A parent messaged me today with the copy of a letter from their child's school. Any child who doesn't have all the right equipment on any day will get a demerit and an automatic hour long detention after school. How many adults would like that policy in their workplace? Would it help you to organise yourself? Or might it make you highly anxious?

This morning I made a mistake. As a result I was 20 minutes late for a meeting. No one gave me a behaviour point. I apologised and we moved on. I’m not in detention now. That’s because I’m an adult and I live in the real world. Why should our teenagers be treated so differently?

I’m hearing more and more examples of school micro-control of teenagers. Behaviour points for the wrong earrings or socks, for not being immediately ‘on-task’ or for losing your pen. Schools say that if they control the small stuff, the big stuff will follow. They are wrong. 1/

This is so disappointing. I had real hopes that the @UKLabour would be able to see beyond the rhetoric and think flexibly about education, but this is more of the same. Attendance itself isn't the problem. Poor attendance signals that there is a problem. You can't make that problem go away by forcing attendance. Many of our children aren't happy at school. Until we ask why that is, then nothing will change.