Keeping children behind at break/lunch/after school - is it legal?

Just wondered what the situatution is regarding whole class punishment at the end of the day. My Year 3 daughter's class is let out as long as 15m after the rest of the school because of the badly behaved cohort in her class and the school's policy of whole class punishment. Many of the parents are complaining. Apparently my daughter is in the worse year group the school has ever known. Am expecting her to be taking in her sleeping bag by Year 6!!!

 

http://eduwight.iow.gov.uk/the_lea/admin/images/DETENTION...

 

It was a shame that so much of this discussion has been wasted on two people who obviously have too much time on their hands and are able to argue for this amount of time!!!
Its just like being in the classroom - maybe you both need to be taken off!!!

and who knows maybe this is wolfpau1 'returned' again?!?!?!?!


Upon return to the discussion - a colleagues school was recently warned not to keep children in at lunchtime as its 'false imprisonment' - apparently some parents took a school to court and won!!! Apparently it was because at lunchtime the children are allowed to go home so keeping them in is actaully 'false imprisonment'!!!!! Daft but apparently true!!

 

lisahoward

Regardless of those guidelines that were posted above, you are right that it is an offence to keep a child against their will unless their parents/guardians have agreed. A verbal agreement over the phone could prove a mistake if the then send PC Plod to see you. You will be in the wrong. By sending a child to school, the parent only gives permission for the child to be in the normal lessons and no more.

However, if the parent will not agree to detentions and their grounds are not reasonable, this then becomes the basis for external exclusion.

I had a child the other day for an evening detention whose mum had agreed in writing. He would not come into the room, verbally abused the deputy and then walked off. No restraint was used as he posed no physical threat. His mum was called to explain that he had walked off site and was excluded for two days.

That is all you can do.

 

lisahoward: I take it you didn't actually *read* the debate between myself and the sock puppet then, else you certainly wouldn't suggest that I should be banned.

You are completely wrong about the "false imprisonment"; this is an urban myth. Try taking a look at the actual legislation:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1997/ukpga_19970044_en_2#...

This clearly gives schools the right to detain pupils, whatever the views of their parents.

 

i did read the debate between you and the person you call sock puppet - such a shame it took so long to read - waste of time as completly irrelevent to topic of discussion. i think you like someone to argue with and probably created the 'sock puppet' yourself! Shame you dont have more important things to do!!

If you had read my post you would see that it was information told to a colleague not myself personally - i am well aware of the legislation.

 

in addition, the legislation (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1997/ukpga_19970044_en_2#pt2-pb3-l1g5) posted by WolfPaul is all about detentions where parents have been given 24 hours notice. im assuming that the original post regarding 'keeping pupils behind' doesnt mean a full detention. The incident i refered to was for a 10 minute chat after a class - not exactly a detention!!!

lunchtime detentions e.g a given amount of time of 15 or 30 minutes or even 60 minutes need to have 24 hour written notification to the parents. Im sure all effective teachers will look this up, check with management and their school will have up to date policies to clarify

 

Of course it was OT, but the end result was that he was banned from using that username because it fell foul of the TES rules on impersonation. That's the truth of the matter whatever you believe!

A school is protected from the "false imprisonment" claim specifically in the legislation.

 

lisahoward wrote: "lunchtime detentions e.g a given amount of time of 15 or 30 minutes or even 60 minutes need to have 24 hour written notification to the parents."

No they don't; this requirement was specifically removed by the 2006 Act, section 92 subsection 4:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060040_en_10...

 

What happened to that nice guy you were having such a heated argument with?

 

That would be you, buggins. Be careful, else I'll be forced to red box you again, and this time it could be an IP ban, not just a username ban

 

I don't get paid enough to do lunch time detentions.


If you do your hourly rate of pay becomes the same as someone who works at Tesco's.

 

So what do you do with pupils who misbehave/don't do homework etc?

 

lunchtime detentions appear to be a black hole as far as contracts are concerned.

IMHO they ought to be organised and monitored the same as evenign detentions, internal and external exclusions are. Too many schools operate an ad-hoc arrangement where the teacher giving the lunchtime has to supervise it.

In a typical 1200-1500 comp, you would have around 100 teaching staff and under 200 days available to set detentions for. Looking at our system, around 30-60 kids have detentions each day, which would require 2 staff to supervise. Any poor behaviour should result in ejection from the detention and it being converted to an after school. This would mean each staff member does 4 a year.

Failure to attend (without cause) should result in an after school too (at our school you get 2 lunchtime detentions for missing one). At our school we run evening detentions just twice a week, meaning each staff member does it once a year.

That has to be a fairer way of doing it. The detention system at a school is one of the legally acceptable means to exclude a child. It has to be watertight and well documented.

 

Re post 50.

Is it acceptable for posters to threaten people in such an offensive manner.

He gives us Wolves a bad name.

Will someone give him a detention please.

 

The big bad wolf = Buggins.

It is the same poster.

 

Pardon?

 

The big bad wolf = Buggins.

It is the same poster.

 

It isnt possible for me to be the same poster as anyone else.

Would you be so kind as to withdraw your suggestion please.

 

This is fantastic... I love a good "discussion"! By the way - your phrase "anyone with an IQ higher than a flip-flop" made me nearly cry with laughter. What a fabulous phrase!