Well we wondered if Michaela would work elsewhere - Great Yarmouth, sick buckets and mandatory smiling

[noblegiraffe]

The previous Dep Head of Michaela has just been made head of Great Yarmouth High School, a school with high absenteeism and 30-odd percent GCSE pass rate.

People thought his initial letter to parents was a bit forthright www.inspirationtrust.org/news/?pid=968&nid=19&storyid=1246

But now details are coming out as the behaviour policy has been leaked to journalists. If teachers think you are faking illness to get out of lessons then they will give you a sick bucket. If you don't smile you're being rude and will be punished.

And then stuff like the attached photo.

Parents aren't taking it particularly well. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-41228803

Also, I don't agree a brief answer sounds unintelligent / inarticulate. Someone responding to their colleague asking 'What's the figure this quarter for x?' with 'The figure for x this quarter is y, name' would sound really odd.

Also, I don't agree a brief answer sounds unintelligent / inarticulate. Someone responding to their colleague asking 'What's the figure this quarter for x?' with 'The figure for x this quarter is y, name' would sound really odd.

Very good point. The whole shtick of these schools is that they claim to give their children the polish and confidence imbued by the public schools. But I doubt very much that anyone at Eton would speak in this stilted way. I think I read somewhere the Head of Michaela said that she wanted the children at her school to have the sort of confidence that Boris Johnson has. I admit I've found it very difficult to judge Michaela objectively after that.

More seriously, I wonder what happens to children educated like this once they start work and possibly, managing others. If they've been given all this "no excuses" stuff and believe you have to carry on regardless how do they show sympathy to employees with personal problems, mental health issues or simple lack of confidence? How on earth will they manage as GPs? If they become MPs how will they have sympathy with their constituents?

Crikey, I know I made a semi-serious comment in another thread about the Government wanting schools to churn out unquestioning, obedient worker drones but f*ck me.....

In case posters here are interested, this is his it's running in AIBU

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3031384-Harsh-Times-at-Yarmouth-High-New-Head-introduces-new-rules-including-sick-buckets-in-classrooms

Read this the other day. It sounds to me like they're turning the school into a prison but then I read more and thought no prisoners have more rights this sounds like a blooming concentration camp.

Don't upset the commandant by not making eye contact, you WILL SMILE!!

Mind you my son was told to "cheer up" at his primary school in July. He'd just been told his Granddad has terminal cancer....

When did we elect to give schools all this power over every aspect of our lives? I don't remember voting for this in any elections.

Schools now dictate when we can have a holiday - or pay the holiday tax. They get stricter and stricter about uniform to the point in some cases of checking labels in clothing to make sure it was bought in the school shop not a supermarket.

A local school failed it's Ofsted quite badly a week later there were queues outside the school gates as they had tape measures and swatches as they checked off school uniform and immediately sent offenders home. All setup to make it seem like they failed their Ofsted because of the students and their uniform, instead of it being solely the fault of SLT.

What happened to rewarding positive behaviour and ignoring negative, where possible??? If all you're doing is punishing kids for tiny stupid infractions like not smiling nor making eye contact (I don't do eye contact now and im over 40!!) you're going to end up with

High truancy
High sickness
Very high levels of stress

In fact i'd not be surprised to see the students concerned at their doctors with stress and depression. I had a similar experience at a job where I was bullied every shift for every tiny thing no matter what and it utterly destroyed me and I was 21 then I really think this is a recipe for driving some of the more vulnerable youngsters to suicide!!!

This school is local to me, although I haven't got a child there I know plenty of people that do and have seen all this pan out, the school has been failing miserably for years and yes it does need stricter policies to be adhered to, however some of the policies are absurd, there is an acceptable middle ground there somewhere but it needs to be found

Hopefully the new slightly more relaxed policies will work better for the parents www.greatyarmouthmercury.co.uk/news/education/inspiration-trust-s-great-yarmouth-charter-academy-softens-its-stance-on-tough-behaviour-rules-after-dividing-opinion-1-5190901

Good god. So they play to basically bully the kids into being one compliant mass of bodies?

So much of those requires confidence and for the kids to feel people believe in them.

So many kids will just be nervous wrecks.

Ruling through fear merely has them behaving a certain way because they have to, not because they have listened and learnt and developed an understanding.

Dreadful

'Sir or Miss'? Lovely equalities message there for starters. What wrong with Mr Jones and Ms Jones?

Frankly, the 'full sentences' thing makes them sound deranged.
The eye contact enforcement makes them sound deranged and disablist.
The enforced smiling would give me the creeps. I find it hard to know what my face is doing at the best of times (as does DD. Resting bitch face, probably, the lot of us) and it's all too reminiscent of men who tell you to smile, it'll never happen love, when it just has.

Sounds like it's all style before substance.

Why don't 'sir' and 'ma'am'? Like in the army or the police. (You know, like real life careers schools are supposed to be preparing kids for.)

The school my friend used to teach at used Sir & Madam (she left teaching to join the police)

The school has been failing for years and years. I suspect more moderate methods have been tried and failed, repeatedly. How many more times should they be tried, how many more years worth of kids should be allowed to fail?

BarbarianMum What are the other secondary schools in the area like? Have they been failing for years and years too?

Very interesting Acorn Clearly the people at the Trust shit a brick when they read 'unquestioned authority' and told Barry to rein it in a bit.

Yes kids should obey teachers when they give instructions in the classroom, but the words 'unquestioned authority' rightly make people uncomfortable.

I do remember being told a few years back about a secondary school in deptford, south east London that was the pits and a new Head took over. She brought in a rule that all pupils had to walk between lessons with folded arms. Most people were at this. The school had a huge problem with fights in the corridors. I think after a school year the Head publicly (in the school IYSWIM) revoked the rule because she was so proud of the progress the student body had made. She reserved the right to reinstate it if she felt it was needed. The students were thrilled. They felt proud and motivated to carry on.

Some schools definitely need a "reset button" but nothing about GYHS sounds temporary. It sounds designed to produce little worker drones who probably actually won't do well at University (especially Oxbridge) as it doesn't suit a drone mentality.

Answering in full sentences is not crazy. We use it with extended answers (rather than one word), and I will add a connective to try to get the students to extend or elaborate. They don't have to finish with "Miss" though! Oracy is a skill that needs to be developed in lots of children. In all the children I teach. Positive reinforcement though, for us, in shaping behaviour.

Answering with full sentences is also what one does when learning a foreign language, at least it was in my day. I agree it sounds stilted, but I can see the attraction.

Would this work?
Question: who is a massive twat?
Answer: Barry Smith, headmaster of Charter, is a massive twat, Miss.

Yes, it sounds stilted and you don't want to sound like that all the time.
English teachers talk about the Register of Language. So different styles are used for different situations. These conversations convey identical meaning in different RoLs.

"Hey Man, whaja do on Sat'dee?" "Went to the pub,saw the footy with the boys 'n boozed on after."

"Mr Sensit, will you please tell the court what you did on the afternoon of the first of March last year?" "I went to an hotel where I met friends, watched a televised match and enjoyed some drinks later".

Young adults need to practise so they can become functional in different Registers.

BlueEmerald, that sounds great! I shows how a process of required discipline should occur so that students develop self-discipline.