Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Flip

Original poster

How would you “complain”

22 replies

MistyReturns · 22/03/2018 07:34

Dd1 is in yr 8 at secondary school. In this time she has had an exemplary record. Loads of housepoints, extra credit, rewards and not a single bad mark.

Last week there was a school trip which she was unable to attend and so she was one of a few in her year/house. There was a house assembly which overran, causing her to be late for her next lesson by a few minutes. The school has recently introduced sanctions & punishments for lateness. Which in theory I do agree with... BUT.... dd now has 5 bad marks on her record. She was the only “late” as she was the only person in the class to have been in the assembly which she tried to explain. She’s spoken to her tutor who just said “sometimes you have to suck it up”. She attended the detention without a grumble, but is gutted about her perfect record being marred.
You are supposed to email the tutor in the first instance, but given his response I can’t see him being any use. The head of house is always helpful & would be step 2.
So do I just follow due process?

OP posts:

MrsHathaway · 22/03/2018 07:59

... following due process means respecting their processes and leaving it well alone. She learns that sometimes we suffer consequences for circumstances outside our control.

Original poster

MistyReturns · 22/03/2018 08:10

Hmmm. I’m not exactly rebelling against the establishment. I agree with rules & discipline, but in this case I disagree with it. For the rest of the year she will be out of the running for any extra credit or rewards. I don’t think she’ll learn much. If what you say is true then no-one would ever complain about anything and nobody would ever fight true injustices (not putting this in the same category).

OP posts:

TheFallenMadonna · 22/03/2018 08:13

Email the head of year. It's not a complaint unless you complain. You're just pointing out that the sanction has been misapplied.

Enko · 22/03/2018 08:14

Follow protocol and email the tutor asking how your dd was meant to avoid being late or what would have happened if she had left the assembly early. The school should be working with the students to do their best not against. If the tutor doesn't give a satisfactory response then I would take it to head of house.

I would complain and have in similar situations.

BeyondThePage · 22/03/2018 08:14

What were the other 4 bad marks for?

Original poster

MistyReturns · 22/03/2018 08:17

Beyond - it was 5 marks for that “offence” plus detention!!!!
Thank you all - that’s what I’m getting at. I’m not against sanctions, but in this case I think it was misused.

OP posts:

YoohooDorothy · 22/03/2018 08:31

I'm a Head Of Year (mat leave, not skiving ) and i would remove this sanction from her record. It's a shame she sat the detention but also says a lot about her respect for the school.

If i've ever led an assembly or we've had a speaker who has overrun, i'll send an All Staff email to advise that some children are running late.

My advice is to ring or email, just to not be hostile straight off the bat. I hope they're understanding!

colditz · 22/03/2018 08:35

God that's absurd. I don't think there's any lesson to be learned by letting her suffer this, it's grossly unfair and the lesson I would want to teach is that when someone is grossly unfair to a child, their parent steps in and fixes it as well as they can

Original poster

MistyReturns · 22/03/2018 08:37

Thanks Dorothy. You sound like dd’s head of house. I think she would do this. I don’t want to go straight over tutor’s head & put his nose out though. I certainly won’t be hostile. I have a lot of respect for the school usually, I think they’ve made a mistake though. I’ll email today with a “can you look into this” and see how it goes. Dd is very well liked by her teachers. I get a lot of emails & good feedback. She’s really blossomed at high school and don’t want this to set her back. (Ooh I’ll put that in the email!!)

OP posts:

HeidioftheAlps · 22/03/2018 08:43

Dd had a form tutor in year 7 who was very strict and gave out a lot of detentions, but she told the children "you won't get detentions for things that are beyond your control." I think that is right as otherwise it just builds resentment and turns a child who has a positive attitude towards school and tries to do the right thing into a child with a negative attitude.
I think you should ask to get the points removed. She's already done quite enough "sucking it up" by going to the detention for something she had no way of avoiding.

TeenTimesTwo · 22/03/2018 08:51

I think the school seems OTT.

So for being late once she gets

5 bad marks
detention
For the rest of the year she will be out of the running for any extra credit or rewards.

What on earth do they do with poorly behaved pupils if this is what they do for being late once?

I would be tempted to view that your DD has already spoken to the tutor and therefore you can go to the head of house, who presumably is aware of the overrunning assembly.

YoohooDorothy · 22/03/2018 09:04

@TeenTimesTwo why would it put her out of the running for extra credit and rewards for the rest of the year?

HeidioftheAlps · 22/03/2018 09:05

I usually try to avoid going over people's heads, but as the form tutor's reply is "suck it up" probably best to speak ho rhe HOH

HeidioftheAlps · 22/03/2018 09:07

why would it put her out of the running for extra credit and rewards for the rest of the year?
Op said that is the system in her post at 8.10

TeenTimesTwo · 22/03/2018 09:08

YooHoo I don't know, but that is what the OP said in her second post!

YoohooDorothy · 22/03/2018 09:13

Ok fair enough i missed that bit!

AuntFidgetWonkhamStrongNajork · 22/03/2018 09:20

What on earth do they do with poorly behaved pupils if this is what they do for being late once?

I imagine there are a lot of kids who think there's zero point in trying.

YoohooDorothy · 22/03/2018 09:28

That was why i was a little surprised that it was so fixed. Where i work the rewards are reset termly and are based off the net score of acheivement points less behaviour points. We believe more in an ethos that mistakes are a learning opportunity. There's a lot of job satisfaction to be had with the children who get detentions at the start of the year but tackle the issue and pull it round.

MrsHathaway · 22/03/2018 10:05

For the rest of the year she will be out of the running for any extra credit or rewards.

Ah, I didn't understand that from your OP, and assumed it was something she would be able to put behind her quickly. What a bloody stupid system! Any rewards/sanctions programme should always have the possibility of redemption and improvement, and you should always (mathematically at least) be able to cancel out bad behaviour with good behaviour, otherwise why bother?

I do still think that it's important for children to learn that sometimes they will be fucked over by circumstances beyond their control, and look at how they can mitigate those circumstances. E.g. it's very easy to think "we're late for abc because xyz overran" and harder but very important to think "is there a quicker way to get there so we can be less late?" or "how can we warn abc that we'll be late?" So your correspondence with tutor/HoY/HoH would need to be based on the fact that DD couldn't have helped being released late from assembly, and did her best not to compound the lateness but couldn't lessen it because they aren't allowed to run in the corridors/take a shortcut/leave assembly early and can't get messages to teachers across the site in real time. There's many a y8 who would happily have dawdled from assembly to class, making a five-minute lateness into a ten-minute lateness, but if that doesn't describe DD then it wouldn't be fair to blot her copybook forever.

Original poster

MistyReturns · 22/03/2018 11:00

It seems we’re all in agreement. My major issue is this insistence that only pupils with 0 sanctions, 100 % attendance & more than (?) housepoints are in the running for the rewards. If it was just a detention and the behaviour marks I would probably shrug it off & tell dd that in my eyes she has the moral high ground & to ignore it, but I can’t. I will clarify in my email whether the sanctions are termly or yearly though - it seems very ott.
I’ve decided to address it to the tutor & cc head of house in.
I’m writing now. Wish me luck & thanks for all of your input.

OP posts:

BrendansDanceShoes · 22/03/2018 13:18

Please don't get hung up on reward systems like that. What if she is ill before the end of year? That's not her fault either, would you ask for that to be rescinded in order that she gets the end of year reward. Is it really worth it? I've found kids who do get rewards really cannot cope well if for some reason, such as this, they then miss out. Much better to build up resilience ie sometimes life sucks- rather than a culture of complaint about one issue. Instead, maybe address the whole pettiness of the reward system as a whole and suggest areas for improvement or change.

Pythonesque · 23/03/2018 23:17

Hope you get this sorted, at the very least I'd want an acknowledgement from someone that they have set up an unfair system. Chatting with my mother the other month she reminded me that when my sister had a prolonged stay in hospital with complicated appendicitis in year 7, missing midyear school exams, she was ruled out of both merit awards and music awards, both thoroughly earned, at the end of the year because of "missing the exams".

Flip