Portslade school plans to axe detention (From The Argus)
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Portslade school plans to axe detention
1:30pm Monday 15th February 2010 in News By Emily-Ann Elliott
A school is hoping to become detention-free after calling in a top behaviour expert.
Education trainer Paul Dix is advising staff at Portslade Community College in Chalky Road how to address problems with low-level disruption in the classrooms.
It is hoped the council-funded sessions, which have so far cost £2,000, will enable staff to stop handing out detentions to pupils by September.
Instead children will be encouraged to use “restorative justice” in which they must admit what they have done, apologise and make amends for it.
Mr Dix, who runs Pivotal Education, has also encouraged staff to remain unruffled in the face of misbehaviour, rather than shouting at pupils.
The visits have been paid for by Brighton and Hove City Council using money received from the government as Portslade is in the National Challenge programme, after just 26% of its students gained five or more A* to C GCSE grades, including English and maths, in 2009.
The school’s assistant principal Mark Deacon, who is in charge of student services, said the money has been well spent.
A spokesman for Brighton and Hove City Council said: “This is part of the additional support we are giving PCC, which includes money from central government and Brighton and Hove staff working in the school on long term projects to improve teacher skills.”
Comments(18)
Andy R
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2:03pm Mon 15 Feb 10
yorkie44
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2:23pm Mon 15 Feb 10
i'mouttahere
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2:32pm Mon 15 Feb 10
kkj
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2:46pm Mon 15 Feb 10
ade1200
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4:10pm Mon 15 Feb 10
Living in the real world
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4:12pm Mon 15 Feb 10
Andy R wrote:If you read the report you will see the words using money received from the government and if you bother to follow the news about the country we live in you will find the current government is LABOUR however not for much longer
What's Labour got to do with it?
stan bailey
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4:55pm Mon 15 Feb 10
yorkie44 wrote:Excellent idea. Pity he doesn't do something about the parents who get paid to bring up the badly behaved brats
Another crazy idea. Perhaps he should travel on the Brighton buses and see what he can do to change the disgusting behaviour of the kids when out of school!
Acheron
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6:28pm Mon 15 Feb 10
Kid arrives late, disturbs the whole class and underway lesson by shouting across the room to his mate, then chucks his back across the room to where he sits, talks as he goes, clambers over the table, doesn't get his book out because he's not got it with him, but gets out a pencil. The trainers response on how to deal with the situation correctly was to praise him for having his pencil, but to ignore all the other stuff.
I was speaking to some students in a lesson last week and they get really hacked off that disruptive pupils get praised for stuff they should be doing anyway and stuff the majority of the class do and get no extra praise for at all. Not tolerating poor behaviour is what is needed, not praising pupils for what they should be doing or have with them anyway!
Big Nasty
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7:05pm Mon 15 Feb 10
kkj wrote:The cane always worked well in my day!!!!!!!!.
Well the traditional approach, i.e. detentions, exclusions etc, clearly isn't working, so why not try an alternative? Perhaps those this attempt can come up with solutions of their own.
pun master
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7:16pm Mon 15 Feb 10
Acheron wrote:The trainer was probably coming from the angle that this student was behaving in the way he was to gain attention - it is well known that youngsters become conditioned to attention in any form - positive or negative - and the trainers suggestion was based around the principle of 'ignore the bad, praise the good' in order to a) accomplish long term changes to such student's behaviour, by conditioning them to equate good behaviour and matching expectations with positive attention and poor behaviour/not meeting expectations with being ignored. This is a powerful part of behaviour management, but only a part, that also has the ability to settle the class much quicker and thus allow learning to continue whilst the teacher also decides on what further steps/intervention/a
Way too many of these courses being run where the basis is praise the kids no matter what as we can't upset the little treasures for fear they will end up on Jeremy Kyle in a few years time. An ex colleague went on one where it was summed up in the following situation.
Kid arrives late, disturbs the whole class and underway lesson by shouting across the room to his mate, then chucks his back across the room to where he sits, talks as he goes, clambers over the table, doesn't get his book out because he's not got it with him, but gets out a pencil. The trainers response on how to deal with the situation correctly was to praise him for having his pencil, but to ignore all the other stuff.
I was speaking to some students in a lesson last week and they get really hacked off that disruptive pupils get praised for stuff they should be doing anyway and stuff the majority of the class do and get no extra praise for at all. Not tolerating poor behaviour is what is needed, not praising pupils for what they should be doing or have with them anyway!
ction will be necessary to deal with this particular behaviour...
pun master
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7:17pm Mon 15 Feb 10
rayellerton
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7:34pm Mon 15 Feb 10
ade1200
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8:55pm Mon 15 Feb 10
RickH
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9:18pm Mon 15 Feb 10
pun master
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10:36pm Mon 15 Feb 10
ade1200 wrote:Totally agree - like I said, this is only part of what should be a much wider behaviour strategy - teachers still need to be tough on kids like these and get them dealt with within the school system - this is about management of behaviour there and then, not a sure fire system of making sure the whole school stays in order. I know exactly what is meant by the injustices felt by 'normal' students who just get on with acting like they should. There is a certain element of truth about nuisance kids getting all the rewards - at my school the kids who seem to muck about all the time get taken out on trips - I can see the logic in trying to reengage with kids who genuinely have a horrible horrible life, and some really do, but there also has to be a movement in schools dedicated to making sure the well behaved kids get rewarded pro rata for the efforts they make, totally agree with you...
Understand what you mean punmaster but I think the technique ignores the effect on other kids without behavioural problems e.g. my kids. I know from first hand what they think of this sort of thing - rightly or wrongly it is perceived as reward for bad behaviour. It is why schools like PCC struggle because they place too much emphasis on developing the bad kids when they should be encouraging the good ones more. Who knows - that might have the result of raising general behaviour as well.
MaryHinge
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8:34am Tue 16 Feb 10
Big Nasty wrote:In what ways?
kkj wrote: Well the traditional approach, i.e. detentions, exclusions etc, clearly isn't working, so why not try an alternative? Perhaps those this attempt can come up with solutions of their own.The cane always worked well in my day!!!!!!!!.
indiequeen
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4:24pm Tue 16 Feb 10
Living in the real world says...
1:54pm Mon 15 Feb 10
Just like Labour to reward failure whilst punishing those who worked to get a job with even more taxes to pay for these silly ideas