Ramifications of teacher lying about a training course?

[kedavra]

For the past 6 months I've had the most horrendous dealings with a primary school after withdrawing my son. We have a disability discrimination tribunal next month, and have recently submitted all our evidence for the deadline.

One of the teachers has said in their statement that they have had training for the medical condition my son has.

I'm calling bullshit.

I sent a SEND7 for their response, and got a very quick response from their solicitor saying that it was a generic video so no certificate. The hospital team have confirmed that the online learning course they, and many other trusts, use is made of modules, assessments and CPD certified.

Surely this has to count as gross misconduct?

Literally no teacher has said this. That have said what training they have had.

No one is claiming that.
Just simply saying that this is the level of training offered generally.
Teaching staff just don't get the level of training they the op appears to expect.

Which is utterly irrelevant in the context of the thread, unless they are suggesting that it means that a video training session is adequate for OP's child's needs.

I was making a remark about your comment, that what you said was untrue, which it is. You don't get to police the validity of what those teachers said.

If I child in my class has additional needs and training is required, I rely on medical professionals or our SENDCo to provide suitable training materials.

I had a child who was registered blind. I attended a course and felt confident to have them safely in my classroom.

Did I know everything about the condition? No.

Did the child's parents probably feel I should know more? Possibly.

Because it's not just about this teacher. Maybe they have done something utterly appalling - who knows? But based solely on the information in the OP, there's no evidence that they have.

And reading about situations like this puts every single teacher and prospective teacher on edge because we all know a small minority parents have impossible expectations of teachers and get really angry with the teacher personally when we cannot fulfill them.

Right now, there is a recruitment and retention crisis in schools, and it's not just about individual teachers but the whole system. It's very, very rare a teacher would do something maliciously. It's far more likely that an individual teacher is being hung out to dry for whole school failings.

Having read the further information shared by another poster, personally I don't think it's appropriate to ask a class teacher to manage a condition such as diabetes. We are not healthcare workers and many teachers would not feel confident with this. I know some would, but lots wouldn't.

Obviously if the information the OP shared on her other thread is true the teacher doesn't understand diabetes but that still doesn't mean they haven't received training. It just means they haven't fully understood the training or the training was poor.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl , I get what you are saying.
And making general comments about how teachers are asked to do impossible things etc... is fair enough. As general comments about the profession.

What I disagee with is posters saying that the OP is nasty and vindictive when you don't know what has happened. It could have been a meaningless issue or something really really serious that put the child in ICU.
If your child had nearly died due to <insert whatever happened at school>, I am sure you'd want to be sure it won't happen again. And you'd want to go to the bottom of what is going on. You also probably wouldnt accept wishy washy excuses and each person involved blaming the other or saying there is nothing you could have done about it (which may or may not have happened. The whole point is that we dont know!)

So general comments about how hard it can be, fair enough. Attacks on the OP and being dismissive of her experience and what her child has gone through, without having any idea of what happened, is not OK.

If something went really wrong, and the OP's child ended up in hospital, it would be a school level failing, not something to blame on an individual level of staff.

I have been in schools where I felt individual children were not kept safe- there was a "safety plan" but this was not clearly communicated to e.g. cover teachers, and in one case the child disliked the safety plan and actively tried not to follow it (in this case I can see both his PoV and the school's). I've also seen "safety plans" which essentially relied on a child's friends being willing to take responsibility for the child's wellbeing.

Ultimately, a safety plan where a class teacher is relied upon to make medical judgements is unsafe- in part because the teacher will not always be there- but also because there are often so many demands on teachers that it's very hard to be in that role and keep a child safe.

If the teacher knowingly and deliberately did something to harm a child, there are processes to deal with this that do not need the parents to be involved and an impartial judgement would be made. They will also get involved if the teacher was seriously negligent. If the teacher has done something criminal, the police would be involved.

It's not for OP to be judge, jury and executioner and decide to go about ruining the life of an individual (I am inferring this from the Reddit threads linked).

And on a wider scale, it puts people off joining the profession, it makes teachers less willing to help in cases like this, it harms a lot of children on a wide scale.

If OP has a really serious concern about a teacher, they can refer to the GTC: www.gtce.org.uk/teachers/reg_prof/index.html

But they should leave it at that rather than trying to go after the teacher personally.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl well you might infer well - from stuff not in this site, let alone in this thread.
Or you might not.

Thats my whole point. These are not facts but you inferring something from what others have linked to.

As you well said, it’s nit for the OP to judge and be jury and executioner. But nor should you (and many other posters) towards the OP.

The link you posted is exactly the sort of answer the OP should have got.

We're all allowed to make our own judgements on here. That's part of the point.
And we can answer OP as we wish.

Quite frankly, I think education has reached a crisis point, where the needs of individuals to get revenge on a particular member of staff can't be put above the wider needs of the system.

If the teacher has genuinely done something awful, the school will have already referred to the GTC.