Police arrest parents who slate school on class WhatsApp

[noblegiraffe]

A primary school sought advice from the police after '“a high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts” that had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.' and the police response was to send 6 officers to their house to arrest the couple making the posts and put them in a cell all day.

Although the couple sound like an absolute pain in the arse who should pack it in, 6 police officers seems like a teensy bit of overkill, particularly with the amount of crime currently going uninvestigated. But with schools faced with spiralling numbers of vexatious parental complaints, something needs to happen. I think some unions are starting to offer legal advice and template solicitor letters for this situation.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d8c8566b-99b1-45c6-814b-008042d74a3a?shareToken=6deab807d148cf7695ed4d9d3664c51e

Slander is a civil matter anyway and not something for the police

Without seeing the evidence none of us can say who is in the right. All we know is that a group of parents are unhappy and making a fuss BUT the police found insufficient evidence to charge them with any crime. Even if charged we dont know if they would be convicted.

So this looks to me like an oversensitive head trying to silence criticism by any means possible. I wouldnt assume there was any good reason for the parents to be banned from the school either.

Some EHCPs mandate daily contact for children with medical conditions, as appropriate. Very regular contact with school is necessary and required for lots of children with disabilities. This child has epilepsy and other neurological conditions. Usually this communication isn’t arduous and can be done informally through quick chats with the teacher at drop off or pickup. In this case the school had deliberately implemented policies to prevent necessary communication with teaching staff so the parents would have had no choice but to email the school very frequently. That was a situation created entirely by the school prohibiting all other forms of contact so to then complain they received a lot of emails is quite some cognitive dissonance.

It’s good that lawful criticism of a school get you arrested? Wow that’s harsh

You seemed to have missed the bit that a large part of the issue with the school was around the appointment of the deputy as acting headteacher and that the emails were also about this, and complaining about being banned from the school site.

Suggesting that the emails were all necessary emails about the care of their child would appear to be incorrect.

but an act not being "fine" is not the same as it being "criminal".
doing something "wrong" is not the same as committing a crime.
Being rude or annoying is not a crime.

The police's job is to investigate CRIME, not "wrong think". At least not yet, although you and lots of other people seem to want us to head towards 1984/Minority Report with alarming enthusiasm....

My reading between the lines is that he is probably a total pain in the arse type who gets the bit between his teeth and then just won’t let an issue go. This type of person often gets involved in community roles like school governor or local councillor, and their persistent personality can make them very effective. It can also make them a complete pain if you end up on the wrong side of them, as it seems like the head did over a recruitment issue.

There is a pretty grey area between effectively persistent and harassing behaviour. After arresting this couple the police apparently decided it didn’t cross the line.

I would love to actually read the messages…

You have no evidence whatsoever that they did anything unlawful and the police concluded they did not. The police do unfortunately have form for this type of conduct (eg woman arrested for criticizing local councilor, Alison Pearson matter etc).

I don't know, do you?

You appear to be suggesting that it is the school's job, not the police, to decide whether something is a crime or not?

And? There’s no law against making disparaging comments about people in a private conversation through a messaging app. If the school believes that libel has been committed they can bring a legal case for that. Your comment exemplifies the problem: some school staff seem to think that no matter what they do they are beyond reproach and that they have the authority to control parents and bar them from communicating with each other, a legal right to control what people say about the school in private conversations online or in person if they don’t like it unless the comments are slanderous/ libellous.

They don’t, and such conversations do not constitute harassment, as the police rightly concluded having had a great deal of their time wasted. Arguably, making this false report to the police constitutes harassment of the family in question.

It is fine in my opinion to criticize a school and teachers even if I don’t agree with those criticisms. It’s an essential part of our civic society that we can criticize public bodies and advocate for our children (especially when they have SEN).

Especially when it seems they have already banned them from the school and now got them arrested! It seems really extreme behaviour from the school

That’s an incredibly unrealistic approach. Schools can’t just forward and complain about all correspondence from parents they don’t like for the police to look through and decide whether it is criminal.

Teachers should KNOW what is criminally threatening and what is just insulting. If they don’t, then I question their judgement on everything.

It’s the police’s of course- they were wrong to arrest people for making statements when they should have known in advance there was no breach of the law. Of course that doesn’t mean the school are not at fault- clearly action needs to be taken here.

Action needs to be taken over what? The school asking the police for advice over harassment?

That's exactly why parents should not have access to their child's teacher at the end of a working day when all the teacher needs is a pee, a sit down and a coffee.
No other profession is treated like this by the customers, you make appointments to see people, if it's a genuine emergency, not the nit-picking nonsense as seen on MN, then there will be Senior staff more readily available. Were I still at the chalk face I wouldn't even look at emails on my school address out of hours.

That is pure conjecture on your part. Some comments from whatsapp have been released which were about the school objecting to the parents raising questions over the appointment of a new Head.

No information has been released by the parents, school or family about the contents and purpose of the emails. I highly doubt there were 45 separate email chains about a recruitment process. More likely, these emails were about distress being caused to the child by her being marched to the gate at collection, prohibited from having her parents attend her Christmas play, and attempts to resolve the situation, communication about their child with neurological conditions which per the Children and Families Act 2014 means the school is legally required to have open and transparent, regular communication with the parents which they were refusing to do, communication that was required as a result of the school apparently refusing to hold parent teacher meetings which are absolutely essential for a child with disabilities and required by the statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015, communication about the school refusing to discuss medical treatment for their child’s epilepsy per the article, etc. It’s very easy to see how that would necessitate a large number of emails with the school deliberately obstructing all communication except for email. What did they think would happen? And per the above there’s pretty clear evidence it was the school breaking various laws and regulations, not to mention the possibility GDPR has been breached if personal data provided in private whatsapp groups has been used by anybody who also works at the school as staff or a Governor/ Trustee and has extracted and used this personal information from a private conversation and used it instead for different purposes within their organisations without permission or consent.

No information has been released by the parents, school or family about the contents and purpose of the emails.

It says in the article "They repeatedly tried to persuade the school to overturn the ban and launched a formal complaint, including their concerns about the head recruitment process. Allen sent a further email about this."

Did I really just see a previous poster complaining about malicious social media comments while calling people “fucking idiots” in the same sentence?

Hi Maxie! Nice to see you on mumsnet!

Some comments from whatsapp have been released which were about the school objecting to the parents raising questions over the appointment of a new Head

you think parents have a right to question who is appointed/how they are appointed to a vacancy at the school? and to harass the school with multiple emails on the issue and/or the person appointment?

Nonsense. There is no reason to believe the report was "false". The fact that the police concluded that the threshold for prosecution had not been reached does not make it "harassment" for the school to have reported the case to them. The decision about prosecution is up to the police/CPS. Should they be accused of "harassment" every time someone prosecuted is found not guilty?

There seems to have been pretty extreme behaviour from the parents. Getting banned from the school grounds as a parent suggests pretty unacceptable behaviour. The WhatsApp chats show two people with little sense. Imagine the eye rolling from the other parents wishing they’d shut up.