Many member of staff at this school seems to focus primarily on sanction rather that restoration. The school's behaviour policy sees children being removed from class and placed in insolation, missing lessons, and failure to return to said lesson until a meeting is had with the teacher, HoD and parents, for factors that range from low-level disruption to more severe incidents. This school seems to value sanctions over student's learning.

Once, a teacher removed my child as she gave him a warning to which she did not explain why this was being given, so he raised his hand to query the warning. She indicated for him speak but did not answer. She then had him removed by SLT claiming he was arguing back. Consequently, he had a 1 hour detention and missed 5 consecutive lessons (thus impacting his learning in other lessons). When I spoke with the HoD this was charted as a misunderstanding however my child was still sanctioned and placed on report. The teacher could not justify this decision and I was left feeling that there maybe some form of unconscious bias at play as my son is a black boy.

There are increasing incidents when students are being sanctioned punitively rather than member of staff educating and supporting students to be aware of their actions and how it impacts other. I also fear that there are underlying racial and gender discrimination in the way that students are being sanctioned.

I feel it's important that we stand together and urge schools with severe and punitive behaviour policies to review their policies to ensure that it is fair and restorative. Far to often schools with severe punitive sanctions will have higher numbers of students from BAME groups, and SEND (particularly SEMH and ADHD) being in detention, isolation and exclusion. This is injustice. Systematic racism is prevalent in the classroom and needs to be tackled so that our children do not grow up feeling that they are the problem; feeling that their behaviour, no matter how similar to white children, are unacceptable for teachers are more likely to sanction them.