Compulsory after school classes

[labrat1984]

It's an odd one here

My daughter has been told she has to attend extra classes after school as her "design technology" work is at risk

If she does not attend the classes she will not be allowed to attend prom

This if I'm honest has me REALLY annoyed, we are a house hold with two disabled daughters and we have explained in the past to this school that we are unable to do after school events due to the care needs and travel time (school is about 20-30 mins drive)

The part that has me really annoyed is that earlier this year they took one DT class off her as they wanted her to do more maths and "this won't affect her DT work as she is doing so well"

What rights does she have here?

Schools really are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

I can’t quite get my head round the timetabling at the OP’s daughter’s school. Compulsory Period 6, but also early finish on 2 days? It sounds like they are struggling for staff. Although the resulting time tabling is unconventional, it is not unusual for prom attendance to be based on 100% school attendance.

How has your daughter got home from school until now?

ETA my eldest is now in Y12. I found Y11 needed a lot of flexibility by students and their parents.

This is the problem with a one size fits all education system that is so rigid it doesn’t take extenuating circumstances in to account. It’s also very clear, nobody here, or at the school understands what needs to happen to raise disabled children.

Threatening kids who otherwise have a great attendance, with non access to a social gathering is draconian and unnecessary. I suppose this is being done to deal with the kids who are serial non-attenders and failing everywhere. Those kids probably couldn’t give a crap about prom so it ends up coming down on children like your daughter.

Does she need D&T to get into whatever she is planning to do next? Does she care if she gets a low grade for it? If not, then everyone trying themselves in knots to try and get her attendance at this class is nothing more than box ticking. My daughter hated D&T, her disability made it quite difficult and the teacher was very unhelpful. She ditched it in 2nd year, the school were on board with that. I have a child who I’m mentoring who is on course to fail a subject, not one she wants, likes or needs. We’ve arranged for her to drop it so she can focus on her other classes. The school were pissy about it at the start but we stood our ground. They are there to educate our children in a way that benefits the individual. They can suggest a child does extra work but if the child can’t / won’t, that is up to the child and their family. There are all sorts of reasons a child can’t stay after school.

If your daughter isn’t bothered about it, I would be clear with the school that this can’t happen due to family circumstances, and your daughter will be attending prom. They already decided it wasn’t a top priority when they took her out of classes for Maths. If they need her to catch up, it shouldn’t be on her time in a way that makes things really difficult for the family. If your daughter does care and wants to do the classes, then of course her wants and needs shouldn’t come second to your disabled children, and I’m sure you’d find a way to make it work.

I can understand why you are annoyed OP, given that you've previously been told that there were no issues with DT and that school hours have been previously reduced.
However, I think you need to be pragmatic and try to find a way to make it work. I completely agree that it seems ridiculous to have reduced core school hours and then be putting on extra classes after school and the school really need to review that decision, but realistically they probably won't do that in a timescale that would benefit your DD. None of my DC did DT but if I recall rightly the GCSEs with practical content that they did do had to be complete by February. It does sound like the school has made some unreasonable decisions but time is probably not on your side if you want to challenge them. You might need to put the practicalities of your DD's course ahead of principle here.
Presumably your DD is not the only one who is staying for the class? Is there anyone else who lives near you that could give her a lift or share a taxi with, even part of the way? We live 20 miles from our DC's school in a village with no public transport and my job isn't the type where there's a guaranteed finish time so when we've been in this kind of situation we've needed to rely on favours from other parents sometimes. I've found people to be generally helpful, especially if we repay the favours when we can, even if it can't be 50:50. I hope you can find a solution and that your DD gets great results.

Your DD is struggling at least 2 subjects. I’d be doing everything I can to help in your shoes, and would be thrilled they’re offering this. Sounds like they were right to give a boost to English as ultimately that’s more important. It’s not uncommon for children struggling for them to do this.
If it’s a pickup issue, is there a school library (quite often they’re open until about 5 or 6!) or somewhere outside with a shelter in rain she can study/ re-read English books whilst waiting to be picked up?

I found Y11 needed a lot of flexibility by students and their parents.

I did, especially during the GCSEs. The bus company that had the contract for bussing the children to school was struggling financially and buses were often late or cancelled with no notification or even caught fire with the pupils on them (yes they did!). When DD had a morning exam I had to take her to school to make sure she got there on time.

Please dont forget these classes will be done voluntarily by a member of staff giving up their own time because they care.

Your wife is a teacher but you think teachers decide the school's opening hours?

All the reasons that the need for extra tutoring might have been avoided are irrelevant. Your family barriers are irrelevant. Your DD needs help to meet her maximum potential. The school has offered help. Either take that help or find it independently, but your job is to help her succeed.

It seems like none of the adults involved here are being terribly fair to your DD. She shouldn't be having to miss out on needed worktime for her GCSEs because everyone else in the family comes first, and she shouldn't be punished by the school because of a decision her parents make.

For me the most important question is the one I haven't seen you really address, OP. Does your daughter need and want to attend these sessions to help her achieve the grade she's capable of in her GCSE? If so then please focus on figuring out how to make that happen for her instead of battling with the school. DT (like other practical subjects), almost always requires a significant time investment outside of timetabled lessons to get a strong grade, so this doesn't seem like a shocking expectation from the school.

Can the school not do the DT intervention during lunchtime rather than after school? That’s what I’d ask them.

Also if it’s DT coursework, I.e the thing they need to make, this has to be done in school so no outside of school/tutoring option. If the child is now behind because they’ve not had enough hours to work on DT project because they’ve been pulled out of that lesson to do maths, the school have created this problem when they could have pulled the extra maths lesson from PE time. Another option is can they do this extra DT time when they would do compulsory PE?
id ask the school what other options are possible. School cannot insist on attendance outside of school hours. They can however come up with whatever prom entry rules they want to.

(our school is rural and 80% of the pupils are bussed to school. There is no public transport to these locations. There is no late bus. As a result school recognises the transport challenge and does intervention classes which are not compulsory at lunchtime)

This is free education? Your daughter needs the best chance of achieving the best grade she can achieve?

Life isn’t fair and circumstances aren’t always perfect. So as a parent have her back and support her doing this.

OP what plans have you set in place to improve her work and get her DT up to where it needs to be?

@labrat1984 , like others, my questions are:

1. Why can't your daughter use public transport?
2. Is the extra class on a day when the school finishes early?
3. Is the extra class for additional teaching time or so that she can complete assessed coursework?
4. As you can't do after-school events, will she be able to go to the prom?

The prom is a reward rather than a right so it's very common for schools to prevent students from going if there are behaviour or attendance issues.

If you write to the school about this issue, do remember to thank the teacher for offering to stay late to help your child. It is not their fault that previous lesson time was reduced, and they're probably as annoyed about that as you are. DT teachers are in high demand and short supply. The school will not have messed with the timetable without good reason - it sounds like they may have financial issues. Are they undersubscribed?

Lunch breaks are too short to do this in most schools. DD had 40 minutes for lunch.

Clearly she should take advantage of the extra tuition being offered, but the school has no right to mandate course attendance outside normal school hours, and also has no right to threaten students with retaliatory action such as removing access to school social eve ts, it's also discrimination and bullying behaviour - report them to the LEA.

I think this is pretty standard in year 11. My Dd is doing DT and is expected to go in on Sundays until Christmas to complete the coursework. Not just Dd - all of the DT students, regardless of predicted grades. It’s just what’s necessary for them to reach their potential.

Yes it’s a pain. Yes it has impacted the rest of the family and what they want to do on the weekend. But it’s just one term, and we want her to achieve her best, so we’ve made it work.

Threatening that she can’t go to the prom is low, though. It’s not her fault.

I would be making an appointment to talk this through with the school, to find a solution.

DS1 stayed after school every Monday for nearly two terms in yr11, finalising his art portfolio for gcse. I think even if she hadn’t lost a DT period for maths, she may well have had to do extra hours on coursework this year.

Sorry but what kind of mental arrangement is it to not bother to provide a full day of schooling two days out of five and then make threats to kids to make them stay late on the other days?

I would tend to think the prom threat was out of order anyway, but doing this to a teenager when you're not actually providing the minimum of education on the other days is unbelievable!

It just sounds like a complete mess. Appalling way to run a school.

when you're not actually providing the minimum of education on the other days is unbelievable!

across the week, they will be providing the minimum hours required, they may eg be having shorter lunch breaks for this.

Octavia64

DT is one of those subjects that expects a lot of work to be done outside class - similar to art.

It really shouldn't be.

The NEA should take no longer than 40-50 hrs as per the specification.

What happens is that DT becomes a subject which gets less than Ideal pupils and SLT that have no idea what it entails.

Any extra curricular studies should be either theory for exams or lessons/hours missed.

Again the problem is that so many SLT have no idea what the subject entails.

Id be annoyed by the fact they took at DT class off her for maths and now she is at risk.

I can see this is upsetting but her doing well in maths is more important than DT. Does she need DT for any future plans? Can she drop it? My daughter did 8 GCSEs it was enough for access to a good A level programme

It's a hard one for sure and threatening to ban her from prom seems an overkill

My daughter is sen and wasn't allowed to take a foreign language or history/geography to fit in extra math and English classes and had to go to school an hour early to work with a TA (for the whole 5 years) and attended homework club after school so she could again access that support

It was inconvenient as I had to drag her brother out on his oxygen since transport didnt cover the start and finish times she needed but it meant her English grade was high enough for college so she only had to retake maths her first 3 years of college

Is there any flexibility with work or the collection of your other two children that would give you a chance to get there to collect?
Is she able to take public transport on her own or with others in her year group so you dont need to go and collect?

Yes this.

Chances are that some of the other days are a bit longer – start earlier, finish later. We are only talking I suspect about a max of three periods a week tbh. A school I taught in only had one lesson after lunch on any day.

I have heard before of schools finishing early on a Friday – as I say, this is often a day with persistent absence so maybe it is a way of easing the issue with that.

Anyway I think the OP has got to park that as it won't change between now and next May. How best can they enable the DD to access the support she needs? That's the key question.

I agree the prom ban seems heavy-handed tho and would try to negotiate with the school if it was impossible for your DD to stay late.

This is normal for year 11. Mine had extra lessons most days after school, this was for all students not just the ones struggling. Surely a year 11 should be finding their own way home from school. What will you do next year in year 12, my kid leaves and starts at a different time every day.