"Isolation booths" - normal?!

[freegazelle]

Read this report about isolation booth use in an academy. Are these really normal in secondary schools now?! How are they legal? I don't know what I'd do if this happened to my DS.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/children-isolated-for-7-hours-a-day-in-consequence-booths-at-academies-mp_uk_5b33a1a5e4b0b5e692f35b59

So I work in a School that has isolation booths. They are used heavily.
Behaviour though is very very bad.
The isolation system is used to try and reduce fixed term exclusions.
Students are not sent to isolation for forgetting a pen but either continuous poor behaviour or one incident of bad behaviour.
There has to be a punishment available to use, many of the students are not concerned with getting detention at all.
Unless someone else can come up with a punishment there is not much choice but to use this.

Well as mentioned when I started another thread, my DCs school has just brought in isolation for forgetting a lanyard (they have brought in different coloured lanyard for each year, which has their dinner cards on them, and it is required to be worn at all times).
Laynards are not even like pens that at least you really need for learning in a class. Or even like planners that might help with homework.
Up until now I thought my DCs schools behaviour policy was a bit more sane - they have something called "community service" for forgetting various things. Community service involves helping clean up the hall after lunch/picking up litter in the playground - all done during break, rather than preventing learning.
But all of a sudden we have compulsory lanyards that result in internal exclusion, until a parent shows up with the lanyard (bit of a killer for those of us who work). Does terrible things also to the mental health of the "good girls", who get very panicky about the risk of forgetting things.

I think there are too many zero tolerance schools where isolation is overused, but I can also see the flipside. A friend of DD2's has complex mental health issues and finds working in isolation much easier than being in class. He has a card that lets him go there when he is overwhelmed and is supported there by the school's pastoral care team. Like any tool it's all about how you use it.

Discipline policies that are seen by the DC as unfair have a much wider impact as well. My DD has a friend who first got an after school detention in form time for looking around (new form teacher) and then a second one because she tripped over a schoolbag on coming in and responded by laughing. DD only sees her friend in form time because by and large the friend is in set 3, and DD is in set 1, but DD says she has been struggling to concentrate in her lessons as she was so upset for the friend.

Apparently internal exclusion is also being used this year for leaving your bag in the cloakroom. Apparently last year that was where you were supposed to leave your bags, and you were encouraged to do so, but this year, maybe there are to many, but if you leave your bag there it results in internal exclusion. At least with this you are given one warning. DD forgot once, as she was so used to leaving it there last year, so the next time it is internal exclusion. She says it is actually quite hard, after having a system, to move into another system - and again the idea that they will effectively stop them learning for a day and have them sit like zombies because of a mistake like this seems horrifying to me (I gather that the bags are now being left at the back of the classroom, which is why her friend tripped up over one, because she wasn't used to them being there)

Having been in state school and seen what the teachers and other children have to tolerate I can understand the need for these booths. However horrible they may seem there is so very little that a teacher can do when they have many other children to teach. My teacher friend has told me how they have lock down due to the violence of a pupil-it scares her let alone the other children and that is at a primary YR2 level. This is in leafy Surrey, the effect of 1 pupil for the whole school is utterly ridiculous.

I don't have a problem with putting violent people into prison, including in isolation, and if children at school are violent, while the police might ideally be the appropriate resource, if a school is having to deal with that on their own, I don't have a problem with isolation booths instead of prison.
But we as a society think long and hard before we imprison people for minor misdemeanours that do not involve violence. We do not, for example, usually imprison for littering, even though that is pretty anti-social, or for speeding (which is actually physically dangerous). I could understand a school asking anybody who didn't bring a pen to pay for the cost of a new one from the office (I realise some students couldn't afford it, but that is true of most fines).
I can see that disruption in class that prevents others from learning is a grey area - but I still feel that the prison analogy is a valid one. Is this the kind of behaviour that you would think it legitimate to call the police for? In some cases - yes. If somebody was jumping on the seats of a bus and screaming, we might well think the police should be involved, so definitely seems reasonable in the classroom. If somebody was harassing someone on a bus we would also call the police. But how would you feel if the government passed a law that everybody who did not carry their ID card was to be locked up in prison for a day? Fair? Appropriate? How about their driving licence while driving?
How about for parking where you shouldn't, should that be an offence subject to imprisonment? To my mind parking your bag in the cloakroom (where they have just changed the parking rules), is equivalent to parking a car where you shouldn't and they have just changed the parking rules. Should this be punished for this by isolation in prison?

There are some horrific stories about people being knifed in Britain. Should that mean the government needs to bring in ID cards, lock up those of us who forget them and lock up people who overstay their parking permit because of zero tolerance? Isn't this what is happening in schools? The threat of violence (real in some school, not actually in others, including my DCs school) is being used to force compulsory carrying of ID cards and imprisonment for mis-parking.

Isolation booths/rooms existed when I started secondary school over 15 years ago- so I don't get why the media has only started making an issue out of them in the last few years.

I do think for some posters on this thread it would be eye opening to spend a day in a "standard" UK school. I'm currently studying for a PGCE, and in a placement school when behaviour is largely good, students are largely compliant and there are good systems for dealing with those who aren't. However, there is stuff that goes on almost daily that I think would shock some parents.

The school does have an isolation type room where students can be sent. They also have a "strike" system for equipment (among other things). If you get 3 strikes, you get a detention. If you didn't show up, this would be escalated and eventually you might end up in isolation, I suppose nominally for not having a pen. Most teachers are fairly sensible about this- if you can borrow a pen/ruler/etc without alerting the teacher to it, then you don't get a strike. This obviously minimises disruption.

I also spent some time in another school recently which is a sought after Catholic school in a large city. Behaviour, even in top sets, was really poor, persistent talking, making stupid noises, fiddling with pens (which then explode) and so on and so forth. This does (must) impact on pupils ability to learn.

I'm not a fan of overly rigid ready to learn type policies, but equally, having seen the potential alternatives, I think sometimes they can be the lesser of two evils.

And if 1 kid is persistently disrupting the other 29, sometimes it is just better not to have them in the room. Yes, you can manage it as a teacher up to a point, but part of this is often having sanctions that students want to avoid!

Persistently disruptive children should be removed from classrooms. Of course. And making the experience unpleasant in the short term probably acts as a deterrent for some. But for others it makes things worse, which means the stay is extended, and makes reintegration back into the classroom almost impossible. I now work in Alternative Provision. The majority of our students come in year 11. Most have been in isolation for several months before they come to us. It is incredibly difficult to turn things around in the two or three terms we have them for.

Early childhood trauma, and children who have experienced this are massively overrepresented in Alternative Provision, can have neurological effects which make it more difficult to respond appropriately in a mainstream classroom. We need better, more joined up, better funded provision for these children.

What's your interest, OP?

Using isolation for months on end is clearly poor practice.

Schools have to work in the framework that exists to an extent though- I totally agree that funding is absolutely part of the problem, especially for children with some kind of barrier to learning. All sorts of school provision is appallingly underfunded (as other services e.g. CAMHS are also being underfunded) and that can only make problems worse.

In uni, we were shown a video of a teacher with a bottom set containing 8 pupils. The video was about 5 years old and was being used to illustrate a point about behaviour. One of the other students made the point that the bottom set she teaches is now 20 pupils. No-one had bottom sets in single figures. I'm sure some schools manage it still but most don't. There also often isn't TA support unless it's for a named pupil with an ECHP plan.

I don't think isolation should be used for SEN pupils/pupils with additional needs in general, but I can see how it ends up happening, and perhaps ends up being a relief for other pupils in that class as well.

Equally, though, I have heard people make the argument re certain pupils that if you expect them to fail (in terms of behaviour etc), and thus don't punish them for it, you're letting them down. That you should have high expectations of pupils of all backgrounds etc, because you may be the only person in their life that expects anything from them and by punishing them like any other pupil you are actually helping them to succeed in the long run. I can see the logic in this view, even if I don't really agree with it myself.

Sadly nodding along with almost everything here. I started a pgce with the intention of sending my child state all the way through. Worked in the local good and outstanding state secondaries. Saw all the behaviour described here, all the catch 22 situations teachers are in daily. Conclusion: system is toxic and broken, dropped out of pgce and put child in private. Best thing I could possibly have done. I well remember the Y7 who never had a pen and if you gave him one would have dismantled it and fashioned a weapon from any metal parts by the end of the lesson. Schools function like prisons and so (or because) children behave like prisoners.

If they have to sit there and look at the wall for hours that's just cruel.

Good gawd. With isolation booths used for significant periods of time, we are talking about kids who repeatedly disrupt lessons, tell teachers to fuck off, make everyone's education difficult, damage property in the school. What do you propose they should get--a cookie and a cuddle?

I am always fascinated by people who seem to want children to be disciplined in a way that does not actually make them feel bad for any period of time whatsoever How on earth does that work, then? A punishment will have no deterrent effect unless it feels unpleasant to a certain degree. We are not talking about birching kids, for Christ's sake.

Poor teachers.

If your child was ever put into isolation I hope you'd support the school's attempt to stop your child disrupting the education of 30 others

Oh do stop the sanctimonious nonsense. It is well known that academies in particular totally misuse isolation for stupid transgressions like to do with uniform. How on earth does wearing blue socks instead of black socks "disrupt the education of 30 others".

Forgetting planners is a minor issue as well (and in fact is one that doesn't arise in my son's school because they use "Show My Homework" and don't have them.

Would you expect this in a workplace? If not, it doesn't belong in a school, either.

We are not talking about birching kids, for Christ's sake

Well at least that's over in a few seconds rather than lasting for hours!

Whoah! Wondering if some of you fans of isolation booths are also as positive about the 'flattening the grass' child abuse in the news