Headteacher under fire after detentions dished out for getting less than 90% in homework

[SomersetBrie]

I am going to guess that this is Sparx maths.
The whole article is very misleading.

I am trying to imagine how my DS would feel if I went to the press because he got a detention!

Headteacher under fire after detentions dished out for getting less than 90% in homework

Was it definitely a 'detention' as in a punishment? Or were these kids kept back to redo the homework to a higher standard or have the topic explained again?

It's a long time since I had anything to do with schools, but I saw that article yesterday and was amazed. 13/16 on homework gets you a detention? Most of my class back in secondary school would never have been out of detention! Detentions back then were rare and for breaking rules - not doing homework at all, habitual sloppy work when a teacher knew they could do better, talking in class, persistent lateness, uniform breaches, rudeness (rare, I'd think - our teachers were a formidable lot) and so on. Not for underperforming academically.

If they were told to stay behind after school, it comes to the same thing, surely?

DC school would give a detention for "homework not done to required standard". I think for Sparx that would be around 80%. They get one warning, then the detention. I think this is reasonable for my DS as he is a bit lazy, so the looming detention encourages him to work on the hard questions.
90% might be too high, but the school and parents would be aware.

It is high, but then kids need to be understanding topics properly and not just coasting (this is not always due to laziness, some kids just find it harder to learn things and need extra help).
Not doing the work properly because you haven't tried is one thing. But a teacher offering extra help so they can fully understand it is another.

At my dc's school they had to redo any tests or work at break or lunchtime where they did not reach their target grade. It was not supposed to be a punishment!
More of a punishment for the teacher tbf

But on sparkx you get 100% if you do all the home work. It keeps giving you questions until you answer them. So 80% would mean you only actually did 80% of the work set, rather than you got it wrong

You need to look at this in the context of the number of kids who are out of school with anxiety and the number of head teachers who are cracking up with anxiety. I think the pressure for high grades is really hurting a lot of people right now.

I had to take my son out of school and it was partly because the school were obsessed with him getting grade 9s in everything. To achieve it they were constantly grinding him on learning app to get his grades up. It's just not good for their minds. He really couldn't cope and is doing so much better at home.

The irony is that he was already getting a grade 6 in GCSE past papers when he was in year 9 so it's not as though he was behind.

What a wonderful way to encourage children to love school and especially maths.

Scools seem to be really toxic right now. I think the head teachers are under astronomical pressure to get results, while not having the staff to employ enough teachers. It's not a good combination.

Yes I think given it is Sparx Maths I think it is misleading

it has improved recently actually so you can give up on questions and you can move through - it should get work to yiur ability rather than giving you something you cant do

when it did for DS I emailed the teacher and that piece wasn’t completed for 3 weeks when he was taught and understood it (gone on incorrectly)

pretty much all schools used it

I had this with my son's school, and i took issue with it, mainly because it didn't make sense. The metadata shows that it's been sincerely attempted.

If the homework simply hadn't been completed, then fair enough, dole out a detention.

Is it definitely Sparx maths? I don't see that written anywhere.

I think that's pretty toxic actually. Kids are allowed an off day, and deserve their breaks during the day. I don't have a problem with detentions for behavioural issues but I don't think this is fair.

My school used to do this,

The way it worked was we'd set homework online. Our systems were not adaptable so it would be eg ten questions on what we'd done in class.

If the students didn't get 90% they'd be asked to attend a lunchtime session where a teacher would go through it with them. "Homework club".

If they didn't go to homework club they'd get detention for basically refusing help.

Most kids worked out pretty quickly that sharing the answers in a group WhatsApp that did not have the teacher on solved the problem.

I think if the school offers 121 help or another form of support, where the homework can be done, if the child is struggling, it is fair enough to do a detention if the support isn't taken up.

If this isn't in place, however, I don't think a detention is fair. The onus should be on the school to enable the child to succeed to that level.

I'd have been permanently excluded if I was expected to get 90% in maths at school! I struggled to even pass.

This will just lead to students cheating to avoid detentions which won't give the school the accurate picture it needs to bring up standards.

It's crazy. It reminds me of kids sitting in the corner with a dunce hat on. I hated maths anyway even though I was in the top set for GCSE, and this would have made me sick with anxiety as I hated being told off. Maths made me nervous enough as it is- even helping my DDs with their maths homework brings that sick "I can't do it!" feeling back. I never had a detention at secondary school other than a whole class one.

DD1 was in the top set and got an 8 for her GCSE Maths (even though she disliked it as I do). Even so she definitely got less than 90% in lots of homework - sometimes getting half or more wrong when it was a new topic or the school was trying to stretch them. I would have been absolutely livid if the grammar school she attended gave detentions for poor marks and it would have really thrown her. Fortunately her school were so much more sensible than most schools seem to be now and there was nothing like that at all. In fact if they got low marks they would say there is nothing to worry about as it was a very hard test.

She was always scared of getting anything wrong in her homework at primary school and used to get really worked up and upset about it. It took me years to get her to accept that it was ok to get things wrong as then you could learn from it and the teacher just wanted to know how much you had remembered at school.

This school's policy would undo all that work in one fell swoop. It makes me so angry for those pupils and parents.

So a good prep for real life then.

Surely certain children won’t bother doing homework at all

Those who know they won’t achieve 90% + will just take the detention rather than right off an evening struggling

When I read the article it said that the headteacher is new and was brought in because the school was failing. He has only done this with the top setted children who are not achieving according to their already determined ability.

If he has identified that there are capable children who are just dossing and not responding to any other incentives, I don't blame him for trying this. It was clear to me that he is approaching laziness, not penalising kids for not understanding. And if these children DIDN'T understand the homework and weren't saying, this will presumably reinforce to them that they need to SAY when they don't get something.

It feels like the parents who are complaining are actively teaching their kids not to bother trying.

But if you know that it is going to take you 90 minutes to complete the homework and the detention is only 60 minutes then surely you just take the detention and you have 30 minutes free time

If my dc wasn't able to complete their home work to the standard required to be in set 1 then I would expect a suitable fix for thay would be to go down a set. Not pumish her for it!

On the Stewards website, it says that in KS3 and KS4, they 'follow the MyMaths scheme of learning'.