Children not allowed squash in school !

I work in a secondary school, and our rule is - in classrooms, water in clear plastic bottle only. We permit flavoured water, but other than that, it gets confiscated. It'll be in the school rules somewhere, which you will have agreed to as part of your home-school agreement.

Reasoning for water only is easy - hard to mask anything else in there (even flavoured water), whereas squash or similar could quite easily contain lots of sugar or similar that may affect a child's attention span.

Not saying its morally right, just that there's little you can do about it (unless enough parents kick up a fuss) other than get flavoured water.

Genuine question... I have a legal duty to educate my children and so does the local authority. But what happens if I disagreed with the school rules and refused to sign them? They obviously wouldn't be allowed to join the school. But considering a legal duty on both sides then what happens?
 
Genuine question... I have a legal duty to educate my children and so does the local authority. But what happens if I disagreed with the school rules and refused to sign them? They obviously wouldn't be allowed to join the school. But considering a legal duty on both sides then what happens?

You don't have to sign them, they are not legally enforceable and the school cannot refuse to educate your child if you do not sign a home-school agreement. The legal duty in reference to home-school agreements exists on the school only, not the Parent.
 
OP has emphasised his reluctance to abuse his child by way of plain water.... so I'll leave OP to deliver the facts of exactly how much squash his child drinks.

Blooming squash drinkers.... I'm off to make one for myself :D

:p:D

I'm drinking water right now, are we arguing from the wrong side of the fence? :p
 
You don't have to sign them, they are not legally enforceable and the school cannot refuse to educate your child if you do not sign a home-school agreement. The legal duty in reference to home-school agreements exists on the school only, not the Parent.

Thanks. That's interesting if true. When my kids move school I may try refusing to sign it as I can't see what benefit it gives me or my children.
 
Thanks. That's interesting if true. When my kids move school I may try refusing to sign it as I can't see what benefit it gives me or my children.

I never sign them. One headteacher tried to tell me that unless I signed one part of it he would not allow my son to use any internet access or computers in any class in case he did something illegal???? I asked why they were not under supervision and why the school did not have suitable firewalls and child protection policies in place, he didn't seem to know the answer but said the school could not take responsibility for what my son did on a school computer without my taking legal responsibility for it, so I asked for access to all logs and history pertaining to my sons computer access on a monthly basis so I could make sure that he was doing what he should be doing in this case, he refused I said that was fine and that he could explain that to Ofsted and my local MP. He said that wasn't necessary then relented and everything precoded as normal without my signing anything.
 
I had this with my son at primary school when this nonsense first started.

I just went in to the school and told them that we as his parents will decide what he eats for his lunch and to concern themselves with more pressing matters like doing their ****ing jobs properly.
Not helped that two days before we received a note in his lunch box telling us that a bag of crisps isnt suitable for a packed lunch (ignoring the ham sandwiches, yoghurt ,dairylee dunker thing that was in there) they had refused to let him go to the toilet so he ended up having an accident in his class.

They were so inept I ended up hunting down a different primary school for him to go to.
 
The line between teaching kids about healthy choices and taking control away from parents has been well and truly crossed. It is not the schools place to force diet chices on parents.

WTF is the world coming to?

You take that responsibility back.

Your child, your responsibility, as Castiel says they have a legal responsibility to.educate your child short of them being excluded under reasonable grounds, anything outside of that they can shove it.
 
I was on the side of the juice drinkers until I just heard Mrs Dimple talking about the days before healthy eating and how 30 kids would all have different drinks, spilling them all over the place and being hyper & uncontrollable.
 
I never sign them. One headteacher tried to tell me that unless I signed one part of it he would not allow my son to use any internet access or computers in any class in case he did something illegal???? I asked why they were not under supervision and why the school did not have suitable firewalls and child protection policies in place, he didn't seem to know the answer but said the school could not take responsibility for what my son did on a school computer without my taking legal responsibility for it, so I asked for access to all logs and history pertaining to my sons computer access on a monthly basis so I could make sure that he was doing what he should be doing in this case, he refused I said that was fine and that he could explain that to Ofsted and my local MP. He said that wasn't necessary then relented and everything precoded as normal without my signing anything.

That's fantastic :)

I love the part about the school not being able to take legal responsibility for the actions of the children under their care, using school equipment.

I actually do believe in being accomodating to the school rules as generally they are there for a reason. But some of them seem completely daft. The school where my children attend is driving me nuts at the moment. The standard of education is way below par and the teachers seem unable to control the behaviour of some of the kids. Then they start throwing silly rules around. My son was in tears one day when he won a race at sports day and they declared it a tie because the second place person was "only a few steps behind". What's wrong with this country???
 
Im not a parent....

Im quite confused as to why your kids wont drink water. Is this common? Did or do children simply die or dehydration every day because they wont drink water? Is this bad parenting?

It's water on its own they don't like drinking. My son wouldn't drink cordial and the like but not plain water. He drank plenty of milk. It's not like they won't drink anything with water in it.
 
It's a bit OTT to ban squash with a child's lunch. My daughter's primary school will only allow water in the classroom, but with lunch as long as it isn't fizzy, squash is fine. They've also set a recommended lunch box policy, but it's a set of recommendations. The kids that schools are normally most concerned about in terms of healthy eating typically get free school meals anyway - so their food is pretty well managed.

In our school (secondary), we had a massive problem with energy drinks. Long story, but the upshot was we had to ban all fizzy drinks. Again, water is the only allowed drink in a class room.
 
And play conkers and be encouraged to win :p

Conkers was banned mid-way through my school period.

It was a sad sad day.

I miss the old debates on what was better, ovening, varnishing, gluing etc etc, and the satisfaction of stomping your enemies pieces.
 
Trying to ban squash and only allowing plain water I would be on the phone to head today telling them to get a grip and you will decide what your child drinks not them. Schools are pathetic enough these days.
 
I don't get the problem here.

The school has issued a ruling.

This ruling does not harm your child, it does not cause moral, religious or ethical problems.

Stop being difficult and just go with it?

Oh and to those saying 'omg the school will not tell me what to do!!!'
Whilst the child is at school it is in their care and their rules apply. Don't like it? Move schools.
 
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