Like, “You’ve been bad. Now you have to do your homework.” You can imagine what it does for our school culture.

We keep being told that the Guidance team are not really there to deal solely with discipline matters. I think I also need to start insisting that writing should not be used as a punishment… which dovetails nicely into…

@Chris: …the notion of having pupils do some form of meaningful ‘community service’ would be fine, but I too have been told that Health & Safety issues prevent this. Mmm… I wonder what the truth of this is. I know that the HSE sponsored the 2007 World Conker Championships because they were fed up with having their name taken in vain by schools who, quite frankly, were scared to do anything that might have an element of risk… I’m rambling!

I’ve always tried to make my own ‘Punnies’ have a ‘fun’ element… getting pupils to write about something they already know about, or which I think they’ll enjoy finding out about… not ideal, I know, but I’ve always tried to avoid lines and other rote punishments.

The obvious answer is to make every lesson exciting and stimulating and well-paced… but then reality sets in and you have to juggle the planning and execution of classtime with all the other tasks that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

I’ve been in the position, this year, where I have been explicitly instructucted to hand out puni’s, then detention, then PT referral as my routine discipline procedure.
It’s nuts!
Phone the parents in most cases is the thing I think would be best, not to “grass” on the pupil but to look for support from home (if possible). This would be a far better culture of punishment than the daft cycle of puni’s/detention that I and the pupils go through.

Although, I quite like giving detention because there is always a job I can get the pupil to do. Usually sharpening pencils, helping me set out stuff for the next class (equipment etc). Getting them to mark prelims. Although don’t worry, I always thank them

When I am teaching music (one day a week) I have offered those who are finding the limits of the less structured activities difficult to remember, the opportunity to learn about music by writing about it, instead of by doing it. After they’ve spent 5 minutes copying from my laminated sheet they are magically able to constrain their wilder impulses.

So I suppose I acknowledge with this that writing is harder work for many, but they do have an option. The punishment element is removal from the class (they sit just outside it but in my eyeline). The writing is then their choice and they have to experience the tedium of it while hearing the others enjoying themselves to reinforce the benefits I offer to those who can exercise a degree of self-control.

But perhaps this is a distinction that isn’t obvious, even though that’s what I tell them. Maybe they will still see the writing itself as the punishment.

I once spent a whole period discussing what “thae auld guys” thought they were doing when they prayed during the last Conclave – all because I went in after lunch and said “Well – have we got a new Pope yet?”

It could be a good time to go over something practical like how to understand a Credit Card agreement or driving test theory…

If there has to be punishment, why does it need to be “academic” at all? I suppose there are health and safety issues to deal with, but I’d have thought cleaning the debris from the social area at the end of the day would be an option. Or – better still – instead of paying teachers to take detention in the form you describe, pay for them to teach: not English, or Maths, or whatever, but to manage a group talk session in which the offenders speak for themselves and in which some real education might take place.

But bear in mind I never rose to the giddy heights of policy-making!