Removal of all breaks and lunch for a week

[babypeach]

Hi all,

just wanting some perspective on this. My daughter’s secondary school have removed her entire year group’s break and lunch times as punishment for a group of students who repeatedly bring vapes into school, run around school during breaks and generally misbehave.

my daughter has never had a detention or been anything but a model student her whole time there. I’m not one to complain to the school in general. I often find many of their rules illogical and have said that sometimes she might get a group detention Alan’s to just put up with it but …not being able to go outside at all for a week? They have been to they must be silent and sit still through all breaks otherwise more punishment will follow. She is very worried that those students will
continue to misbehave, given their lack of respect for rules in general, leading to more punishments for the majority of kids who haven’t caused the problems.

I also have concerns that cooping kids up like that will cause issues in concentration etc even in kids that are usually good, again leading to further sanctions.

ive never complained to the school but I did this idea really quite awful and don’t understand how it will help? It won’t magically make these kids behave and stop vaping/being rude/having behaviour issues etc. what do the school plan to do at the end of the week if the problem doesn’t away? What’s the exit plan? Just keep doing it?

I plan to write to the school (though I know it won’t do anything) and just wondered if other people here felt the same or had other views?

thanks!

Piss poor, very occasionally i feel like imposing a whole class sanction, but i never do because it fundamentally unjustifiable and unreasonable. Aa whole year group sanction is off the scale not ok.

I work in a secondary school with quite strict rules which I support as it’s really challenging…but this is very wrong. Totally demotivating and unfair to the many who are doing as they should.

Straight from OP to now.

Unacceptable. Collective punishments are an indication of a school who cannot manage discipline. It's a recipe for disaster. They know who is offending? Sanction them.

I never say this- but write to the head, and CC the governors. If the school know who the offenders are, discipline them. If they don't, find out. Monitor every corridor, know the kids by name. Allow a culture of whistleblowing. Isolate the troublemakers. There'll be a pike of kids who also want this to stop, too.

Do not do collective punishments.

A year ago I finally walked away from what had been, 6/7 years ago,a fully functioning NHS front line team. Hunt decreed 24/7; so suddenly we were inundated with third world often dubiously 'qualified' staff, disaster after disaster.

Now, the upper management who employed them, fingers-crossed, didn't dare single them (most, if not all) out for identified, recorded issues; they chose the 'you're ALL responsible!' -tack. Fearing a cry of 'Racism!'

The original team all went 'I'm bloody well not!' -and, losing faith in the ability of the managers to manage- one by one...left.

We all knew they knew what they'd done but collective punishment was easier. And caused a complete collapse of the team.

This is what they do when they fail to identify, for fear of retaliation.

Cowardice.

This is wrong in so many ways. I'd email the school and tell them, unless my DD was actually seen vaping she will not be doing the detention. If they insist, after day 1 she might suddenly come down with a tummy bug. Oh well.

It's such a weak , ineffective and unfair punishment that I honestly don't know what they're thinking. The kids who act up won't give a shit, and I doubt they'll care much about their peers/their opinion. The middling kids might just decide to act up if they're going to be punished anyway, the good kids will be frustrated and resentful and trust/relationships will break down.

It's such a cop out to expect children to behaviour manage other children, when a whole team of experienced, professional adults have failed. Never mind the risk they're exposing themselves to if they do speak out and the vapers are also violent/bullies/the fighting type.

Are you absolutely sure about this? I've spent 20 years in education and never heard of this sort of collective punishment - for a week? How big is the school? Most secondary schools will have year groups of over 250. There's no way you could enforce silence and sitting still all breaks for a week. In the nicest possible way, can I suggest that you check that you have got this right.

I'm a teacher and this is ridiculous! I never do a collective punishment and it doesn't work for so many reasons! I also believe that a collective punishment is against the Geneva convention! But that may not be true! Talk to SLT at the school and ask them what they hope to achieve by it.

The theory that collective punishment will lead the studious, well-behaved children to turn on the culprits has never been borne out by much evidence. On the other hand, if the goal is to get even the well-behaved students to hate the school and administration, and to permanently alienate parents, then this probably an effective way of doing it.

Yes I remember being in school and things like this happened due to a handful of kids breaking rules. ( I'm almost 31 so going back donkeys years now since secondary school ) but I do remember whole year group punishments. However, it was pointless and unfair in my eyes and still is! Many schools still do this unfortunately

Thanks again for all the replies.

I composed an email yesterday to the school echoing what has been said here, emphasising that essentially they are hoping children do their work for them.

Ive also asked what their plan is when inevitably the kids who are breaking rules just carry on doing it.

not had a response

Daughter indeed had all breaks and Lunch inside in silence which I find appalling. According to her (and she rarely complains or exaggerates) them staff said if everyone was silent at lunch they might let some out on Monday, but obviously the badly behaved kids talked so now plan is back to a week - even more ridiculous if you ask me!

if I haven’t had a response by Monday afternoon I’ll be in contact again.

such a shame as daughter has been happy at the school despite starting with high anxiety/school avoidance. Then school were helpful in getting her through that and although strict punishment has always been against the individual who broke a rule. This is a new thing as far as I’m aware.

very disappointed in them. It’s lazy in my opinion, getting kids to weed out and somehow magically convince naughty kids to be good 🙄

Our school tried this because some girls were wearing non-regulation skirts. The day after they told us about the collective punishment, we all wore non-regulation skirts on the basis that if we were being punished for it we might as well have the fun of it as well.

This is insane and I'm a teacher. Complain to the chair of governors. There are occasions like at the end of a lesson, someone's bag has been hidden and I might say no ones going until we've found it...which promptly results in the bags appearance but a whole year group week long punishment is crazy. The school must know who the problem kids are. All schools have cctv, vape alarms in toilets, individual cubicles etc so it will be easy to id them....and if they don't have them then they should get them!
Whoever is running this school must be an idiot because they are going to lose any goodwill they had from any student in the year group and plenty more will decide they might as well fuck about now if they are going to get punished anyway.