Should child be refused GCSE revision session because of detention?

[youarenotkiddingme]

DC year 11 gets a detention for not handing in a piece of homework - fair enough.

Revision session for core subject is announced for same day.

DC asked teacher if he could re arrange detention as thinks revision session would be useful.

DC told no because detention is punishment and they have to learn actions have consequences - again the consequence is fair enough.

This is only 2nd detention has has had in 5 years so isn't a serial offender iyswim?

AIBU to think that considering the change in curriculum and grading and the fact the GCSE's affect their immediate future the teacher should have agreed another day or even said he could attend the session as part of his detention for being mature enough to A) realise the session was important and B) have the maturity to try and rearrange not just get out of it?

This is only part of a whole issue that seems to have stemmed from a change of HT.

Do some schools put all hwks online? Dd's puts big projects online, but regular smaller ones are written in the planner so if they miss a lesson due to music rehearsals etc they are reliant on other kids. The problem with what happened to your friends son is that he didn't actually make a mistake let alone do something wrong. He asked his friend and the friend said there wasn't anything. Yes it's just a detention/suck it up blah blah, but he then has to miss a revision session and wonder whether he might have missed something in it that would have helped him do better. That might be wrong/irrational, but i can see why a teenager stressed about his gcses might worry about it.

It depends on individual schools.

Mine is quite techy so everything is on Google Classroom, or should be - a few Luddite colleagues haven't quite got their heads around it, but we are working towards...

It does make life much simpler for everyone. Students know what is expected, worksheets etc are uploaded so if they've lost the hard copy they can still access it. Parents can see it too. I can set HW in seconds from my phone.

I can also link useful revision links, videos etc, kids can ask questions if they aren't sure what to do. Quite often I set HW where they have to upload, say, a PP or whatever on the topic so everyone else then gets the benefit come revision time.

So the situation with OP's friend's ds simply wouldn't happen - he would have quickly seen what he needed to do.

I'm still of the opinion that missed HW generating a detention shouldn't automatically be evaded by 'oh but I need to go to a revision session' though, however the task was set. It's such a common cop out that schools do need to support the teacher setting the detention, else I'm afraid the piss taking & chuntering is just endless - & that takes up so much more time than just saying 'nope, suck it up'.

Google classroom sounds really good.
I suppose he wasn't trying to evade the detention but move it to another time that the school was running one. Maybe that would be logistically harder than I'm imagining it though?

Again, depends on the school!

Ours runs a system whereby 'detention' is for accumulating too many negative behaviour points in a week (not subject concerns or missed deadlines). That's on Thursday, which is the last day of our week, & nothing else happens after school that afternoon.

Then each after school from Sunday-Wednesday is devoted to various after school revision or catch up sessions - obviously that isn't enough days in the week to cover all subjects for all year groups.

So if someone has missed a key task for me, & I want them to catch up in detention - well, I've got year 13 IB prep Sunday, year 11 GCSE panic club Monday, department meeting Tuesday, KS3 debating club Wednesday...

I'd honestly rather they just went away & sorted out the missing homework & handed it in . But if they don't, & I don't insist they come on Tuesday & do it in the room next to our department meeting, I'll be in deep poo if they then fall behind, fail & I can't show that I put them in detention to catch up.

At this point 'oh I've got Science revision on Tuesday, can I come on Wednesday instead?' is really not making my life any easier. Especially when they then skip Science too.

Oh i misunderstood. I thought detentions were centralised and not run by the teacher that set them.

Friends ds didn't actually need to do the 'homework' in detention. It was set on the Friday for following week but he caught up as he'd planned with all missed work from that day over the weekend. Teacher went through the answers to the sheet in the fridays lesson.
So in detention he sat and read some more maths stuff and did his own revision - so even he admits it wasn't a wasted hour but he'd have rather been at the revision session.

My ds school put most homework online too. My ds has severe problems with executive function so anything not online should be written for him or he should be supervised to write it. If its not then he doesn't get detention (they check to make sure it's not recorded!) and then I get an email to say he has to do it with a deadline.

The school my ds friend goes to is centralised. They do 30 minute ones and 1 hour ones - one of each each week. Admin staff send the emails out to parents as teachers give info to them. They are run on a rota of teachers.

Well, in some schools they will be! & then some kids will be double or triple booked for multiple detentions on the same night anyway...

By year 11 in most schools there'll be revision sessions for various subjects running after school pretty much every night. It's a logistical nightmare however you slice it.

youarenotkiddingme

So what happens to those children that get multiple detentions in the week?
Do they roll over to the next week or max out at 1 hr?

It depends on the school raspberry. In my school we have faculty rotas for detentions. Science (my faculty) are on Monday, and I take one per half term. So I can put a kid in detention for the next Monday, but only have to take detention once every 6-7 weeks.

I actually wouldn't allow a child to miss detention for a revision session, but equally our students are expected to find out what work they must do in advance of missing a lesson and all homework is set online as well as in class. Every child has one 'I forgot' opportunity each academic year. I have a column in my planner to record any such incidences and it isn't much of a faff. The usual suspects use that chance up before the end of September.

boney, probably the same as the serial detention kids in my school. Yesterday I needed to put a detention in for a child who missed a homework for me. He is booked up for the next 3 Mondays (plus the bank holiday), so he will sit his detention (and probably still not complete the homework) a month after it was due.

Sorry, x post OP. Fairly pointless detention then IMO.

Detentions for poor behaviour, fine. Detentions because a student hasn't completed a piece of work & needs to be detained to catch up, fine.

Can't honestly see the point - on an individual student/teacher basis - of putting a student in detention for missed work if they've already sorted the issue.

However, it's quite possible the school has an endemic problem with homework & is being draconian to change the culture. So in this instance, it'd be difficult to say 'oh well, this kid is generally reliable, honest misunderstanding, he's caught up now, let's let him off' without an outcry from everyone else who didn't do it & has accordingly been sanctioned.

Unfortunately it's just not always feasible to individualise every response to every missed homework every time. It'd be someone's full time job!

equally our students are expected to find out what work they must do in advance of missing a lesson and all homework is set online as well as in class Who do they find that out from? Despite having 100% attendance still dd (12) missed quite a lot of lessons towards the end of last term for things like school orchestra rehearsals/day of taking messages around the school/music exam/trip to London specific to a school club. I don't think it's caused any problems but sooner or later it will and i want to remind her she needs to always get all the info she needs re lessons and hwk. Maybe i need to ask the school.

They are supposed get it from me, raspberry. So if they know they will miss a lesson for any reason they are supposed to find me in advance of the lesson to find out what work they will miss and what homework will be set. It is a faff to sort it out for them during lunch / break, but I strongly believe in extra-curricular so I don't mind. I normally know this about a week in advance, but almost certainly the day before. For work missed through unexpected absence (eg illness) they are supposed to copy up the work of another student and see me for any worksheets before the next lesson.

I say 'supposed to' because that is the school policy. Not all staff insist on students follow the policy which makes it impossible to implement properly and thus ineffective over the whole cohort. But the kids that do follow it tend to be the ones who do well in exams, and the ones I never mind giving up lunch or after school time to help. I'm starting a new job in September at a school where this policy is properly implemented. I can't wait!

As an example, next week I have two students missing a lesson for a trip. They are coming at lunch the day before to complete the test set for the lesson they will miss. One of my year 7s was sick for one day towards the end of last term. By the next lesson he had copied up the work with a note in his book to say it was copied, seen me to get the homework sheet and completed it so it was in, marked and returned along with the rest of the class.

Thanks. I'll ask dd about this and also ask at parents evening if need be. I think she's one of the more conscientious students at her school but I'm not sure she's doing any of this. Thanks again

No idea what happens if they get lots! This was only the 2nd one her ds got since he started! I only know about the rota system from her ds because he explained why they wouldn't re arrange.

I'm not aware of endemic problem. It's was always an outstanding school. I went there many decades years ago and so did my friend. We know plenty of students including our own younger siblings who've gone through it.
It's been been a highly sought after over subscribed school.

We live in an area where there's 8 secondary schools within about a 5 mile radius of each other so all our friends have kids in each school! So we hear lots about them!

When the new head took over she got backs up. Suddenly it became very autocratic and demanding and promoted the rules are rules ethos. Which I actually don't disagree with in principle but it doesn't allow for genuine misunderstandings and mistakes.

The best thing I think everyone local loves to read is the Ht weekly blog! It's really long and tedious thought to be very much a poor use of her time!

I'm just glad that friends ds can focus on exams now knowing he has his mums backing that they come before the bloody local schools athletics competition!

It really is worth doing, raspberry. It means that she won't start the next lesson already behind (good lessons build on the previous ones). When I give back work we go over it in class to make sure the kids understand where they went wrong, so if work isn't handed in, marked and returned with the rest if the class she will be at an (admittedly minor) disadvantage. Equally, if homework is due in for a lesson she will miss it should be handed in early to avoid the same thing.

I don't think she's ever missed a hwk yet but sounds like she's been lucky.

All pupils with a subject detention attend the one session regardless of what subject/department it was.

If the school have work detentions and other detentions then the work one is to complete the work so the child and the rest of the class are on the same page for the next session.

Revision session is extra.

Say geography homework was missed and the revision session is for maths then he needs to complete the geography before the revision session so that the geography teacher can carry on, not doing it disrupts the learning of the rest of the geography class.

My take is that revision sessions are extras organised by staff to support revision. Detentions are part of the school's behaviour policy.
Detention takes priority over revision sessions.
Personally, I'd have said to the child quietly 'you have a detention, but if by 9am tomorrow you realise that the rest of your homework was somewhere else and get it to me I could probably sort it'. That said, the teacher set it. It stands. They are not required to make allowances for everyone.

Too often (not saying this child is like this) students and parents have come to feel entitled to revision sessions and I've seen people calling staff saying "well they do media and maths and they're on the same night so can you do a different session".

I think the confrontational way your friend has gone about complaining is just ridiculous aka he's an athlete and if you don't give him a free pass on homework I'll get him to train elsewhere.

Once again- children are not entitled to extra revision sessions.

The child's keenness to attend the revision session is interesting given the fact that he didn't complete his homework which presumably would also have been useful to him in getting a good grade....

He couldn't do it as the child who'd agreed to let him know of any homework told him there was none.

Maisypops. Not sure you read the thread all the way through. The child was stressed and the school chose not to help. They left it up to the parent to sort. The parent sorted it. From the description, the HOY was confrontational and unreasonable.

Don't know about anyone else's school/home agreement. But nowhere does it say I support the school to the detriment of my child's mental health.