Child constantly removed from class

[CornwallMamma]

My son is in year 9 at secondary school. Last year he was removed from lessons 50 times during the school year. Mostly he is over talkative, occasionally backchatting teachers. He’s disruptive but not to the point of violence or anything really bad. Mostly he just can’t concentrate in lessons.
the school have assessed ADHD and concluded that actually he is very bright and not ADHD.
Apart from the lesson removals, which are obviously a concern, the schools policy is that is a child is removed from class they then have to sit in ‘reset’ for the next lesson, effectively missing the next lesson too.
Has anyone come across a school that does this?
I’m arguing that it is an incentive, not a punishment, for kids who don’t want to be in school. And it isn’t proper learning!

@CornwallMamma a few things. 50 times in a school year isn't constantly. 38 school weeks x generally 5 lessons a day is 50 out of 950 lessons - less than 5%. Not ok but is there a pattern to which lessons are hotspots?
I assume the school have done a screening tool and not identified ADHD traits as far as it goes. Is he a PITA at home too like many 14 year olds?
I don't see the sanction as the issue or the education he's missing - actions and choices have consequences. The priority should be giving him strategies that support him to change his behaviour within school, reinforced at home. If he's bright he needs to sort it soon so it doesn't limit him with GCSEs.

Yes it is! Deliberate seating plans, girl, boy, girl, boy. Bloody nightmare. Purposely to separate the boys, why do the girls have to put up with their behaviour?

I never do that. Never. Why should a lovely,hard working girl have to sit next to an annoying, rude, disruptive boy? It's so unfair.
I make sure that the hard working, pleasant students sit next to a friend!

Your argument that it is an incentive, not a punishment, considers your child exclusively.

The teachers have the rest of the class to think about. Once your child is out of the way they can get on with educating the well behaved cohort who actually want to learn.

if you want to do more to disincentivise the behaviour I suggest you discipline your child at home more effectively.

I wish!!

Disrupting the class IS really bad. Why should everyone else suffer?

An intelligent child with no SEN who disrupts the class is just badly behaved. He should be disciplined not pandered to.

an intelligent child with no SEN who disrupts will have emotional or mental health challenges. it should be fully investigated.

If his behaviour is a choice and not due to special needs, then what consequences are you imposing at home to support the school?

The school is protecting other pupils from having their education disrupted by your son. That is their duty. Your duty is to step up and do some parenting.

What are you doing about his behaviour. I wouldn't of dared act like that at school as I knew how much trouble id get into at home.

You appear to think that there’s no such thing as bad behaviour.

I find secondary school’s current disciplinary policies bizarre. I grew up in the UK and went to a fairly rough school, kids chatted and talked back. There were also teen pregnancies, drug use and ocasskonal violence. So it was by no means a school where everyone sat nicely and always listened to the teacher. But people being disruptive were told off, often joked with (all right Emma come on then, since you love a chat, come and teach us about red blood cells instead of me. You clearly want us all to listen eh?). Occasionally students were made to sit outside the class. Detentions were incredibly rarely given for really exceptionally bad behaviour. Yet we all did really well and seemingly no one needed to be given internal exclusion for being cheeky. You would get that kind of punishment for throwing a chair or flipping a table or organising a massive fight on the playground. Not for speaking in class.

Your child sounds like he needs some serious lessons in respect and behaving. He is cruising toward disaster.

However I do take issue with the assertion that 99% of pupils referred to CAMHS with suspected ADHD are completely NT.

That would be at odds with natural incidence rates and would suggest a significant bias toward referring young people who categorically did not have it. Add in the difficulty of getting over the CAMHS threshold in the first place, non- completers of referral/ assessment etc etc etc.

He’s your child - this behaviour doesn’t come from nowhere - how are you addressing the real issue or his back chatting?

Your son sounds like a peach.

He is disrupting the learning of others.

If he is bright and insufficiently challenged at school, then it is perhaps an opportunity to broaden his outlook at home?

What do you talk about when you are sitting together at suppertime? Do you get a quality newspaper where he can discuss an article with you that he is interested in?

negative attention seeking will be a response to trauma.
family breakup, drug and alcohol issues within the family or the child, abuse, peer influence and low self esteem, too many potentials to list but it is a cry for help.

My 60 year old self has no recollection of persistantly disruptive classmates.

Obviously we didn't have huge numbers of SEN kids in those days (eg no respect for dyslexia or adverse childhood experiences) , but we knew which kids were just 'naughty' - no excuses or reasoning.

I think we had punishments that are unthinkable today, but even benign enforcement results in horrible reactions from today's parents (who perhaps were softly parented themselves).

Going against what a lot of posters are staying on here. DS (now 15) was your son from year 8 to year 10. All the things you described. At least 2 detentions a day. Removed from classes regularly and known as one of the more challenging pupils.

3 years of endless consequences at home, meetings at school, conversations trying to understand why on earth he’s behaving like this. We tried everything to try and get the bottom of it but nothing had any effect. It just kept on happening. It wasn’t good for anyone. Not for him, his teachers, fellow classmates or me at home trying to deal with it.

One of his teachers called me one day and we ended up having a longer conversation than normal and she asked if I’d ever thought of getting him assessed for ADHD. She said that she’d been teaching for 30 years and can tell the difference between there being a diagnosis needed and just being challenging. I know that there’s a lot of eye rolling about ADHD and excusing bad behaviour and poor parenting etc but I kept it in the back of my mind and didn’t do anything about it for another 12 months. I just kept tearing my hair out trying to deal with the situation and nothing worked.

I then borrowed some money off my DM and got him assessed. He was diagnosed with ADHD and started on medication 6 weeks ago.

I can’t begin to describe the difference in him at school. He hasn’t had one detention (yet) since he’s been back at school. I am now getting phone calls home about how well he’s doing. He’s getting multiple merits a day and he’s doing his homework every night with it too much nagging. I have spoke to him quite a lot about what the difference is now and (not a massive talker admittedly) he says that for the first time ever he can focus and concentrate at school.. and that he’s enjoying school now. It’s early days but I had to post as it’s been so transformative for him.

Back to yours and other posters’ points - it’s not within the school’s remit to say if anyone has ADHD or not. I feel strongly about this as I went through similar with my DD (now 18) when she struggled in school. Endless phone calls home about her talking and lack of focus in school. I had spoken to a friend who runs an ADHD charity and she had said that it sounded like DD had ADHD. I asked the school and they were absolutely adamant it wasn’t. They don’t have the time, qualifications or resources to say whether a pupil does or doesn’t. In fact I would say that most state schools don’t have the resources to do more pupil passports, make reasonable adjustments, apply for EHCPs so it’s ‘easier’ (I know it’s not easy but figuratively speaking) to just deal with the behaviour in the moment.

My DD was later diagnosed with autism and ADHD after a long time with CAMHS and lots of MH problems.

If you have the funds then I would seek a diagnosis even just to try and get the bottom of it / rule it out yourself. Don’t take what the school day at face value.

Poor kid being vilified and constantly removed from lessons, and poor mum with this complete lack of education on behalf of the school and a huge majority of posters here.
sadly this is a common story across the board with children with Sen in mainstream schools.
Nobody in a school is qualified to assess for adhd. The op has no idea if her son has a neurological condition or not and has been told by a woefully unqualified establishment that her son hasn’t.
therefore he is being let down terribly.
how is it fair to challenge her about what she is doing to curb his behaviour when the education provider has had the final ‘say’ on his (non) diagnosis?
too many armchair professionals here. OP request a proper assessment via the gp, not even gps are qualified to assess so I don’t know where people get off laying into the mum here.
disability discrimination seems to be at an all time high in this country thanks to the media and ill informed public opinion.

Exactly this @Jellyheadbang!

It breaks my heart. Teaching is meant to be a vocation .
so many kids being excluded from lessons and treated like they’re wilfully disruptive is unjust and unkind

#team29

'...actually he is very bright and not ADHD.'

This sits weirdly as the two are in no way mutually exclusive.

Also probably looked a bit 🤔 reading your comment about nothing serious like physical violence. Talking is serious, when it's stopping people learning. I think you need to alter your attitude, as it's potentially negatively influencing your son's behaviour .

@CornwallMamma just to follow up on my exceptionally long post (!) it’s absolutely common and normal for a child to have ADHD AND be very academically capable at the same time. It’s not a measure of intelligence (or lack of) It was widely acknowledged amongst DS’s teachers that he was capable and intelligent.. but in parallel to that he was seen as disruptive and challenging. This is part of the challenge of getting any recognition of neurodiversity.

Gosh how you wrote about your son was exactly how my boy was and became after medicated. My son was diagnosed at 5, medicated at 6, he’s now 18 and at good university. I bet many a teacher didn’t think he’d do it either. My son and I were lucky for a quick diagnosis but even though the school refused to refer to CAMHS and I had to get a referral through my GP. He was diagnosed as a cut and shut case of severe ADHD. Teachers can be pretty clueless, needless to say when they saw the difference medication made they were then sending off kids for referrals willy nilly, all coming back as not having ADHD. To me it would be obvious anxious child, eager to please, won’t listen, can’t sit still, rolls about, wriggles, really annoying I get it but how can any sensible adult confuse that for a conduct issue you’ve have to be a bit lacking. I’m very glad those days are over, they were awful. Now it’s just anxiety, extremely poor organisation, not listening to instructions and needs constants reminders to name a few. Thankfully now no judgy Mothers giving you their unwanted “parenting advice”. These parents seem to manage to pipe down when they have teenagers, perhaps acknowledging all children are different and we’re doing our best and it’s not nec told how your bossiness works so well with a 7 year old but somehow it doesn’t last into teenage years. Meanwhile my teen is a piece of cake in compassion.