Four cases, one fair policy
A school policy forum will bring pupils, staff and governors together to decide whether consistent rules require identical consequences. You have been invited to open the discussion.
The forum will consider these cases:
| School rule | Pupil | Information available to the forum |
|---|---|---|
| Pupils who arrive late receive a detention. | Nadiya | Her usual bus was cancelled without warning. She arrived 12 minutes late, reported immediately to reception and had not been late before. |
| Pupils who arrive late receive a detention. | Owen | His bus arrived on time, but he chose to stop at a shop. He arrived 12 minutes late and this was his fourth late arrival that month. |
| Pupils must not leave a lesson without permission. | Priya | A pupil in the corridor had fallen and called for help. Priya left to find the nearest adult and returned with a member of staff. |
| Pupils must not leave a lesson without permission. | Reece | He left immediately before giving a presentation, waited elsewhere until the lesson ended and did not speak to a member of staff. |
Write the text of your opening speech. Use all four cases to recommend and justify a response for each pupil. From those decisions, establish principles that could guide future cases, explain how they could work in practice, and answer the objection that different consequences are simply favouritism.
Your response will be assessed for communication and organisation, and for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation. The total includes 16 marks for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation.