how common are detentions at secondary?

[Cocostardust]

I know this sounds like a bit of a how long is a piece of string question but I just want a vague idea of how this works.

my daughter has just started at Secondary school. She’s a really well behaved girl, genuinely very sweet and never been in any trouble.

they had a 2 week grace period where they didn’t get detention then on 16th (the day they started) she came home with one straight away. It was for misunderstanding her homework and doing it slightly wrong. She’d spent an hour of the allotted ‘10 minutes’ on it and tried so bloody hard. She was in floods of tears when she came home.

tuesday her friend got one for helping another year 7 yo class who’d got lost then today her best friend got one for forgetting to put her name on her homework. They made her stay and redo the homework even though it had already been done, she ended up not having time to have lunch so went the day without eating, is this normal for schools?

The reason I’m writing is firstly this all seems crazy to me. Of course the schools should be allowed to discipline the children but for forgetting to put their name on the sheet and misunderstanding something?? Surely the teachers should be having a quick chat with the children so they can explain themselves but they’re just handing out detentions like they’re sweets with a total disregard to how much this is affecting the children.

The meaning of detention has clearly changed a lot in 30 years and while I can accept that it doesn’t mean I can force my daughter to.

she has a nervous tic which over the past week has gone through the roof, we were at the point where she had almost got rid of it. She’s also struggling with the insane amount of homework they’re all getting.

as I said I understand they have to be disciplined but shouldn’t that be for when they’ve genuinely done something wrong? It feels like the school don’t give a damn about the kids and how they’re coping.

on a side note they went from outstanding to required improvement over the summer and part of me is wondering if it’s always been like this or if they’ve been told to crack down.

curious about what other think

They are quite common but never for things like that. It is either an excessively harsh school or she is misinterpreting the reasons for the detentions.

Most secondaries are terrible, they dehumanise pupils. It's no wonder tooth mental health problems are through the roof and school refusal/avoidance especially at secondary level had sky rocketed.
They're still dry up for churning out factory fodder for jobs that no longer exist.
If you do nothing else for the next five years, support your child and have them know their worth is so much more than a points system or a detention.
Best of luck!

My daughters now does same day detentions for forgetting equipment, being late to lessons, not doing homework, not wearing the right clothes etc. It's madness

@Cocostardust sounds to me like you need to document a safeguarding concern with the school for your DD and her mental health. Due to overload from the school.

documented that way they should take it more seriously than a moaning mum. You’ve listed out really well in this post about overwhelm, her tick and stress. Go down that route, not starting with the detention, that’s only part of it.

my DD has just changed schools and we’re both disappointed with the lack of home work she has!! There’s lots listed, but so far it’s been login to this app so you’re ready to use it in future, or 6 maths questions.

So I was a child who really struggled with organisation at school, I rarely had all of my pe kit with me, or whatever equipment I was supposed to have and my homework was often handed in late. I can assure you that detentions did nothing to change this.

I did better with the other ‘sanctions’ the school imposed because that was forcing my parents to support me in getting things ready and planning my time, but it only helped for as long as it lasted. It was assumed I was lazy and the only advice I was given was ‘just do it.’ But I wanted to do my homework, I didn’t want to be the kid that was always shamed and made an example of in class despite being well behaved and working hard while I was there. It was never that I wouldn’t do it. I literally could not. I didn’t need punishment, I needed strategies.

I am still horribly disorganised, but I am managing to hold down a good full time job, and doing really well at it. The equipment I need on a day to day basis is the same every day. If I forget an item there are no consequences for asking a colleague to borrow. While there would be consequences to getting no work done, there is no expectation for me to get work done in my own time and it’s never been an issue to get work done in work, just as getting class work done in school was never a problem.

All this to say, punishing me for my lack of organisational skills did not prepare me for the adult world, it just made me feel bad about myself. And while there will be kids who’s lack of equipment and homework is purely behavioural, it won’t be all of them

I’m not saying that this is the case at all and definitely I’d be following up and asking to see policies as others have said. But I’d caution before going in all guns blazing that sometimes things can get lost in translation when hearing it from a teenager. I know I used to come home outraged at things that in retrospect were fairly reasonable requests from a teacher (some def were not and there can be teachers on a power trip for sure!) Just you’re more likely to get somewhere productive with the school if you go in questioning things and open to listen to their viewpoint as a starting point. And then get angry if needed!

Look up Birbalsingh and Gove. Gove’s idea was to have super strict Maoist Singapore style schools. This is supposed to create workers who will work themselves to the bone without complaining. It is absolutely ruining young people.

@Annio82 ,

I am not really sure that your reply to my post disagrees with it.

If you see my 3rd para, I explicitly state that some pupils are disorganised because they are lazy and others because they need help.

And I also suggested that support for disorganisation/lack of prep should be called something other than detention.

I’d be speaking to the school. Those are stupids reasons for a detention. My DD is statistic and struggles with people not following rules but being for punished for trying something and getting it wrong is just ridiculous. She was threatened with detention for something similar and I was fuming. She didn’t understand her homework and I couldn’t help her (I’m a teacher but GCSE physics is not my bag). She tried asking for help a few times and the teacher wasn’t supportive. She went to homework club and non of the staff running the homework club could help with that piece of homework. He read out a list of people who hadn’t completed homework to the right standard (100% correct) and her name was on the list. It’s in her pupil passport that she’s not to have detentions because they have the wrong effect and she’s not a naughty child, never been in trouble and is a stickler to the rules. She didn’t go to the detention as she knows she doesn’t need to bit the next day he told her off 1:1 and said she still owed a detention. She then left the class and went to see the pastoral person as she was confused as to why her support plan wasn’t being followed. I then had to contact the sendco to have words. I explained she’s not naughty for not understanding something and giving a detention is not going to help her get it right. She ended up staying after school for homework club with the sendco who is a physics teacher so she could get some help with where she was struggling and the sendco had to have a word with the teacher. She absolutely stresses now over this subject and the homework that is set.

There are parents on the group chat complaining about detentions but many of them are for actual behaviour issues but those teachers who are punishing for not understanding a subject are out of line.

That is insane, that is far too draconian. Getting a detention for being kind is shocking. I would be complaining if that was my child.

@CornishIrish ,

The idea that there is some conspiracy to get schools to create ‘good’ workers is absolute rubbish. Anyone who has done a PGCE will know that teachers are taught research-based methods to both educationally and emotionally support pupils.

Now, some of that research is dodgy (I think educational research is generally quite poor) and some schools get it wrong but none of a PGCE is about creating good obedient workers.

The rise of strict schools is a backlash from the very permissive ones which failed pupils in other ways. We always go in circles from permissive to strict (or at least we have in the last 50 years),

There is also a major issue with parenting. A lot of parents just can’t be bothered to parent effectively and see it as the school’s job.

And to the poster who suggests detention is like 1:2 free tutoring. It’s not. The teacher sits and watches the child completing the work. They don’t helps. Often they’re are several kids. And teachers are paid for so many hours (1265) a year and I suspect the detention falls within this time. If not then the teacher is daft to be stating back this extra time. Many are at lunch times as well and often teachers get 30 minutes unpaid lunch within the school 1 hour lunch period so them doing a half hour detention is within their hours. Not always. Many teachers do work more hours.

She didn't complete her homework; at any point in the week did she find the teacher who set it and ask for clarification?
And as you aren't physically in school with your child you don't know if the other examples are correct or not. Didn't put the name could be didn't do the work at all. Was helping another year 7 could be pissing about in the corridor!

You're not that naive to believe everything your daughter says are you?

@celticprincess ,

Are you a teacher?

I was and I assure you I always helped with the work.

Why would the teacher be daft? Most teachers go into teaching for the right reasons, to help children succeed in life.

Now, many get disillusioned, caught between awful pupil behaviour, entitled patent behaviour, administrative burden and bullying SLT, and a few do get into it for the power (but they are a tiny minority). But the majority will go above and beyond to support pupils.

I have been in school until 8PM helping a panicking A level student the day before their exam. And I am far from unique. The vast majority of teachers put pupil welfare first, and will go above and beyond for their pupils.

Ours don't give out detentions for homework anymore, they seem to give them for everything else though, getting lost when you've only been there a week, your tie not being quite central, being late because the teacher on the gate held you up because of your ear rings (he doesn't actually have any 🙄)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-michael-gove-should-know-about-going-to-school-in-singapore/ I’ve chosen a link from the Spectator so as not to be accused of “leftism”. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, as it has been openly declared to be the point.

Chinese and Singaporean friends have come to the UK specifically to give their children a happier education and are dismayed that we would emulate a system which leads to really stressed and unhappy childhoods.

There has to be a sanction for lack of homework. How else would you get pupils to do it? Most schools, though, have at least one warning first. My first school had ‘minor penalties’ and 3 minors within a half term led to a detention. I think that is a sensible balance.

Again, in one of my schools, teachers weren’t allowed to give penalties to Year 7s until half term. In that half term, in my own subject, 50% of pupils did their prep, and pretty much always the same 50%. This is actually letting down the 50% of pupils who didn’t do it and there was a decent correlation (we can argue about causation) between those who failed to do it and those who did less well for quite some time.

And there is good evidence that secondary school homework helps (not primary school, though). The higher up the school, the more homework matters.

@CornishIrish ,

Have you read that link. The author has painted a very mixed picture, saying that we should emulate some aspects of Asian education but not go too far.

Very few school here have Saturday school and Singaporeans will typically go to school until 5ish and then have 2-3 hours of prep.

We are nowhere near there yet.

Our school sounds like yours. They issued rules, the uniform is reasonably strict, they have made it seem like a miserable place to be.

They also threaten detention for all sorts of things, and I would have been terribly upset at that age to here received one too, especially for a trivial reason, or for something unavoidable, or for helping someone.

I didn’t voice to the school, when I was utterly appalled at a speech given by the Deputy Head setting out all these punishments in a welcome speech to parents and children, nor have I voiced how useless they are in sending out information, without all of the detail that you need to know, so that you have to email about three times to find out what is required, including them sending out, out of date information, because they don’t read their own emails.

I will go the Governors and complain the next time, and would advise you to do the same.

Except you don't have to "toe the line," and it is up to the teacher. Society is full of policies that are not enforced to the letter, in situations where doing so would be clearly unreasonable or impractical. And generally, it is assumed that the people charged with enforcing such policies have the judgment and discretion to make these choices.

You would be making a choice by giving a good student a detention for an innocent mistake like running out of ink; you are deciding that the remote chance of your being punished is more important than the risk of demotivating a good student, and losing whatever shred of respect they may have for you. And rest assured, they would lose all respect for you. The excuse of "Following orders" never makes the person using it look any better. It just makes them look more craven.

I always find it fascinating when administrators and teachers that have spent months busily alienating students and parents, and establishing themselves as petty tyrants, then act mystified when parents refuse to "support the school," and some children refuse to go in.

The name on the homework is basic stuff since primary. If 10 kids forgot to put name on it then working out whose homework it is can take ages. For me it would be filed in recycling as I don’t have the time to sort it out. I also wouldn’t give detention as I need my break to go to the toilet myself and set up for next lesson.

is the detention where they help them with homework and should it be called something else?

the no lunch thing I would definitely challenge as by law adults are allowed 20 mins lunch for 6 hours work. So that in theory should apply to children as well and not allowing them to eat lunch is bad. It’s also their toilet time as they generally aren’t allowed to go in lessons so break time detentions will be a rush if the break is 15 mins and they are let out of class late.

you won’t change the policy and unless lots of parents get on board then nothing will change. I would move your kid early on so they can get settled.

As I have said, I do think the OP’s daughter has been treated unfairly.

But talk of going in all guns blazing is silly and counterproductive. Some parents seem to act as if they have been given a detention themselves.

The first thing to do is to discuss it with the girl and say that they have to do the detention, regardless of whether it is unfair. Explain that it is a short period of time and not to take it personally. Then state that she will get your support and that you will discuss with the school strategies to support her.

Then email the teacher and copy to the form tutor and head of year (leave SLT out at this stage) and explain the issues. Ask to have a meeting. Hopefully, they will meet and you can put strategies in place together to support her.

Only if the above fails do you want to escalate it further. Until you try the above, you don’t really know what is going on one way or the other,

Generally, when parents work with a school, they are far more likely to get the outcome they desire.

Talk to her Head of Year (they may have a designated person who's in charge of this transition year too - DS's school did and he was a very caring and approachable man who genuinely wanted to settle the new yr 7s in and knew what a culture change it was). Ask about the behaviour and sanctions policy. Express concern that someone who is already coping with the big transition to secondary, and has a MH issue (tic, which should not be glossed over) is now feeling very unsure and upset at what should be a fun and exciting time as she finds her feet.

I am 100% sure this is to do with the OFSTED rating changing but what a pointless way to try and effect changes. Penalising clueless year 7s who forgot to put their name on their work??

Maybe things will ease up. I would actually be considering a different secondary though.

One way to prevent people from thinking it is "unfair somehow", is to not spend time alienating families with draconian policies over trivial issues, and then expect to still have any trust or credibility when you need them to "support the school" later on.

You, and many other teachers, complain about how parents these days often support their children rather than cooperate with school discipline. But it's unclear how you could possibly expect any other outcome when school administrators and teachers have established a track record, within the first days of the term, of essentially bullying students over nonissues.

My son's school absolutely love doling out detentions.

They're usually for 20 minutes at lunchtime, or after 15:00.
So, it's just enough to be mildly annoying for the boys.