My child was happy, secure, polite and deeply caring and these policies broke him

My son went to his local secondary school, which was a place that said it had high expectations of all students, and expected all students to be ‘ready to learn’ from the moment they entered the building.

The behavioural polices and practices seem to be driven by the aim of creating a ‘controlled environment’. But these expectations included children remaining silent and ‘tracking’ [always looking at] the teacher during lessons. They weren’t allowed to pick anything up or do anything at all, and if a child didn’t meet one of the classroom expectations their name would be written on the board – this was ‘warning one’. 

If they failed to follow one of the expectations a second time, they were immediately removed from their lesson and would stay in detention until the same time the following day, which included an after-school detention.

If the child failed to leave the class, the on-call team would be called to remove the child. 

If a child could not complete the detention period in silence, this would cause another detention to be issued and so on, until it was either completed; escalated to internal exclusion; the child was sent to a host school or a fixed-term suspension. 

This form of punishment and control was all new to our son and it removed all sense of agency and individuality. And after being repeatedly punished for really trivial things, he just didn’t care anymore.

At first I trusted that the school, as ‘the professionals’, knew what they were doing and I sat with my child and asked him to please just try. 

I will never forget the look on his face (and his tears) when he said ‘Dad, I am trying’. I knew the harm that these policies and practices were doing and that it should not be allowed to continue.

These control-at-all-cost practices and constant lesson removals led to my son becoming ‘branded’ – a teacher once admitted they’d sent him out of the classroom because they had heard someone speak and my son was the one ‘usually’ in detention so they just picked him. When I raised this they apologised, but it was too late. 

So while our child went to school every day, he was completely disengaged or physically removed from class. He’s an intelligent child but he eventually shut down and stopped trying. They refused to listen us, branded him as a problem and as his grades dropped his ‘value’ to them dropped also. 

When he started skipping lessons they didn’t even notice until I mentioned it. They had assumed he was in detention as he spent so much time there – they didn’t miss him.  

I’m all for discipline and guidance when it’s needed but it needs to be seen from the lens that behaviour is a language and if one approach isn’t working, change it. The goal here is inclusivity and support, not exclusivity and exclusion. Our son has a disability which they refused to entertain and refused to make adjustments for. His reaction to this harmful environment was rooted in trauma.

If these behavioural policies actually worked then surely you’d see a diminishing number of punishments? But they’re not – you’re having more punishments and removal from lessons and sanctions being meted out than ever before.

It seems that these policies are all about what is easier for the adult, rather than spending time to understand the ‘why’ behind the behaviour. 

In our son’s situation these policies took a child who was happy, secure and confident, who was polite and deeply caring and broke him. As he could not be made to fit the box they chose removal, rather than inclusion.

I went through the entire complaints process and every one of our complaints were upheld leading to promises of change. But I soon learnt that it was just to make us go away. Absolutely nothing changed and after following it up and complaining to Ofsted, I was banned from the school premises and from having any communications with the school. And there’s nothing one can do about it. 

I would love legislation where every local authority has to have a panel to hold schools to account. This panel should include all stakeholders and comprise people with diverse backgrounds, and the children should be at the centre of their focus.

Parent, South West