is just a cultural habit, it isn't a biological norm. We don't have a car, and often have been without train fare or bus fare, so walking is just the norm. Up to 5 miles each way (10 miles in total, to and from school) wouldn't even cause a comment. DS has on one occasion "rushed" home after school and back again to pick up an instrument he needed for an after school concert, and he would have been about 11 or 12 then. 8-12 miles would be a bit of an endeavour, and 20 miles a special occasion, only once or twice a year, on holiday, or for a sponsored walk, or something.

We walk because we have no choice, but having said that, it is a pleasant, healthy, sociable and enjoyable past time.

This boy has, through his own appalling behaviour, left himself with no transport home. Suggesting he walk at least some of it, as a consequence, is fair and reasonable. The reason some posters think otherwise is because they have fallen out of a very natural habit.

Apart from anything else, he may enjoy it, and it may calm him down. It may even become something he chooses to do, in future. Many restless school children with poor behaviour and concentration, have benefited from taking up walking to and from school, particularly boys. Regular strenuous exercise is one of the first suggestions for habitually poor concentration and impulse control.

As I said, the OP prefers not to tell us the actual distance, probably because it isn't actually that far.

If you live more than 3 miles away from the nearest school, you get free transport.

Hang on- your son walked 5 miles home form school, 5 miles back for his instrument, then 5 miles home again? And then played in a concert?

I hate to say I don't believe you- but I don't believe you. If he finished school at 3.30, he would be home by, say 5.30.Back to school for 7.30 then home again by 9.00. And then the concert. And that's doing it non- stop, after a day at school, and presumably having walked 5 miles to get there in the morning. At 11 years old. Nah.

Along country lanes, AElf? Bollocks to that.

No Hakluyt, he was in school, realised he didn't have his instrument for the after school concert, and rushed home to get it, and yes, was back in plenty of time to play at 7 or 7.30, whenever it started, don't remember exactly. I suggest you think hard about why you have difficulty accepting that. It is perfectly natural, completely doable, and if you are in the habit of walking, no big deal at all. That it is problem to you indicates that you have got into the unnatural habit of using transport everywhere, and don't realise how far this is from the real lives of many people in the UK, and around the globe.