Sixth form unnecessarily restrictive and strict

[Libre2]

DS has stayed at his comp where he got really good GCSE results (all 8s and 1 9) and had a very good friendship group.

The school was great and provided fantastic support and he got on well with staff. He has moved into the sixth form there and it seems to have gone a bit crazy. They have brought in serious rules and regulations - they have to sit in silence in free periods, with no headphones, they are not allowed to communicate with friends, they must be studying. One of DS's friends has four frees in a row and has to sit in silence for 4 hours. His parents questioned this and was told "he'll be fine".

They are giving out behaviour points for minor infringements and basically still treating them like children. DS is completely fed up with this - he has engaged brilliantly and done a lot of reading around his subjects and completed all tasks, but wants more freedom.

He is thinking of swapping schools in the city - sadly we don't have a sixth form college - he is worried about being lonely and missing friends, but doesn't really engage with them anyway as they are all maths/science and he is arts. Has anyone else encountered this or moved in the first half term?

Sounds like an utterly depressing way to study personally.
You really think students shouldn't talk to each other about a book they are studying unless every other member of the class is there to join in?
Or one student giving help to another because one isn't understanding a maths concept?
I struggled with 6th form because I found it too hard - I would have struggled even more if we had to be silent all the time.
Sounds like punishment not encouraging learning.

As a former Sixth Form Tutor I would be happy teaching in a disciplined environment where students were up to date on their prep because they used the study periods wisely not spent chattering in a common room. It is not utterly silent just library quiet in these environments to allow all students to work.

Actually it is the school doing that and not letting them find their own way recipe for complete disaster when they are at uni

DD grammar adds in one hour of study time per day for them to have to and the rest is free time to get them to learn themselves how to work

she has left to go to the local boys school that adds in girls and they are allowed to chat - absolutely imperative actually at this stage for the new girls and old boys to mix and learn to live with each other - work will start to ramp up

mine ensures she does an hour a night at home and 2-3 hours on the weekend so she can make the social bits at school

her friend in a similar environment is moving back to her old school today

My school didn't have a common room.
We had a study area.
We didn't have to be silent so we could actually study together which is a much more natural way to learn.
In my personal opinion.

I'd definitely speak to them, express your concerns from the perspective of - they need to learn independence and how to make the right choices around studying, they often need to discuss ideas and share thoughts at this level, one silent environment really doesn't help everyone's learning styles. Quite often early year 12 is a transition period where schools manage them tightly before they feel they can start to relax a bit. If that's the plan, great, if it's not then start looking elsewhere - however, a levels are short and building new friendships in a new location can be tough, so he needs to take those things into account and weigh up the situation.

I was a Sixth Form Supervisor before I retired. Students were allowed to talk, listen to music, make drinks and snacks in their kitchen and as long as they weren’t being actively destructive we let them get on with it. There was a separate computer room plus library for those who wanted to work and these were quiet rooms. They were not allowed to leave school premises though except during lunch hour. They are nearly adults and need to self regulate in terms of workload when they get to university so this is good training.
Our results were excellent with a fair few each year going to Oxbridge and the school was over-subscribed.

If this is a state school, name and shame (but perhaps check the actual published policy first). Schools cannot permanently exclude (which is what this would be) on academic grounds.

See St Olaves Grammar, Orpington, August 2017.

Theres always one power crazy person that inflicts this type of nonsense on 6th form. My DD got more detentions in year 13 than any other year of school. Apparently one day she wasn’t wearing office clothes (black trousers, top and cardigan, with smart shoes!), another day my DD and her friend were working through some practice questions and that wasn’t ok!!! It just got stupid. They are meant to be developing independent learners, and supporting that young person to adult transition!

How do they develop conversational skills, how do they support each other working through answers- how do they learn when its time to work vs time to chat !!! When they have to sit in silence for hour after hour. I would move him and I would have a conversation with the chair of governors.

Pretty sure they can at Sixth Form. Many schools have a policy that certain grades need to be met before you can go into Year 13.

I left 6th form in 1976 and it was more liberal than that then! Our teachers were of the opinion that we needed to learn to take responsibility for our time and activities and learning, otherwise we would wash out within months at university. They were correct.

I think it has to be his decision, but if he finds this too restrictive, make the change sooner rather than later.

My kids went to the library, but they were still allowed to talk quietly. They also helped each other. My daughter was the one people came to for help with further maths. She went to another peer to discuss stuff about physics.

They all learned from each other when needed whilst not causing disruption. They were definitely there to learn but they did bounce ideas off each other and it helped consolidate their learning. Absolute silence is not always the best way to learn.

I was in 6th form in the 80s and Fridays everyone would troop off to the pub at lunchtime. The teachers and sixthformers each had their own pub of course.

These kids aren't going to have teachers breathing down their necks making sure they're working when they're at uni. Being given the freedom at this point to decide how to use their study periods is an important part of that transition.

There was very little oversight from teachers as to what happened in free periods at my school, and we had excellent A Level results.

I definitely didn't do 5 hours of independent study per a level per week 😱 I did 5 a levels, plus a part time job, plus spent two frees a week volunteering in school, plus was a young leader at scouts plus volunteered with the national trust 😂 so given I am someone who needs a firm 8 hours a night of sleep just can't have done more than an hour or two per subject max. Obviously plenty more in the run up to exams. I did spend all my frees studying but I only had 5 free periods a week.

We had a study area (not silent), the library (silent) and the common room (no obligation to study).

At some point you have to allow children the chance to make their own decisions about how much work they're going to do, and sixth form has to be the start of that to my mind. I.e. structure from lessons but no structure in frees. That way when they get to university they have learnt how to manage their own time to study effectively.

It wasn't a condition of funding that they completed a set number of hours of supervised study in addition to the minimum timetabled hours per qualification (whilst allowing for Study Leave just before the A Levels start) fifty years ago. It wasn't even a condition of funding that the hours were increased to the current level until last September.

Ditto. Where I live is supposedly one of the best colleges in the country. Two friends’ children recently went through there and they get rid of them at the end of Y12 if they aren’t ‘on target’.

That’s the difference between sitting in the library or sitting in a “common room” space.

It is perfectly possible for students to achieve while still having a social life - taper if the idea of sixth form is to develop independent study habits they can use at university or for professional development. Not sit in silence and be isolated.

You really don’t have much respect for teenagers do you? Th vast majority of teenagers are actually there to learn at sixth form.

Supervised study only needs to be used for those who actually need it. It doesn’t have to be a blanket approach.

DD’s sixth form are using it for those who don’t complete their wider study over the summer to catch up. Those who did complete the wider study don’t have to be supervised.

They don't know how to. They're effectively still Y11s who have just had an incredibly long holiday and need to get back in the habit of things. They don't know how to use their free periods and getting them into the swing of using them to study before allowing them to have the freedom not to is a better idea than just letting them do whatever they like and then finding out the hard way that they haven't been studying enough.

Seen it happen a lot. January exams used to be when they found out.

Same with ours.

Perhaps the teenagers you know are like that because you don’t give them the credit they deserve and treat them like children?

In my experience if you set expectations they will often find their own way to meet those expectations, just because it doesn’t look like your interpretation doesn’t mean they have got it wrong. A Level results are consistently good across most areas, the media claim the exams are ‘too easy’. They aren’t easy - the teenagers just work really hard.

I've been teaching for 20 years and and my school doesn't 'treat them like children' or mandate that they study in their study periods which is how I know what will happen when you don't, and why I understand why the OP's school is taking the approach it is. Not all children need that structured introduction, but quite a few do.

Pointing to A-level results is silly, as they are only sat by the ones who actually made it to the end of the course.

The school wants good A level results (both for the school and for the students) so it is encouraging students to study. Sixth form common rooms are not always used sensibly. That's it in a nutshell.

Back in 1983 I went to College for exactly this reason. Sixth Form was an extension of school and students treated exactly the same and taught by the same teachers, who tried to treat them as adults but never quite managed it in the same way as a college.

However, for all the benefits of college, students did waste free periods by popping into town and getting into bad habits of not studying. Add to this their commute, they weren't necessarily making up for it with night time study either as they got home late and had to get up early.

If he is in all other ways settled and doing well, then I'd stick with it and say treat it like a 9 to 5 job. Then time in the evenings and weekends can be free time.

It maybe they will lighten up a bit once students have settled into the more demanding A level personal study work. It's early days at the moment.