One last moment of ECHR despair before Xmas...
Discussion
from today's Times..
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-523449,00.html
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-523449,00.html
Girl, 15, sues over detentions that 'breached rights'
A SCHOOLGIRL is suing her local education authority, claiming that a string of detentions have breached her human rights.
Freya MacDonald, 15, was given 11 detentions in seven months last year at Speyside High School in Aberlour, near Inverness. She claims the half-hour punishments were handed out during her lunch hours for “trivial” offences, such as talking in class, and that ultimately they affected her health and schooling.
With the support of her mother, Annie, she has issued a lawsuit against Moray Council which states that detentions contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted by Scotland two years ago. Miss MacDonald, from of Tomnavoulin, Morayshire, is also seeking compensation for the stress she claims the detentions caused and for the loss of schooling during the autumn term last year, when she refused to return to lessons, fearing that she was being victimised.
Cameron Fyfe, her solicitor, said yesterday that if the case were successful it could herald the end of detention as a punishment in Scotland, and he predicted that England and Wales would follow suit.
Article 5(1) (b) of the European Convention of Human Rights permits “the detention of a minor by lawful order for the purpose of educational supervision”. But Mr Fyfe said that this “lawful order” had to come from a court or a tribunal before any detention due to run in a child’s free time was handed out in an educational establishment. Schools cannot make their own orders and in Freya’s case there was no lawful order. Our view is that this effectively puts an end to detention in schools. No school is going to go to court every time it wants to hand out a detention,” he said.
“Obviously schools could still hand out detentions within school hours, but not as in Freya’s case during lunch hours or after school.”
Mr Fyfe has written to Donald Duncan, director of education at Moray Council, and also plans to raise the case with the Scottish Executive.
Miss MacDonald has since returned to Speyside High after the school agreed not to punish her with detention. She said: “It makes me out to be a little rogue, but I’m not a rebel. It gives me a bad name and I don’t like that. There’s no law against anything that I did.”
She claimed that she received further punishments when she complained about the injustice of it. “One was for entering school through a fire door. Another was for drinking cherryade at the start of a lesson. These aren’t crimes.”
Her mother acknowledged that teachers had to exercise discipline in class, but added: “They’ve got to develop more effective ways of handling situations like these. Detention is an extreme last resort.”
John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: “I hope the court throws this right out — if it ever gets to court — otherwise teachers will find it increasingly difficult to enforce discipline. Detention is the least likely punishment to offend anybody’s human rights. Perhaps the girl would have done better behaving properly in the first place.”
Captain Muppet said: "Detention is an extreme last resort" - she clearly has no imagination at all.
Being nailed by the feet to the underside of a burning caravan driven over pave until the child's head is either worn away or melted is an extreme last resort.
Now THATS justice!
Kids today, dont know they are born.
Matt.
Solicitor general, or whatever the scottish equivalent is, (proctor fiscal, keeper of the great turnip, something like that) should use the ECHR to remove this child from the malign influence of her mother. What hope have these kids got with parents like these?
At some stage you have to learn that life is not always perfectly fair. We all have to put up with the odd embuggerment for the sake of the greater good. If you've got a teacher dealing with 30+ kids, they're not always going to be spot on identifying the trouble maker. Kids have got to learn that, and parents have got to learn that too. If the kid whines to Mum or Dad when he gets home the correct reply is "tough luck, you'll survive". If teacher is always "picking on me", its almost certainly because little Johnny is a turd. If we want to have discipline in schools, we have to back teachers when they discipline our kids and not second guess every decision they make.
Bah humbug!
At some stage you have to learn that life is not always perfectly fair. We all have to put up with the odd embuggerment for the sake of the greater good. If you've got a teacher dealing with 30+ kids, they're not always going to be spot on identifying the trouble maker. Kids have got to learn that, and parents have got to learn that too. If the kid whines to Mum or Dad when he gets home the correct reply is "tough luck, you'll survive". If teacher is always "picking on me", its almost certainly because little Johnny is a turd. If we want to have discipline in schools, we have to back teachers when they discipline our kids and not second guess every decision they make.
Bah humbug!
If they are allowed to use detention but NOT within lunchtime or after school then when is this detention going to happen? When I was at school we didn't have any free periods so detention could only happen at those times.
Also, it wouldn't be detention if she wasn't kept behind after class would it.
I would also suggest that lunchtime is within school hours as the school still has responsibility for the child during this time. Sounds like she's a right scrote who just can't follow even the most simple of rules.
What's with this s**t of having to go to court to impose a dentention? The worlds gone mad
Also, it wouldn't be detention if she wasn't kept behind after class would it.
I would also suggest that lunchtime is within school hours as the school still has responsibility for the child during this time. Sounds like she's a right scrote who just can't follow even the most simple of rules.
What's with this s**t of having to go to court to impose a dentention? The worlds gone mad
FFS GET A GRIP STUPID GIRL. Wow you got a detention for drinking something where you shouldn't be drinking it, that's your own fault, it probably said no drinking in certain places in the Schools Code Of Conduct, I know mine did.
I had 5 2hour detentions with a senior member of staff because I coughed in an exam and the teacher in charge was convinced I was communicating. I should've sued shouldn't I.
You can sue for absolutely anything now. If I did something wrong and I know I did, I have no problem with having a detention. ARGH, SOME PEOPLE
Edited to add:
Well actually no they can't because in school hours your learning, however lunch hours are still school hours IIRC. If they can't give detentions at lunch and after school then when can they, instead of lessons.......aah but then she'd sue for lack of education.
>> Edited by Graham.J on Tuesday 24th December 12:53
I had 5 2hour detentions with a senior member of staff because I coughed in an exam and the teacher in charge was convinced I was communicating. I should've sued shouldn't I.
You can sue for absolutely anything now. If I did something wrong and I know I did, I have no problem with having a detention. ARGH, SOME PEOPLE
Edited to add:
“Obviously schools could still hand out detentions within school hours, but not as in Freya’s case during lunch hours or after school.”
Well actually no they can't because in school hours your learning, however lunch hours are still school hours IIRC. If they can't give detentions at lunch and after school then when can they, instead of lessons.......aah but then she'd sue for lack of education.
>> Edited by Graham.J on Tuesday 24th December 12:53
I can't believe this, detention is the only real punishment available to teachers (other then the 'you can't be on the school team' type ones)
This is bullshit
One of the 'trivial' things that the little tart was put in detention for was drinking in class, ok it is trivial, the problem is if the rule states that she shouldn't be drinking in class, the teacher tells her no, and she undermines the authority of the teacher, then what else can the teacher do? Just let the little tart drink her drink?
>> Edited by rpguk on Tuesday 24th December 12:55
This is bullshit
One of the 'trivial' things that the little tart was put in detention for was drinking in class, ok it is trivial, the problem is if the rule states that she shouldn't be drinking in class, the teacher tells her no, and she undermines the authority of the teacher, then what else can the teacher do? Just let the little tart drink her drink?
>> Edited by rpguk on Tuesday 24th December 12:55
Surely someone out there makes this sh*t up. What the Fcuk is going on in this country. If this doesn't get thrown out of court then were all doomed. This girl's mother needs a good fcucking slap around the gob- how do you teach discipline without enforcing it when broken.
Funny how in the Victorian era, there was a culture of extreme discipline in schooling and coincidentally we ruled half the world, and yet now discipline is non existant due to the lefty-libbie scum bags and we hang on the coat-tails of the Dubya Bush, the first man to survive a half-completed brain transplant.
swilly said:
This girl's mother needs a good fcucking slap around the gob- how do you teach discipline without enforcing it when broken.
Funny how in the Victorian era, there was a culture of extreme discipline in schooling and coincidentally we ruled half the world, and yet now discipline is non existant due to the lefty-libbie scum bags and we hang on the coat-tails of the Dubya Bush, the first man to survive a half-completed brain transplant.
So what punishment is there left?
Let me just see -
You can't belt em
You can't expel em
You can't use detention
I guess the teachers now have to say: "Don't do that", "no I mean it"
"If you keep doing that, I'll have to keep telling you not to"
FFS someone needs to get a grip - is there no way we can counter sue her mum for wasting taxpayers money!!?
We're just training a new generation of scroungers....
Let me just see -
You can't belt em
You can't expel em
You can't use detention
I guess the teachers now have to say: "Don't do that", "no I mean it"
"If you keep doing that, I'll have to keep telling you not to"
FFS someone needs to get a grip - is there no way we can counter sue her mum for wasting taxpayers money!!?
We're just training a new generation of scroungers....
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