Death of Detention

Posted by Paul Dix on 29 May 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: behaviour, behavior, detention, reparation

The death of detention

If punitive sanctions prevented re-offending the prisons would be empty, the police eating donuts and I would be out of a job. The truth is that sanctions only work when they are designed to improve behaviour, not simply manage it.  In classrooms where sanctions are used to re-chalk the boundary lines, negotiate appropriate behaviour, repair trust and cement agreements for future conduct then they can have a sustained impact.  When sanctions are personal retribution, revenge or born from an adult's emotional response they are remembered for the wrong reasons.

Punitive sanctions that satisfy a desire for mild revenge make children resentful and damage relationships. This includes:

- Loss of time that is delegated to others ("Right you are staying in with Mr Savage for the next three weeks!!")
- Repeated sanctions that are subsumed into the student's day ("I stay in every lunchtime because I am naughty")
- Humiliating or disproportionate sanctions ("Right that is the second time I have asked you to sit down, go and wait outside the headteacher's office")

The teachers nodel is poor and the strategies have no positive imapct on behaviour.

Reparation

A reparation meeting with the student should take no longer than 15 minutes and cannot be delegates to a colleague. It isn't a prelude to the student apologising. It should be a genuine conversation that re-chalks the lines of acceptable behaviour and repairs damage. In many institutions this has been introduced in place of traditional detention systems. The change in emphasis has had a profound impact on teacher/student relationships for the long term and significantly reduced high-level interventions.

Leading the transition from detention to Reparation in a large North London comprehensive means teachers now take responsibility each time a student reaches high level sanctions. The initial impact of time on the workload of the individual was considerable yet students quickly realized that this approach was going to be sustained and consistent. Students placed in reparation meet at a central point and are collected by teachers who can speak to them in the hall or move to a quieter space. Students and teacher discuss the behaviour and not the student's identity. The discussion is structured to address what happened, reinforce expectations and reset behaviours for the next lesson. After some initial doubts the students saw the benefit of reparation over detention, relationships and mutual trust grew and the number of students reaching high level sanctions reduced dramatically.

Reparation will not give you the instant satisfaction that comes from pure punishment. It will give you a platform to build relationships that change and improve behaviour for the long term.

The Reparation meeting is often structured in 6 steps as follows:

1. What's happened?
2. What were each party thinking?
3. Who feels harmed and why?
4. What have each party thought since?
5. What behaviours will each of us show next time?
6. Reaffirm your commitment to building a trusting relationship