Do all secondary school do detentions

[user1495443009]

Forgive my ignorance but I would like to know if all secondary schools: private and state do detentions. I didn't grow up in the UK so this is something I never experienced.

The school I went to didn't do detentions. It was a mixture of reasons. 1) behaviour was outstanding and 2) if someone stepped out of line, a phone call home to parents sorted it immediately.

I imagine that if you were to have been perpetually naughty, you would have been asked to leave!!

I was at a London independent in the 70s (NHEHS if anyone's interested) and detentions were on a Saturday morning. I lived over an hour away from school! Me and another girl got the first detentions in our year for copying a dweeb's maths homework and the dweeb made some mistakes! I never got another one after that!!

We are supposed to have 'restorative conversations' with the students in our detentions, but they are still detentions and they're not automatically over when the conversation is over.
There's also the issue of what to do if a kid refuses to reset the relationship.

Yes I think they get followed up and as the easiest course is to apologise and have the conversation they apparently comply.

I can definitely see the pattern play out - dts said some kids got detentions all the time and weren't bothered, others like my dd got very upset about the constant threat of a detention in Year 7- she was terrified to the point where I had to make a joke out of getting detentions, I even tried to convince her to get one just so she could see how painless they really were, ds got a couple for lack of organisation and he tried to reassure her that they weren't a big deal too, of course she never got a detention and in Year 10 she's confident that she can permanently avoid them.

OP, I think most do use them, but a lot depends on the school. There are schools near us (Academies and v.strict), where detentions are given out for things as benign as just turning your head in a lesson. I've heard of kids getting multiple detentions each week, which seems really ott to me. In contrast, my son's comp has detentions but it's nowhere near as common. He's been there 3 years and hasn't had one yet.

I think they are overused and often unhelpful.

They are very very rarely used in dd's school but they don't finish until 6pm anyway.

When a detention is given it means the student misses a vocational lesson e.g. Dance or drama.

For some kids they work. For others, you tell them they've got a detention and they get out their diary and say 'I can fit you in a week on Tuesday'.

This tickled me.

in theory ds school does detentions, but they are incredibly rare.

they have a behaviour system where you can get a bad behaviour point. So, homework not handed in, using phone in class etc = 1, 2,3 or 4 behaviour points.

behaviour point salso mean email home to parents. 12 behaviour points = meeting with deputy head and lunchtime detention. After school detentions woudl come next.

In practise, most boys do not accumulate 12 behaviour points in a whole year. There was one boy who was getting a lot and the school's response was more in the line of support and pastoral care than punishment as they recognised that this boy was having a relaly tough time, and needed help.

That is a super slective grammar.

Our local school (comp in a bad area) recently got a new head. In her dirve to up standards she introduced draconian detentions. So, no homework = immediate detention, uniform violation = immediate detention etc.
It was very touhg, she did get a big turn around in behaviour, but it was very harsh, especially to basically good kids who made a mistake, it was zero tolerance.

My eldest says that they don't at hers (state grammar), although she seemed to be suggesting that it was because they didn't need to.

Within a week of starting his secondary, younger child was given a detention for something minor and completely out of his control. Apparently they are very hot on giving detentions and do so for things that wouldn't be an issue in eldest's school and she has got away with multiple times.

Thank you. DD is still in year 6. I hope the school she goes to in secondary school don't overuse them. I am sure she will get upset if she ever gets one.

If they are a well behaved type who will worry, you can put it in perspective a bit by saying that it's just sitting in a room. (I was able to say to dd that i used to get them too.) Do they ever keep them in at break at her primary school? They do at my dc's so i said it's just the same. You don't want to undermine the school but you also don't want them thinking it's the end of the world if they do get one.
Sometimes I think it's the word "detention" that stresses people. When dc's primary school keep them in at break for not doing homework etc no one thinks much of it, but it feels like more of a BIG THING at secondary school.
Probably super selective schools have got quite motivated children who remember stuff and do homework anyway, but other schools have got kids who need the deterrent more.

They threatened to keep my dcs in at break time in Year 6 if they hadn't improved on their Sats test scores every time - my dcs described it as detention and were very anxious about it - to the point that I had to have a word with the teacher - who was shocked that my hard working, well behaved dcs ever would have thought she was threatening them - apparently she was threatening the 5 kids in the class who never did any work, but she couldn't single them out! After she had a chat with them, they were fine - so I would say a break time at primary caused no less stress/anxiety.

Obviously if that's the case you wouldn't use it to put things in perspective about a secondary school one.

My ds got a few in years 7 and 8 and they really did seem to give them out for everything. Occasionally he thought he'd been hard done by but I said it was only 30 minutes of his life and I was going to keep my powder dry for the times I really needed to take his side.

Early in year 9 he got one for not doing something I'd actually seen him doing on the computer, so I contacted the teacher and said I wondered if it had simply not gone through because of our internet connection and they let him off. So he's not had one since year 8.

At my school they had Friday night detentions which were for really really bad infractions. I don't think they were handed out very often at all. If you did things like not handing in homework (more than once) you'd get a 30 minute detention at lunchtime. I got one of those in each of my first three years at school because I was lazy with homework I think the teachers generally relied on telling you off and occasionally a phone call home to parents.

Ds started off really stressed about detentions & not turning up to them but they started happening so frequently it became just something to endure.

The worst was the Saturday detention he got for displaying autistic behaviour. (He had a sensory meltdown & hid in a dark, quiet place which happened to be a locker)

Awful. I think you said on another thread he has moved to a different school, so i hope he is getting better support there

That's terrible Alexander. Doing this to a child who has special needs is child abuse only opinion. I have the feeling some teachers/schools use them for every little thing; this is child abuse in my opinion. There should be some rules about it.

He hadnt been properly diagnosed back then. He was still on a wAiting list. Even after his diagnoses his "episodes" or "tantrums" as his Head of Year called them were treated as bad behaviour.

Yes perigord he has moved. He's had a 10 minute time penalty for inappropriate language which is fair enough but no detentions. He's doing much better.