Daughter being excluded from prom

[user1471497170]

My daughter is year 11 and sits GCSEs next month. She has struggled throughout the whole of secondary school with friendships, MH/school anxiety, behaviour and approximately a year ago almost got sent to pru. She has never settled in school. However she has made significant improvement, not on any behaviour plan, is revising hard and should pass GCSEs and do her chosen subjects in college.

She has autism, anxiety and some physical health issues that are likely linked. Getting her into school is a struggle as she feels unhappy there but we make the effort and her attendance is good.

Although much improved her behaviour score is not high enough to meet the 90% prom threshold (reminders, uniform points and gokng to toilet when not permitted). She was informally told this week the final decision is that she will be excluded from prom.

Now all the girls have their tickets and she is beside herself. They are all making plans and talking about dresses and she now feels unable to continue going to school due to feeling so distressed about this. She is worried how she will cope with the sense of exclusion having to keep hearing about prom in school and assemblies

She's now at home. I have written to the school and submitted 2 complaints over the last 2 months however I have not received a satisfactory response. There has been no communication to me from the school about their decision or how they will support those excluded. Please can someone advise how I can escalate this further and if possible externally.

I'm 29, I barely remember my Y11 prom at all. Why would I, it's half a lifetime ago! I've moved on from standing around in a hotel with a load of other teenagers drinking non-alcoholic punch and giggling about who was going to get off with whom.

It's a shame for OP's daughter that she will miss out but come on, it's really not an important event over the course of her life.

Amen!!

The forgotten kids.

Teen parties are often underwhelming. But if you'd been officiously told you couldn't go by adults- and all your mates were going - you'd remember that. Especially at that age.

Then its a good reminder for her that bad behaviour has consequences

Or it screams parent who can be bothered and school.which can't justify what it's doing.

You never behaved badly? At all?

Since when is needing the toilet a disciplinary issue? Can’t believe any of this (including the parents who feel this is exclusion is acceptable). As I see it if you can pay to go, you attend. Are the school paying for the whole thing? As I understand it costs are covered by ticket sales

@PGmicstand “You wouldn’t tell someone in the workplace when they were permitted to empty their bladder and/or bowels” - erm that’s what teaching staff do. We can’t just leave children alone in class (I’m primary school based).

If she can't behave in school satisfactorily, she can't expect to be rewarded or her nonsense tolerated off site in the evening.

'Going to the toilet when asked not to' is short hand for 'leaves the classroom whenever they want to and won't listen when told when/where to go'. Which rather creates an issue at an event for the supervising adults.

I have a yr 11 and am really conflicted on this. They are a very good student- always in school, well behaved, hard working, organised and diligent. They are predicted good grades and revising hard. They are really looking forward to their promotion with their friends and it will be a fun celebration and a way of beginning a summer of freedom before college.

Their school made a big thing of earning your place at prom and set out guidance for attendance including at revision classes and workshops, for behaviour and not getting negative marks or detentions and they jave given them chances to earn extra benefits and money off through helping with younger years and open events. It all seems very fair.

Except they don't want to exclude anyone and so there are kids who have waltzed in and out of lessons and school for months getting to go. Kids who have disrupted lesson after lesson by being confrontational, loud, not doing their homework or refusing to sit tests, all getting to go too.

And on the one hand I am sure that these disruptive, rude, difficult kids have many many reasons for being the way they are. They won't necessarily be having happy home lives with stable supportive parents. Maybe they've experienced abuse or are care experienced. They need a lot of support and understanding and shouldn't be excluded when they already have precious little fun.

On the other hand, my dc will hopefully do well in their exams in spite of the sheer chaos these kids have inflicted week after week through school. Their resilience in keeping making good choices and knuckling down and working hard despite the shouting and disruption should be acknowledged and celebrated.

Whether it is because of unmet SEN or Healthcare needs or because of poor behaviour related to ACEs, children with loads of negative points, detentions and poor attendance do not exist in a vacuum where their behaviour only impacts them.

I don't know what the answer is really but nothing seems fair for anyone as it currently is.

Yes, you'd remember it for a while. But then, fingers crossed, you'd go on to college and meet a load of new mates and learn some exciting new things! And then you'd go on to a career, or to further study, and you'd go to proper grown up parties and celebrations and weddings and you'd go on fun holidays and fall in love and do a million other exciting things, such that within a short period of time you'd either forget the prom completely, or you'd look back and laugh at how silly the whole thing was.

Or alternatively you could hang on to it as a pointless grudge, or do some of the mad things that people on this thread are suggesting like take legal action or go to the papers, and turn the whole thing into an endless source of misery and resentment. You could choose to spend years believing you'd been deprived of some magical coming-of-age experience. All over some lukewarm punch and floaty dresses.

I know which one I'd encourage my daughter to do.

Well I can't knock that- but that way the adults persist with their silly behaviour and it continues bothering teenagers.

This post shows exactly what is wrong with the school system. OP's dc has special needs and has made tremendous progress. The school is aware and cannot apply rigid rules to this particular child.

FFS, not being able to go to prom due to uniform/toilet issues is so militaristic that I despair.

And in healthcare. Paramedics don't stop off at the services on the way to a pile up. Surgeons don't leave a patient bleeding out mid op. Midwives don't leave mothers pushing in birth pools.

I can think of loads of roles where you have to wait for an appropriate moment - Pilots. Lecturers. Vets. Dentists.

Friends worked on a factory line during uni. If you needed the loo outside of an official break you had to raise you hand and the entire line had to be stopped and then everyone on the line waited for you to come back. Mega mega inconvenience for the whole factory.

Expecting the average medically fit and well person to be able to time their toilet trips or hold on to the end of a lesson is not remotely unreasonable. My dc have been able to wait for the next services on the motorway etc for years!

I can guarantee she would have had PLENTY of warnings. She hasn’t met their requirements. Hopefully she will learn from this.

So because you can't go to the loo you punish your pupils and don't let them go either

And I don't understand the attendance thing.

There are dc in our acquaintance who are fighting these decisions right now. Whose children have really low attendance due to illness/mental health/anxiety/sen but who they are adamant should be allowed to go to prom.

They seem adamant that their dc who is too unwell/anxious to attend school for more than one lesson every week or so will definitely be fine for prom. These same dc are also well enough enough go prom dress shopping multiple times. And to choose their transport and plan their hair and tans.

If I had a yr 11 with really poor attendance due to illness, ALL of my energy and priorities would be getting them well enough to get through English and Maths. Nothing else.

Do you genuinely think all students freely popping to the loo whenever they like throughout the day is going to make for a calm and manageable learning environment in schools?

I dint think the OP dc has once gone to the loo when it wasn't break but multiple times despite being asked not to.

But we're not talking about 'burning out'. We're talking about behaviour that was significant enough to warrant serious consideration of a PRU.

I’m a secondary teacher and have pupils who have regularly trashed the classroom, been verbally abusive, bullied others, displayed violent behaviour towards pupils and staff and still not been eligible for PRU. So…….🤷🏻‍♀️

Teachers aren't stupid. They know the difference between kids who take the piss and the ones who don't.

So your daughter has a toilet pass, for a medical reason, and a medical professional had to write to confirm this medical reason. Sorry, I just don't get the problem.

The GP can say what they like. As a teacher, I think everyone should get same day GP appointments, there you go. But the world doesn't work like that for many reasons.

The issue with toilet actually has many complexities alongside safeguarding (you know, where we try and stop children harming each other or themselves in the toilet). Perhaps ask your GP how much fluid children should drink. I think you'd be surprised that it's not 2 litres; that in fact drinking 2 litres a day is harmful for them, and yet the amount of parents that send their kids to school with sippy cups and allow them to damage their kidney function, and then complain that they need to go to the toilet all the time ...

Here's the info on water, it's just so sad that some adults put the adult amount for their child - https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/health/family-health/how-much-water-should-my-children-drink

Where not talking about one incident we are talking about a continuous pattern of behaviour.

All the secondary teachers rightly pointing out that the threshold for PRU is high..

Had a student been at risk of PEX 18 months ago you wouldn’t still be holding it over them now… right?

In the last 18 months, she hasn’t been PEX. Which if she had stayed at the threshold for it, she would have been by now.

You also all know that a student in Y9 at risk of exclusion wouldn’t be making it into your Y11 cohort if they were still presenting the same challenges, because I don’t know a single school that’s gambling their results data on a known PEX risk that first materialised in KS3.

The PRU keeps coming up, and it’s barely relevant at this point, because if she was still
presenting “PRU level” challenge, she’d be gone by now.

and allow them to damage their kidney function

Get a grip. That a broad statement.