Bit of an ooops really!
My 15 year old earned himself a detention on Friday. During the afternoon I had a text and email from school stating that he'd had a C3 so would be in detention for an hour, and to call the pastoral team to discuss if necessary. I had no idea what a C3 was - he'd only previously had a C1 and it was like pulling teeth trying to find out what that was a code for (his shirt was untucked). Anyway I called the pastoral team. If my son has a detention then I'd like to know why, because then we can discuss it with him at home - a letter and number means nothing and I'd already brought this up with a deputy head when he had his detention for being a scruff! Anyway, I left messages for the pastoral team with no callback so eventually had to go through reception and a teacher called me. Apparently he'd been acting the clown in class. We talked to our son about it, it's GCSE year so we impressed on him how important it is that he's doing what he has to do in class. I emailed the deputy head and again asked if it would be possible for parents to be informed of whatever their child had done to earn the detention rather than just being sent a vague code. That was how it'd been done up until this academic year.
Fast forward to lunchtime today and another text arrived, followed by an email, informing me that he'd received a C3 so would be in detention for an hour tonight. Again I called the pastoral team. No answer. I put in emails to them and had no response. During last period tutor my son replied to my earlier text ("What have you done now????") and told me that the pastoral director hadn't been aware that he'd done the detention on Friday so wanted him to do it today instead, so nothing to worry about and he'd be home on time.
But....I didn't find this out until I'd sent a ranting email to the pastoral team about how bloody crap the school are at keeping parents informed and copied in the head, deputy head and head of year 