Monday, 4th April 2011

I have a little ranting to do due to the fact that school has now become a prison. My school, or "sixth form centre" as I probably should call it decided to go down the route of "Zero Tolerance" starting today. This means that for doing even the slightest thing wrong, you get sent to the hall. Being a member of the sixth form, which claims to be a separate entity to the main school i expected the teachers to be a little more lenient with the rules, as we are not forced to attend and that we chose to. But no. I got sent away twice. Twice. The first time, I'll admit i was 10 minutes late for my lesson so it would make sense for y'know a slight telling off or "please try to be on time in future, you're missing out on precious learning time" but no, I get sent to the Sixth Form Director. He wasn't in his office. I waited for about 20 minutes for him to return, by which point I'd been joined by another member of my class who had also been late. Her bus hadn't come in on time - hardly her fault that she had been late really, but still. So, after missing ten minutes due to my lateness, and my teacher sending me away for 20 minutes for no reason I missed half of my lesson. Is there any logic there at all? Being late and missing lesson is punished by missing more of the lesson? And apparently this "Zero Tolerance" is going to help us learn. Not if it's causing us to lose lesson time it isn't. The second time I was sent away (this time to the hall) I had been literally 2 minutes late and the lesson hadn't even started, but I had to go off and miss more lesson time walking over to the hall. Upon arriving at the hall, I was sent back because the hall was full. The hall was full. Around 200 students have been sent to the hall today, or so I hear, for "bad behaviour" which I personally think isn't helping them to do better at all. If anything, the kids in the main school will do wrong on purpose to get out of lessons. And all of this just before exams. I do, however have one teacher who seems sane enough to agree with most of the sixth form students that these new rules are a load of absolute shite. He's actually lovely. Two girls walked into the lesson late and he didn't give a flying fuck. He is the only one who understand that exams are right around the corner and we need all the lesson time we can get, we don't need to be sent of to the hall every five seconds. I sound like a bit of an ass kisser there, huh. Basically, it's like I've gone back to being in year seven. I've said many times today: if they are going to treat me like a child then I will start acting like a child.