Detentions as a punishment

[SweatyLama]

I didn't grow up in the UK, but my children were born here. This year, my DS started secondary school for the first time, and I discovered that they have a system of punishments in place. Is this a common practice in all state schools in Britain? I really don't like this system ( I mean punishments) and find it degrading and outdated.

Ok, sorry. Yes I did miss it. I've got a Russian friend and will ask what she thinks about the two systems next time we meet up.

Oh man….how old is your child???

and you missed my message that I don't consider my school as a model, and one of the reasons for emigration was the education system. I don't want my children to study in my country.

as far as i know, now in Russia there are also no punishments for being late and not doing homework. The school tries to stimulate doing homework through marks and mainly through working with parents. I don't think it's right and effective.

Unemployment is low in this country. Under 4%. We have noticeably ungenerous out of work benefits compared to the rest of the OECD which no doubt keeps this figure low.

We do have high levels of economic inactivity.

And a mismatch between what schools teach and what employers sav they need.

I'm not sure any of this can be laid at the door of school sanction systems though.

Ok. Just say to your ds that a detention is just sitting in a room and not to be feared. It's an inconvenience but not something to be frightened of. I said that to my dc (now 17 and 20) and they've barely ever had a detention. Eldest had one breaktime one for about 15 mins I think. Elder dc definitely needed a lot of support at home with organisation, although she got there in the end.
When you said you were asking friends what happens if they don't attend detention, I wouldn't advise that as schools don't just let it go.

I do know what you mean about your son as my DC is very scared of getting a detention.

The students who actually get detentions (or sit in a room maybe doing some homework) aren't generally scared of getting detentions. Irritated maybe.

Just to add, I started school in 76 and the Head teachers of my Infant and Junior school still used corporal punishment! So you can see why sitting in a room doesn't sound too bad to me. 😀

You don’t understand much about statistics. Thirty students from one school with 270 pupils in a single year is not representative of the whole education system.

I've been happy with the Comp my dc have attended. It has a system of sanctions and rewards, but the teachers seem caring and to want the best for the dc. Younger one is in sixth form now. They've both been happy and done well. Would I have liked them to go to the same school if there had been no sanctions? No way! It would have been chaos and my kids wouldn't have been safe and they'd have learned nothing and been unhappy.

I wouldn’t say this is a major problem for my son or me. I’ll help him avoid detentions, and if he can’t, he’ll handle it just fine. What bothers me is the principle behind this practice in schools. It’s a topic for discussion, not an excuse for personal attacks.
Anyway thank you.

In an ideal world there would be adults and funding to work with teenagers individually to help them want to learn, not be late etc etc.

But back in the current situation in the UK a certain amount of 'crowd control' is required if we aren't just going to give up on kids. And detentions are part of crowd control.

No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. You said five out of a class of 30. One would be bad enough and spark investigations here and queries from a visiting Ofsted inspector if they discovered it. 16% of a class (even if it’s a total of 30 out of a big school) is completely shocking.

You’re comparing apples and bananas. In Russia kids are heavily, regularly tested and kept back a year if they fail? Is that not punishment?

If a child is late for class in the UK, they have to come back later to see the teacher who will go over the work they’ve missed, and establish whether they have understood the rest of the lesson after they’ve missed the start. That’s not a punishment, if anything it’s the teacher that’s being punished.

I didn’t quite understand. Your children weren’t afraid to push boundaries, but they chose not to. Is that correct? Why do you think they weren’t afraid? And why did they agree to go to their room?

Attentive and caring parents will support a child who has gone off the rails and help them back. The role of the family is to provide help and support, not to judge or punish their loved ones. IMHO

If the system cannot provide this, it does not mean that children no longer need support

So a good teacher encounters no bad behaviour and certainly no persistent poor behaviour?
This is a wrong conclusion.

I didn't really do punishments with mine. I did tell them off, which is a punishment and praised positive behaviour. I don't think never telling kids off creates nice children.
I see running a school with thousands of teenagers in a building to be very different from raising a couple of kids though. As I said I wouldn't have wanted my kids to go to a school with no sanctions as they wouldn't have been safe, happy and learning because of the chaos.

It doesn’t always work, though. I’ve seen unruly children run rings around their gentle, nurturing parents. I think you’re making the mistake of seeing everyone else’s experience through your own eyes. You obviously didn’t go off the rails, and didn’t get punished, so you seem to believe that this experience would extend to everyone else.

You’re also ignoring the fact that many kids have shit parents. How many of these parents, many of whom will have grown up with their own trauma and have lacked parenting themselves, are capable of being turned around, and how? Unfortunately we don’t live in a utopia where everyone is capable, or even prepared to be the best that they can be. Plenty of parents don’t give a shit about their children. These are more likely to be the ones running amok in schools. What’s the solution?

I have a lot of experience when parents think that everything is fine with them, but the child is bad. But after living a day in the family, you understand why the child prefers bad behavior.

The value of a teacher is that he can make studying his subject interesting. Have you ever noticed that some teachers make even interesting things boring, while others make even difficult things interesting and arouse a desire to study.

I'm afraid that is again a very naïve way of looking at things, OP. I've been a teacher for 30 years in a wide variety of schools. I'm a good teacher. It was and is my vocation (decided age 12!). I've worked with hundreds of good teachers. The majority of us devote huge amounts of time and energy (often at the expense of our well-being and time with our own families) trying to make our lessons fun, interesting and useful.

However, for many kids, maths or French or chemistry is never going to be interesting, however good the teacher. Certainly not anywhere near interesting enough to make them listen in class and do their homework out of sheer interest and motivation (rather than sanctions if they don't). To be fair, I didn't understand this before I started teaching, so it's not surprising you don't.

But we still have to teach these children who (despite our best efforts) have no desire to learn. And for their sake, and the sake of the other children in their classes, we have to have ways to make them behave and make them learn (as far as we can). We do our best to do that in supportive ways, especially for kids who have needs, and reasons for their behaviour. But a large proportion of kids who misbehave just do it because they can and because it's more fun than maths.

I don't understand what these statistics are due to. The country doesn't have enough specialists, there aren't enough workers and they are invited from other countries, while the country doesn't have enough money for medicine and education.