Ban the Booths

[PlayNtag]

banthebooths.co.uk/

Has anybody's school responded well to petitions against this?

No it isn't! Except how you are choosing to read it.

It is saying:

Children, (apart from those who can't due to special needs and need reasonable adjustments), need to follow school rules and there should be a range of consequences available to teachers including isolation.

I also said, joy ‘In 14 years of teaching I’ve not met anyone who physically can’t ever have a tucked in shirt, so I think it’s pretty safe to generalise, and then make exceptions for extreme outliers.’

^That’s a horrible, ableist, bigoted thing to say.’

Don’t be daft. Demanding that any general statement that anyone ever says has to also include a disclaimer that excludes anyone that a reasonable person would realise that it doesn’t apply to is just tedious.

Teen, that is NOT what Noble said. At all.

That is exactly what noble said. You’re reading this with your own agenda and seeing things that aren’t there.

That is the lens that you are viewing the world through, joy. Secondary teachers see literally thousands of kids who are capable of wearing a tucked in shirt, some of whom refuse to follow the school rules.
A much, much smaller proportion of those are physically unable to follow the school rules, and generally, adjustments are made for them.
That’s how I’m approaching it.

If you want to argue that a kid with extreme sensory difficulties should wear an amended school uniform, then you’re arguing with the wrong person because I’m quite happy for that to happen.

Joy I think you would struggle to get a diagnosis of asd if sensory issues were your only problem. You have to meet quite a detailed criteria to get a diagnosis, sensory issues are obviously part of that.

I am going through this process with my child at the moment and although sensory issues are a major concern there is so much else going on with him as well.

The idea that across the country thousands of kids are being put in a cell for simply having their shirt untucked is just bollocks.

If there are kids being put in a cell simply for having their shirt untucked, then the vast majority of teachers would say ‘that’s not right’. (In the Daily Mail sad face articles, I suspect there is usually far more going on behind the scenes than the headline - and the outraged parent - suggests).

What is happening is that outraged people are leaping on the ‘kids put in a cell for having their shirt untucked’ bandwagon and demanding that schools ‘ban the booths’ - i.e. get rid of any sort of isolation room for miscreants.

And the vast majority of teachers say ‘fuck that shit, we need to be able to exit extremely disruptive kids from the classroom’.

And then the reply is ‘omg you want to force kids in wheelchairs to walk’.

No we don’t. There is a middle ground between isolating kids over nonsense and not being able to isolate kids at all, that really both sides should be agreeing on instead of being pitted against each other by people with a book to sell. (It’s Paul Dix again, folks).

joyful you're being goady now and deliberately distorting noble's posts to suit your agenda.

Poor show.

Those posters that are backing "ban the booth" what are you suggesting should replace it.

glad you’ve changed your mind.

I haven’t. You’ve just realised that leaping on someone in an outraged fashion and assuming the worst of them isn’t always justified.

I'm quite in favour of the booths but as it happens, ours were taken out and replaced by an intervention room.

Should a pupil be removed by an on-call member of staff, they are taken to intervention. Should a pupil's poor behaviour be bad but not quite warrant an exclusion, then they spend the day in isolation: they have break and lunch and separate to the normal timetable.

The room is staffed by, in our case, a retired teacher from a Pupil referral unit who is more than used to pupils who don't conform. Every single child is provided with work that has to be completed.

Like Boney, I'm also really keen to know what the alternatives are for those people
In favour of banning these booths/isolation rooms.

Interesting that an online petition for "Ban The Booths" has got fewer than 1000 signatures.

I think they're necessary. It's not fair that one student disrupts teaching time for 29 others. It's not about shirts being untucked, it's about defiance - a child with an untucked shirt (alternatively, insert other seemingly minor infraction) who tucks it in when asked is not going to be sent to isolation. A child who refuses, or argues that the shirt doesn't stop them from learning, is potentially taking teaching time away from others and should face a sanction.

OK, so shirts aren't major issues but the point is not the shirt, it's the defiance. If an adult has to wear a uniform at work, I don't think they'd get very far arguing with their line manager that not wearing it doesn't stop them from doing their job.

The "can't afford school shoes" thing is nonsense too. Unless the child is coming to school barefoot, then they can afford footwear. And shoes are not more expensive than trainers - both can be bought cheaply. So someone has made a choice to buy the wrong thing instead.

My Ds attends a state selective school. They have a room called independent learning support. This is a room that is for everyone not in a lesson. So internal exclusion for those misbehaving or have been sent out of a lesson and those with learning support needs and sen. I don't think this works either. My Ds has sen but no behaviour issues and was in the room a few weeks ago when the head walked in and said "so this is where all the naughty boys go". It was a joke, Ds didn't find it particularly funny. As far as booths go, not sure what the answer is though. We do have a problem with behaviour in our schools and I sympathise with those teachers that have to face these issues everyday.

The point aim trying to make is that putting children who’ve already disengaged from education into isolation everyday because they wear trainers to school or something similar or don’t tuck their shirts in is obviously totally pointless.

Does anyone disagree, happy?

What we may disagree on is that insisting that those kids who’ve already disengaged from education shouldn’t be in isolation, but should be in the classroom disrupting the lesson for everyone else instead.

Clearly, work needs to be done with those kids on re-engaging them, trying to get them an education and that should be happening. But the alternative to ‘ban the booths’ isn’t ‘intensive intervention with these kids’, it’s ‘stick ‘em back in the classroom and tell teachers that all would be fine if they simply gave them a handshake at the door’.

The amount of learning hours that this loses for everyone else in the class is incredible.

I don't think it's possible to understand unless you've been that teacher in the classroom dealing with a child who is being openly defiant. Parents see their one child and obviously see things from their side, and to a parent I can understand why "I got put in isolation because I wouldn't tuck my shirt in" can sound petty. But for the teacher, who has 29 other kids not being taught because they are having to deal with that one child, it's incredibly difficult. Perhaps the Daily Fail should run sad face stories from parents whose children can't get through a lesson without some other kid disrupting it rather than parents whose children were put in isolation for wearing the wrong shoes.

This practice would make an interesting legal test case. It's arguably in breach of Article 8 ECHR, and the loco parentis principal which used to be premise on which school duty of care is based.

My son struggles with sensory issues around clothing, yet he's at the top of his class academically. You all can bleat "reasonable adjustments" until the cows come home, but getting schools to HONOUR THOSE ADJUSTMENTS is like pulling teeth sometimes. I would love to see schools banned from using isolation booths as a way to punish uniform infractions because there are a number of schools who either can't or won't use common sense and instead opt for zero tolerance, and for the life of me I cannot see how a child who wore the wrong socks belongs in the same room as the child who won't shut up/swears in the classroom.