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?

I can see this must be frustrating for you when the school day has been truncated on two separate days. Posters are right, the teachers offering these additional lessons are likely not the management level who decided on the hours allocation. In the end, as a parent, you should be taking up these offers of extra teacher time because your daughter needs them and she should not loose out because you have two SEN children. The Prom is a red herring but it’s a somewhat mean stance.

It depends where you live. Not everywhere has plentiful public transport.

DD had art lessons after school every Monday. Being rural, the school bus left at 3. There was an option of a long walk in the dark to the station to come home, which I didn't want her to do, so I would pick her up.

Well that's your experience, so normal for you, but it's not universal. None of my 3 children ever had a single compulsory extra lesson after school, they couldn't get themselves home if they missed the school bus as it's 20 miles and there's no public transport to our village, and 6th form hours at their school are exactly the same as the rest of the school.
What's "normal" varies hugely from place to place. You can't just assume the OP's situation is similar to yours. I'd hazard a guess that if it was an easy walk from school to home she wouldn't be worrying though.

Teachers give up their own time for these classes. And it's often inconvenient for them (I had to arrange childcare for my disabled child so I could run classes for other people's kids!)

If these classes are considered compulsory there is often a little spoken about transport budget or organised minibus for children who would've got a specific school bus home or won't be able to get home otherwise. It's worth asking and explaining your situation.

In what year is your daughter?

Oh wow, two super short days a week is very poor from the school! My son’s school is compulsory until 4pm … school is in the middle of nowhere, school busses leave at 4:15 and 5:15 .
No surprise the OPs school can’t get enough teaching done.

@goldenautumnleaves25 You are being unfair. All schools have a statutory minimum school week of 32.5 hours: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64a2f21fbb13dc000cb2e5e1/MinimumSchoolWeekNon-StatutoryGuidance.pdf

How they arrange this is up to them.

It is notable that the op hasn't answered any questions about whether the extra class is on a short day or a long day, and why their Y11 child can't get public transport. So its unreasonable to make assumptions.

You can tell them that they need to make up the classes in lesson time since they didn't tell you that she would need to make up the time when they took the DT class off her. However it won't actually make there be enough time in the school day for her to complete all the work. Unless you are happy for her to drop the DT course, I don't think you have a choice. I remember having to spend year 11 doing one lunch time maths club and one afterschool maths club each week along with the other children who were doing the higher maths paper, because we weren't going to have time to do all the higher paper work in class. It was rubbish that they hadn't taught us separately all year in class and had allowed teaching the other kids to hold our learning back when doing the higher paper was something that almost every school would teach, but there was no other way to undo the mess!

Whilst i see this isnt massively convenient for you, do you realise these teachers are offering up extra lessons that theyre not actually being paid for? If they werent staying at school for this, theyd be able to go home to their own families earlier.

So do you really think theyd be doing it if it weren’t beneficial to your daughter?

I get through frustration.

There will be a blanket policy but hopefully more nuance is possible on an individual basis. Start with whether it's physically possible for her to attend. Unpick, in your own mind and with her, whether it's impossible or "just" difficult. If it's impossible then you go in with that, politely not aggressively, explaining (again!) about your family's needs and how this isn't possible. Don't get sucked into a bigger debate on grades and class time, it is simply not possible and it is completely outside her control.

In our experience the main deliverable for the NEA is the PowerPoint and it could be done at home. Obviously they can't build a table at home but one period a week to work on their PowerPoint, fine. My child was actually out of class for a chunk of theirs due to bullying and there being no teacher, so I was physically bringing them home to do it.

Whether she could drop the subject might be worth a discussion. Not always easy at GCSE level but possible at some schools, and having 8 or 9 GCSEs shouldn't hold her back from anything.

Left of field suggestions - regular taxi home for her, or to a waiting place such as a library or coffee shop until one of you can collect her. We had a public library in walking distance of school so DD could just go there after school chucked him out.