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 I really don't like this system ( I mean punishments) and find it degrading and outdated.

I always prefer to have a quiet chat to a student who misbehaves rather than start the whole 'sanctions' procedure. But sometimes time is short, and, very often, the quiet chat gets an apology but no actual change in behaviour. The big thing is that many low-level things have an effect on other students in the class so need to be dealt with fairly quickly.

At our place, very low-level stuff gets a "point" and a detention happens if too many points are accumulated, so there's always plenty of warning.

I doubt anyone would think it’s acceptable to be fined at work for forgetting a pen at home, not turning off their phone, or missing a deadline. In real life, people finish their work in their own time rather than being punished by sitting alone in a room

In ‘real life’ there are rules and consequences as well.

If you are disorganised or don’t meet deadlines at work, you would face warnings, disciplinaries or capability. You need to meet your targets, turn up on time, do your work in a set time frame, or there are consequences.

Neurodivergent is hard, you can't rely everything on school. You'll need to help him a lot more than NT kids of the same age. Help and train them for coping strategies so these organisation things can be solved.

Kids actually like clear rules and consequences. Without them, classroom behavior varies wildly and a huge amount of time is wasted dealing with stupid things like kids not having the right equipment or kids asking three billion questions to try to find out what the boundaries are. The actual sanctions aren’t that important - it doesn’t matter so much whether the result of forgetting your homework is a detention or a call home to parents. It matters that the kids understand that bringing their homework to class completed and on time is a rule they need to try to adhere to.
Your son isn’t anxious because detentions are scary or humiliating - he’s anxious because he knows it’s not easy for him to remain organized and he doesn’t want to disappoint his teachers or himself by failing to live up to the challenge.
The loss of freedom from detentions is an illusion anyway. Kids who don’t give a shit about school or education just don’t turn up to them. They only work on kids who actually want to be in school and get some qualifications and succeed in getting to university, training or a job afterwards.

You can disagree with every other poster on this thread (a lot of whom have much more up to date experience than yourself), that's fine BUT you need to buy into the policy in the UK and support the school otherwise you are setting your child up for constant confrontation with any school you send him to.
If you feel that strongly and if you won't support the school then you need to take him out of UK education system and home school. They won't change the whole system for you.

If you don't like the UK education system, home school your child.

As you appear to have never seen inside a British classroom can I direct you to watch any of the "Educating Essex" episodes that show inside a secondary and the shit that teachers have to deal with. All available on Youtube for you. This was the first of many of this series. Maybe pay attention to the one where a child claims a teacher assaulted them only to be proven a liar because of the TV cameras set up that showed he was nowhere near her. If the cameras were not there that teacher would probably have been sacked. All because she broke a school rule and refused to hand over her hoodie/coat that she knows she is not meant to be wearing inside school.

As someone who has worked inside a primary school where children have kicked teachers, spat at teachers, even bent back and broken fingers of teachers, told teachers to fuck off and die, you need to understand the systems in place to help those children. Teachers bend over backwards to help students. The punishments of detentions in secondary are there to dissuade children from repeated unacceptable behaviour.

The fact that you think parents would come into a school meeting and agree with school shows you are delusional, they usually say their child is an angel and how dare you discipline them.

For this reason we chose a secondary that was heavy on behaviour and great on pastoral. Children who don't hand in their homework are supported but I don't want my children's education disrupted by a child who cannot make it to class on time.

I would differentiate between children who follow the rules but make mistakes or break them accidentally, and those who break them on purpose. I believe the former group is willing to stick to the rules without needing 'sanctions'. Then there are children with challenging behaviour. Sanctions will only provoke more bad behaviour from them. These children need the support of specialists, like psychologists or even psychiatrists.

What should schools do about bad behaviour if they can't put punishments in place??

Maybe spend some time in a secondary school and you might understand more clearly. I don't think keeping a kid in at breaktime is treating them like a criminal... get a grip!

'Quiet chats' in a state boys school don't have much success unfortunately

Sorry, but this is very naïve. Detentions don't work for the most hardened of miscreants, or for those kids who genuinely don't really have control over their behaviour due to trauma or complex needs. However, some kids misbehave just because they want to. They disrupt other students' learning. If you could be a fly on the wall in the average secondary school, you might be glad that detentions were in place to deter some of the poor behaviour.

Yes, private schools have detentions too. They are often stricter than state schools, though the behaviour is often less bad. Having a chat with the parents often doesn't work because some parents don't care, and others will just accuse the school of picking on their child and cla the child did nothing wrong. I work in a really good, very nice school. Detentions definitely work as a deterrent even there.

There is neither the time nor money to differentiate. The SEN system is broken.

When you say that in your country and in your school if students misbehaved the parents would be called in and there would be a meeting with the teachers and the parents -

This is discipline, it's just being outsourced to the parents.

Many teenagers hate for their parents to be called in to discuss their behaviour. It could be argued that this is a punishment in itself.

I don't know what country you are from. I was a teacher for a long time so I can tell you that U.K. schools do also do this - if a student is getting a lot of detentions the parents will be called in.

In the U.K. this can result in a number of things depending on the school and the parents:

So we had an attendance officer and various pastoral support people. If the parents were struggling to get up in the morning (maybe disabled, or drug addicts or whatever) we'd arrange for pastoral support to ring every morning to check on them.

In some cases we'd give the child a lift to school in the school minibus (so send someone round to collect them).

Is there no disability or drug addiction in your country or was it just not at your school?

If it turned out that the parents and kid were getting up on time but the kid wasn't making it to school on time then suggestions would be made to help. For example one very intellectually retarded father (single parent) had heard that at secondary school students should make their own way to and from school. We weren't his catchment school so he was expecting his son aged 11 to walk over an hour through a city he didn't know to get to school. His son was frequently late and often got lost.

We put school transport in place to help the kid.

In some cases the teens were late or not attending because they were selling drugs or being used as drugs mules (county lines). These students absolutely did not come into class upset as their punishment was missing the teachers explanation,

As a school we worked hard to bring them into school and keep them there as they were safer in school than on the streets. We also worked with the police and social services to improve the home situations they were living (or not living) in.

Does your country not have drug addiction amongst teens and gangs? Most countries do,

Detentions are there to help children work out what is expected behaviour and what they need to sharpen up on. In the U.K. there is more of an emphasis on parental and own responsibility for learning. You and your son need to be sitting down and figuring out solutions

The detentions are to flag to him and to you that you need to fix a problem.

They also flag to the school leadership team and if he keeps getting them they'll ask you in for a meeting to see if they need to support your parenting, just like in your country.

Cultural attitudes to lateness/punctuality vary. In the UK it’s really very rude to turn up later, especially to something like a class or a meeting or an appointment. So UK teens can’t just slide into class quietly if they are late. Not only are they missing out on the start of class, they are breaking a social convention. Which is going to cause a reaction from their teacher and peers. You can’t change the rule about lateness and the school’s sanction for it without changing the whole societal expectation of turning up on time for things. Which isn’t going to happen.

Yes, in fact often worse.It’s not unusual to have 3 hour Saturday morning detentions for really bad behaviour

However, it's unlikely that any teacher has been fired for being late a few times a year.

I would think it’s extremely likely that disciplinary proceedings would be started!

You clearly have no concept of how a small but significant group of students can behave in our schools. Children who are late do not quietly slip into their seat. They make a huge fuss. They generally have no idea what is happening. They interrupt, talk while the teacher is. They throw things. They argue. They make inappropriate noises. They refuse to complete tasks. They demand to leave class. They sometimes leave class without permission. They swear. This cannot be addressed without consequences. You are living in cloud cuckoo land. Your dc may be sensitive, kind etc but many are not. Without struct rules these noisier, poorly mannered students will ruin your child's education and make it impossible for him to learn or feel safe.

That primary school sounds horrendous.

Now that your ds has told you the primary school did keep kids in at break for bad behaviour, has this changed your positive impression of it and you now think the children were treated like criminals at the primary school too?