Detention.

[NewLife4Me]

At my dd school it's basically 3 behaviour marks then a HT detention.

She has the marks, so now detention.

I haven't spoken to her about it yet as won't see her until later, so don't know what she did. Of course it wasn't her fault.

How do you make them see that it is their fault, it is fair and they should be punished.

Or, have you been the parent that if dc said they were in the wrong place at wrong time and punished for just being there, have challenged the school or teacher.

I would start with Ok the school have notified me that you have 3 points. Could you explain how you have 'earned' these? My school uses 'SIMS' which parents can look at their child's behaviour, rewards attendance etc. It might be useful to see what method of recording dd's school use and whether you can access her record.

Its a tough one to call. Teachers do make mistakes, but kids never really want to take responsibility. Id wait until youve talked to her really.

I know it will be her, but after having an older child who it was never his fault (asd) I want to get it right.
I'm pretty sure they will be small misdemeanours but obviously bad enough for a mark.
I just wish for once mine wasn't one of the ones getting detentions.
I suppose ds1 was good, but it is such a long time ago it's hard to remember.

It's the taking responsibility so they learn and don't do it again that's the problem.

If she got three individual marks then it's unlikely to be a mistake.

Kids will often go 'teacher picked on me for talking but everyone else was talking so unfair blah blah etc'

The response is 'were you talking?'. When they admit yes, then they are admitting that they deserved the behaviour point. Banging on about everyone else is a distraction from their own behaviour. You tell them to forget about everyone else, to concentrate on their own behaviour, and if they weren't talking/misbehaving they wouldn't be racking up behaviour marks.

Thanks noble

She is home and showering now, so thought I'd update quickly.

Apparently, she is challenging 2 marks but says the other was fair enough, she was 15 mins late and should have been better prepared etc.

The second one was for being in the wrong place i.e talking outside room when should have been in her own individual room.
She said others were talking outside her room but she was clearly inside getting on with her work.

The third she said was for missing a piece of English, but according to her the teacher realised she had written it in the wrong part of her book and is willing to reverse the mark.

I'm wondering what to do. Whether to contact school and tell them what she says, because either she is telling the truth or blatantly lying/ not understanding hence won't learn from these things and continue to receive marks?
I don't want to just leave it to school and not address it at home.

If the third was a mistake then she won't get the detention. Focus on how she has the chance to do the right things from now on and not do a detention.
15 minutes late. Wow. That's rubbish. If she argues about the other one I'd say the lateness is bad enough she's lucky she didn't get two marks for that.
How on earth did she get into trouble for being outside and chatting when she was indoors working?!

My DS had a HT detention once in Middle School, through being silly and immature. He still maintains it was the best English lesson he and his mates ever had. The HT obviously thought that sitting in silence was a waste of time so gave them a lesson on points of grammar! Not at all helpful, but every cloud....

I wouldn't argue or challenge the school. They are very lucky to have detention after having been given two more chances to avoid it.
At my DS they get detention on the spot. No if & no "but". Three detentions in a row and they have to go on Saturday to school wearing their school uniforms. I must say, the behaviour at my DS's school is impeccable as a result & the parents are not getting involved in arguments over detentions at all. Of course the children would say that they were in the classroom doing their work! Did your child mention what happened before she sat at the desk doing her work?

Wolfie

It was the second week and the kids were finding their way around. They have a live stream of where they need to be, not straightforward at all, when you first arrive. Lessons were clashing and overlapping for the first couple of weeks for most of the kids. The new ones did struggle a bit.

Even though to me that one seemed harsh she isn't arguing that one and if that one alone had a detention she would have been happy to take the punishment.
It's the others.
I'm hoping to get some more info from her live stream and record on monday, but wanted to know how to tackle it for now as I won't see her for another 10 days or so after this weekend.

I suppose I need to know she isn't minimising what has happened, so she will learn and be better in the future. This comes in the same week she gained 4 merit points.
I don't know whether I should be punishing or congratulating.

I'm certainly not going to challenge the school, I just want to make sure that as parents we have the full facts and also that dd isn't given the chance to minimise. I want her to be good and do well, it's a great school and a wonderful opportunity for her.

My son had detention a few times. Never his fault. Told him he was to do it and if he knew they were wrong he would always know that inside. Life ain't always fair - sometimes you just have to run with it.

Only time I ever got involved was when three in a row was on the same issue. I didn't contact them about detention (he did them) I contacted them about trying to put right an issue which was seemingly getting out of control.

If you ever get the chance to notice how few children attend detention, you soon realise how "unlucky " your child must have been to get one with two unfair black marks. Our 600 cohort school had about 5-10 attendees on the days I picked my son up. Really not very many

OP your DD is at boarding school you have decided to let the school look after her day to day education and discipline; don't interfere, I'm not even informed by my DS or his school about these kind of things, if I knew, I probably wouldn't discuss it with him, he's old enough to work it out for himself where he went wrong, and for this level of misdemeanour if he moans that it's unfair my view is such is life. If the English teacher has already acknowledged she's made a mistake then hopefully she will be back down to no detention.
Boarding schools especially in the beginning are often more lenient, they know it's all new and a big settling in time and that children make mistakes, lots of kids get head masters detentions it isn't a permanent black mark against their name, if the detention goes ahead its a fair punishment for a few realitively trivial incidences, you should view it in the same way.
Finally OP children generally can't be "good" all the time and shouldn't be, adolescent brains are programmed to take risks, teenagers as I'm sure you know as they mature start to really challenge things they don't like, they make mistakes and do stupid things, that's how they learn. Children at boarding cannot be expected to be good 24/7, it's not like being at a day school, good boarding schools know this, a good boarding school is able to mix a degree of tolerance and slightly turning a blind eye (as one teacher once said to me many moons ago "you are in their home"), with caring about individual children and treating them as individuals but staying fair and discipline, it's not an easy balance when so many live together.

I don't even ask! At secondary if its unfair, they can challenge and part of resilience is occasionally sucking up unfairness. I don't double punish either and certainly wouldn't contact the school.
Detention is hardly an unreasonable punishment either, it's not six of the best or even deprivation of a treat.

I don't even ask! At secondary if its unfair, they can challenge and part of resilience is occasionally sucking up unfairness. I don't double punish either and certainly wouldn't contact the school.
Detention is hardly an unreasonable punishment either, it's not six of the best or even deprivation of a treat.

I agree. As long as parents are told, and have the chance to move the detention if there is something important after school like a hospital appointment.

My son's school hands out detentions like confetti, no "three strikes and you're out" at his school. Forget homework? Hand in something unfinished or not up to the teacher's expectations? No second chances.

If he was really upset about getting a detention, I might raise it with the school, but in year 7 he accepted the ones he got were fair and he's not so far had any in year 8. I'm sure he won't get through the whole year though!

Just let the school get on with it. A detention isn't the end of the world. Whether fair/justified or not. Really not worth causing stress/hassle about it.

When I was at school, we had lots of whole class detentions when there was lots of talking etc (usually when we had a weak teacher). I always found it unfair as I was usually well behaved and trying to work. But we just did it. It's not ruined my life.

I say the same to my son, who likewise has had a couple of whole class lunchtime detentions (again a weak teacher). He comes home miffed about it, but at the end of the day, he wouldn't be doing anything else anyway (other than messing around on his phone). I tell him to grow a stiff upper lip and get on with it!

DD2 had a detention for letting her friend use her lab coat whilst she went to violin lessons... Unduly harsh in my opinion, especially since she is year 7 and it was only the second week in school.

The student who was using DDs labcoat did not get a detention.

Result is that DD who was originally keen to do chemistry and experiments especially because the ones in primary school were a bit naf now hates the subject and loads the teacher... I'm sure it will all blow over, however not sure if I will not mention something to the teacher at parents evening...

The detention itself does not bug me but the fact that chemistry is now DDs pet hate does annoy be tbh.

• loathes

BBF that's ridiculous!

don't get involved in the fairness of it -tell your child you trust the adults at the school to make the right judgement and if she disagrees she can sit and write a letter out to the head of year if she feels that strongly. There are very very few children that will say that they believe it's all fair and that they will learn from it. Largely they break the rule just a little bit off-centre so anything the school does is not fair.

If it makes you feel any better, kids moan on about how unfair their parents are an awful lot when they are at school.