Detention

lincroft1710

Certainly 50 years ago at my senior school, detentions were given for bad work and failure to pass some internal exams.

pollypenny

Kim_13 wrote: »

Detentions were never given for failing to meet a particular threshold when I was at school, but then like the students, teachers are also under more pressure since GCSE's have been reformed.

The after school part I don't agree with (they should be a last resort, and as other posters have highlighted, can punish other family members who could have done very little/nothing to ensure that the student did better.) By Year 10, if a student doesn't want to do the work, they aren't going to. If the child is struggling with the work, most parents are probably going to struggle to help at that level.

In my school, after school detentions only happened if the student had either been really poorly behaved, or the student said they couldn't attend the break/lunchtime detention they were given because they already had another detention with another teacher. Even then, if the parent said no, it didn't happen and the teacher had reschedule in school hours.

Is the class a mixed ability group or set by ability? Teachers who do set a session for this reason may look closely at the marks before setting the threshold, so it only punishes those who didn't put enough effort in. I doubt a student is going to advertise it if the teacher has exempted them because they've had xyz happen recently. Until it happens, who knows whether the teacher will continue to do this with further tests going forward, or whether the threshold is just a percentage or carefully considered according to performance.

The closest we ever had was when we had an essay set as a test in class. Everyone who didn't get 100% (!) had to do the same question again for homework. Detentions were only given when it was obvious that the student hadn't tried - for instance, one boy hadn't done his Art homework and drew something on the way to the class. The same boy also got a detention when another teacher decided his homework looked as if he'd completed it sitting on the dodgems.

100% for an essay? :cool:

Very rare!

Kim_13

pollypenny wrote: »

100% for an essay? :cool:

Very rare!

Yep, I was the only one who didn't have any homework!

I thought it was harsh so everyone else must have been spitting mad. With any essay there's an element of subjectivity in the marking.

Spendless

Kim_13 wrote: »

Detentions were only given when it was obvious that the student hadn't tried - for instance, one boy hadn't done his Art homework and drew something on the way to the class. The same boy also got a detention when another teacher decided his homework looked as if he'd completed it sitting on the dodgems.

My daughter's artwork used to look like she'd drawn it on the way into school, despite time spent on it. I used to take issue that the art teacher just used to spend the lesson saying 'draw......' without demonstrating/explaining to the kids with no artistic talent how to do so.

Shortly before DD was due to drop the subject, I wrote in DD' artbook to the teacher 'could she please give some constructive feedback on how DD could improve her work, instead of giving just negative comments about it'

I never received a reply. :rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

suejb2 wrote: »

The students that didn't get 77% are staying an extra hour tomorrow after school to re-sit the test. It's not being logged on the school gateway system as a detention by the teacher, make of that what you want!
My d.d exceeded the mark but if the same 'threat' is given next time and it makes her more anxious or it doesn't bother her yet she doesn't make the pass then I will be having my say.
Appreciate all opinions, thank you.

Sounds more like a compulsory intervention session for those who didn't get the minimum grade for the KS4 data drop. Before anybody launches in with the assumption that this means the teacher is fiddling the figures, it would technically work out better for the teacher if they put their level as lower at the beginning of the course, as the improvement over the year would be greater (if they just had an off day or pulled their socks up after a few intervention sessions), so making them resit it and get a higher grade is for the benefit of getting an accurate assessment of their capabilities at this point of the course - there is the risk of them being kicked off the exam entries if they continue to do poorly on assessment, though.

It's quite often a bit of a culture shock to go from Year 9 where nothing is all that important, particularly if they've already decided they aren't doing a subject, to get into Year 10 and they're straight into new courses with stricter timetables, baseline testing for each subject and little leeway for behaving as they could in the previous term. Some kids don't get it all together until the start of Year 11, but the majority do after some hiccups in Year 10.

Cakeguts

This sounds to me like a thick teacher at work. Probably someone who has got a modern degree from a university that offers degrees worth about 5 CSEs in old money. GCSEs are really really easy exams to pass. A top mark at GCSE is about the same level as the old 11 plus exam but taken at 16. That is 5 years of extra time to get a small percentage of students through the old 11 plus exam. When you consider that there are lower grades possible at GCSE how can a teacher not get all of the class through an extremely easy primary school standard test? It sounds as if the teacher is keeping the students back because the teacher is useless.

badmemory

Well unless they've had some tuition since the last exam I can't see much point in a resit. But in this age of the sole purpose of learning being to pass exams I guess I shouldn't be surprised.