Male School staff inappropriate behaviour towards DD

Not really.
I have a valid reason to be concerned about the poster's ability to deal with accusations impartiality.

Stop, no. Ensure that false allegations are dismissed within about 30 seconds, yes.

Of course you can be accused but it will be cleared up by lunchtime, because it’s completely obvious that you couldn’t possibly have done anything.

Thank God I no longer have to work with people like you. See? Works both ways.

Your assumption that the accusation must be true.

Completely agree.

If false allegations were so common, this guy and all his colleagues would just treat his suspension while a full investigation takes place as a box-ticking exercise until he's back at work right? It's just one of those things that has to happen, like when there's an unattended package they have to clear the platfom.

No, of course they won't. Because they're rare.

It's the absolute minimum to ensure that a child isn't further victimised by having to face the man they have had the courage to report, as we constantly tell them they should do.

I wondered this too

I know I shouldn’t read these threads. But fuck it’s depressing.

If a child discloses abuse or worrying behaviour in any other context - safeguarding 101 says it’s taken seriously and investigated.

Unless it’s in a school - where instead it’s the opposite and all kids are not to be believed, any disclosure is to be ‘taken with a pinch of salt’ because everyone knows kids are lying little shits who are constantly making up false lies against their poor teachers. It’s like an ‘anti safeguarding’ attitude on here in threads like this - every time.

I reckon a school is the ideal place for a predator to hide in plain site - after all, all their colleagues will instinctively rally around and protect them from the malicious lying kids. And if you challenge it well they’ll just all threaten to quit in solidarity.

It’s where my rapist was able to hide, and get away with it.

But I was just a malicious lying 12 year old in the eyes of most on this thread - so what do I know.

Why?
What was in the post that made you say that?

To the OP, your DD definitely needs to be protected from this man while these allegations are investigated. I hope she’s being well supported at school.

I think that entirely depends on the school. I think malicious allegations are becoming more common now sadly - probably goes hand in hand with the general decline in behaviour. My friend’s DD was involved in making malicious allegations a few years ago - it was horrendous and thankfully they didn’t suspend the teacher involved.

There's a difference between being accused by a student of doing something ugly, and being accused by SLT of not following proper safeguarding procedures. I've been accused by a troubled student of physically assaulting them; it totally wasn't a big deal because I had followed procedures. The entire time I was supposed to be assaulting them, I was on camera and within the eyeline of loads of other staff members. The student did not realise this. On the other hand, if I am on break duty at lunch and I let little Susie leave the canteen area she's supposed to be in, to go find an adult eating in private, I'd be up shit creek. If I covered up the windows in my classroom with posters because I don't know squat about safeguarding, that's also a much more serious issue. Student accusations are treated with a pinch of salt, staff fuck ups are not.

Right but the person I was replying to said that if you follow procedures, you can't be accused of anything which per my example simply isn't true as you cannot predict and prevent any situation where you might encounter a solitary student unless each teacher is allocated a security guard who accompanies them for the whole school day to act as a neutral overseeing presence.

I'm not a teacher but this attitude of if you get accused of something then it's your own fault is really sucky to put it politely.

No one on this thread knows whether the OP's kid is making it up or whether the TA has been acting inappropriately and can only speculate but attitudes that one should assume guilt (not from you but other posts) are just another reason why schools fail to keep staff as false accusations follow you around even after they've been proved to be malicious as who wants to do a job where annoying a child by asking them to turn their phone off during a lesson can end up with you in jail as a sex offender because they didn't like being 'disrespected'. It's not something you can just forget about.

Think you might have mistaken me for someone else.

The guidelines tell you not to engineer a situation where you are alone with a student unnecessarily. So, for example, I do a lot of 1:1 work with students, so I use a semi private room that gets a lot of foot traffic, or a small office with the door closed, but the door is glazed and there's a large window onto the corridor. Both areas are on camera. Same is true of the classrooms; only the staff room in my school is difficult to see into. Most schools are designed to not have secret nooks and crannies. You're not penalised if a student comes to find you (although the duty person responsible for making sure students aren't wandering around unsupervised might be). If you are alone with a student for a good reason, it's a reason other people will usually know about and there's always a good chance of people interrupting you if people know where you are. Which they should.

Oh also they are unlikely to share the outcome with you other than “appropriate action has been taken”.

Obviously if he stops working there you’ll notice that and even if he wasn’t dismissed etc I’d expect the school to give your DD a different support worker to protect all parties but they are unlikely to actually tell you the outcome of any investigation and subsequent hearing

I work in HR in education.

We would investigate this and inform the LADO.

We might suspend but even though it’s supposed to be a neutral act it’s not really so we are cautious when doing that - we might look at other options such as having him wfh etc. That said if we thought he was a safeguarding risk we would. Don’t assume because he hasn’t been suspended there will not be a lot going on behind the scenes.

if an investigation showed the allegations to have foundation it would proceed to a disciplinary hearing. Dismissal would be likely if upheld. We would complete an outcome form for the LADO and if dismissed a DBS referral.

If the investigation didn’t uphold the allegations we would still record as a low level concern and look at training etc and do a risk assessment.

It would all depend on the evidence really.

Where does it say he had the door shut?

As for this "If he had followed proper procedures, it would not be possible to accuse him of anything because there would have been no opportunity for anything to occur."...

Teacher X is sitting at their desk at lunchtime eating their sandwhich whilst simultaneously marking some homework. Pupil Susie comes into said classroom and asks teacher something about equations and leaves two minutes later. Susie later says Teacher X molested her. So kindly explain how Teacher X has failed to follow protocols and therefore has brought this on themselves. Which of these things would be against protocols? A teacher sitting at their desk? A teacher eating their lunch? A teacher marking homework? How can a teacher ever protect themselves from being alone with a student? I can look down a corrridor and see it's empty and think yes I can walk safely down this corridor, there are no students, and then one comes from round the corner? How could one predict that?

Also, obviously safeguarding courses I've attended we were advised not to stop children from telling us personal things as long as that got reported to the correct person because children will disclose to those they feel comfortable with. If you shut it down straight away you could miss something important.

A false allegation is false therefore it is nothing to do with the teacher being an abuser. It is about the teacher being the victim. A false allegation is about being malicious. Malicious people find a way and make things up.

So no this doesn't make it more likely to be believed as the nature of a false allegation can be about anything.

Not sure why you mentioned teachers being less likely to abuse when my debate with another individual is about teachers being victims in false allegation situations.

How about if kids didn't make up allegations and were held to account then false allegations would be less likely to happen and teachers more likely to be believed.

But the teacher who follows these rules is (a) much less likely to have opportunities to abuse pupils, and (b) much more likely to be believed if a false allegation arises.

The support worker may not get suspended in the first instance, but will definitely be investigated quickly. If he is suspended it's likely to be on full pay whilst being investigated.

In the meantime your DD should be allocated a different support worker.

I am not surprised they quit. Suspension is not a neutral act.

It’s not rare. It’s constant.