School plagued by bad behaviour brings in Saturday detentions

A school troubled by bad behaviour has introduced two-hour Saturday morning detention for pupils.

Staff at Caldicot school in Monmouthshire held strikes in response to physical and verbal abuse from pupils in 2023.

Now parents have been sent letters telling them the Saturday detention will be introduced from this weekend.

Pupils can be given detention if they collect bad behaviour marks, and acting head teacher Alun Ebenezer said the Saturday sanction was needed where other punishment, including being held after school, had not worked.

This Saturday, six pupils have been told to be at the detention.

Mr Ebenezer said most of the school's 1,300 pupils were following its rules and just a handful of boys had to attend after-school detention on Tuesday.

The school hopes the Saturday punishment will prevent pupils being suspended, which is also known as a fixed-term exclusion. But failure to attend will mean exclusion.

Other aspects of the school's crackdown on bad behaviour see pupils having to clean tables if they have vandalised them, do supervised litter picking, and some parents are asked to go in to sit next to their children during lessons. 

Mr Ebenezer said Saturday detention had been in the school's eight-page behaviour policy since September and the school "haven't needed to use it until now".

"I have to travel nearly an hour to get here on Saturday and I don't want to be there," he said.

"This is the next step to have to come in on a Saturday morning," he said.

"I'm told it's restrictive practice, that young people don't like them, and to use it sparingly but the vast majority don't get a detention and once young people start liking detention then let's get rid of it as it's not worth doing.

"Everybody I talk to wants young people to behave and that doesn't just happen, you have to put things in place, but all we seem to get is a backlash.

"People talk about it not being good for wellbeing.

"I would argue it's not good for anybody's wellbeing to have young people misbehaving and defiant," Mr Ebenezer added.

The letter to parents said Saturday detentions will run once per half-term and had been discussed in school assemblies.

Schools are entitled to hold Saturday detentions, except for those immediately before and after half-term holidays.

Parents have been told that travel arrangements should be considered but it does not matter if they are "inconvenient".

Education inspection body Estyn has said in its latest report that staff morale and pupil behaviour had improved at the school since the appointment of Mr Ebenezer. It found the school needed "significant improvement".

The school recently received a backlash after pupils said a number of girls were sent home due to the length of their skirts.