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

Indeed. It was because of an unevidenced allegation. The school staff involved should be charged with wasting police time.

Don't be daft.

Yeah, I don’t expect that the school had any say in how many officers went to the house. That’s a decision for the police.

In many ways this thread raises the question of what a school is for. Educating a child, socialising them, (dare I say) keeping them occupied for a number of hours - people say school isn’t childcare but it is during school hours that many people get work done. It is the job to engage with parents but to what extent? This school seems to believe that the amount of engagement these parents require made them a nuisance.

Some people seem to think that the school somehow made half a dozen police go around to this couple's house and I don't think that's how it works. The police are usually supremely uninterested in things that go on in schools.

Exactly. They asked the police for advice, which sounds sensible to me. It seems that the police were the ones making the decision to act as they did. I can't begin to imagine that the school wanted this kind of response. As we've seen, it makes for terrible PR.

There's a lot of talk in this thread about the emails and WhatsApp messages. But it's this couple's behaviour on school premises that is what had them banned and confined to emails in the first place. We don't have any information on what they did or said when actually face to face with staff on school premises. That's what I'd like to know more about.

So no-one can ask for advice from the police? It strikes me that the police wasted their own time.

Has the possibility occurred to you that complaints are rising because there are a large number of instances of law breaking and teacher misconduct? You appear to believe all of these complaints are malicious and parents are sitting around with nothing to do making complaints just for the fun of it against angelic teachers who are doing a perfect job and must under no circumstances be criticised in any way, otherwise they’ll have a breakdown and call the police. Yet there is copious evidence of repeated breaches of law and regulations by Local Authorities and schools. 98% of EHCP tribunals are won by parents for example, so it is quite evident that a very large number of schools and Local Authorities are repeatedly breaking the law, over and over again. Proper sanctions and a very harsh regulator is required to reset this and clean up the sector. Nobody in other professions (law, accounting, medicine etc) would keep their job if they behaved like this and refused to comply with the law and regulations in their sector, the regulators and professional bodies make sure of it. OFSTED and the TRA need to do the same in education. If they were doing their jobs properly then parents wouldn’t be forced to fight these complaints themselves, the regulators would take the schools/ LAs to court.

Why would you ask for “advice” from the police on something that is obviously not a police matter? Do you ask the police for advice every time someone makes a comment you don’t like or agree with? Or if someone makes a complaint about your work?

“Daft” is calling the police because someone made a mean comment about you.

They may well have approached the police about what to do should the couple ignore the ban and turn up at school. Who knows? They might have been told of some intent on the couple's part that they felt unable to deal with. And bear in mind there's always the possibility of young children witnessing an altercation on school grounds. As they were banned due to their previous behaviour on school property, that might well be the school's concern.

It's very clear that many posters here have no idea of how difficult and stressful it can be having an aggressive parent in school during the school day.

It seems to me they think the Head of Governors is useless (and as one of a parents was a governor last year he would probably know enough to have an opinion) - and has hired a head teacher that they don't agree should have been given the job. We don't know why they think the head shouldn't have been given the job though.

The messages say things like 'X is useless' referring I assume to the Head of Governors. There's no bad language or threats but I guess someone has told the school about the messages.

I would imagine the parents feel very invested in the school what with one having been a governor very recently and having a child with SEN there. People are saying they'd just move the child but that can be extremely difficult for an ND child.

If the Head's previous school had a very poor rep for supporting SEN children or something similar then I can understand why the parents might be so upset. The 6 police was ridiculous considering the 80 year old grandmother was called to look after the kids. There can't have been that much tech to take.

If anyone turns up to a school and is physically aggressive, the school should phone to police. To be honest, if a school didn’t already know that, I wouldn’t trust them with my children.

There's been no mention of them being physically aggressive. And that's not generally difficult parents' way of going about things. Verbal aggression and body language is the way it tends to go, and staff will do all they can to de-escalate that. But when there's a serial offender, it's perfectly reasonable to ask the police for advice so that they can have a plan in place for the future.

Yes, the police seem to have over-reacted. Not the school.

The Times’ article seems to say that is what got the school’s back up and made them send a rude email to all parents trying to bully them into not discussing issues with the school in private messages.

The article also specifically states that the school refused to discuss arrangements and medical care regarding the child’s medical condition with the parents. That it refused to hold parent teacher meetings (violating the statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015) and refused the parents contact with the child’s class teachers or any regular communication (in violation of the Children and Families Act 2014). The information provided also indicates there may have been violations by the school of GDPR, but uncertain without further details. It also states that the school got this vulnerable, neurodiverse child and marched her to the gate to be collected, marking her out as different to her classmates and probably making her feel very uncomfortable and alienated. They also, vindictively, refused to allow her parents to watch her school play, which is cruel to any child, let alone a neurodiverse one who is likely to find such events particularly hard anyway. This behaviour is verging on abusive.

Given the large amount of evidence of illegal (not to mention extremely unprofessional) behaviour by the school, and evidence of behaviour that would be a cause of safeguarding concerns (like the denial of appropriate discussion of medical issues that they are responsible for while in loco parentis during the school day), all of which would have necessitated discussion with the school which they were deliberately obstructing, and there being no evidence of these emails primarily about the Head Teacher recruitment issue as you are claiming, your attempts to pretend they started 45 email chains with the school all of which were about Head Teacher recruitment are not only unevidenced but highly implausible, not least because the school had prohibited any other form of communication so none of the other issues above could have been communicated about at all had many of the emails not been about them instead. It’s quite obvious that if a school refuses to speak to the parents of any child for six months and tells them to communicate only be email that they will receive many emails, particularly if the child has significant medical issues!

The school overreacted by reporting it to the police!

Presumably there was enough evidence for the police to want to carry out the investigation. They don’t do that if it’s obvious from the outset that there’s no case to answer.

He works for Times radio.

Good, I very much doubt that all they have done is post a few mildly critical things, hope they got a major fright and any other parents who have participated in this have had a long think about their behaviour. My child was at school pre social media and while a few teachers were grumbled about there was not the means nor I hope the inclination to stoop this low. Sometimes I feel that I no longer understand the world

They didn't "report it" they asked the police for advice. It was the police who decided to do something about it.

Why do professionals need advice on when to phone the police?

I can’t comment on the facts of this case as I don’t know them fully but do know the facts relating to my own experience.

When we moved house with an SEN child with pending ECHP the local village school refused to take him saying they couldn’t meet need. The LA forced them to take him. They then switched to saying that he had no need (autistic and ADHD) and parents were making it up (as were medical professionals including GOSH) plus EP, SALT, OT autism outreach. They couldn’t provide any evidence that all was fine and he was learning as expected - just angrily argued that he was happy sitting at the back of the classroom doodling and this stopped him preventing the other DC in the class from learning.

We were at an impasse and had a meeting with the head, the class teacher who was also SENCO and the LA. All was well until the class teacher became aware that I had done SAR and was aware of what she thought were private emails to the LA slagging off parents behind their backs.

So she doubled down and the head backed her. She refused to have any further contact with parents claiming she was intimidated. I guess she was embarrassed and unable to explain her behaviour. We were never physically or verbally abusive but only wanted an explanation as to why she was making claims that contradicted experts and had the potential to prevent my son from receiving needed support in his last year of primary, transition support and support in secondary. This obviously upset her. She was overly concerned with undiagnosed girls but dismissive of diagnosed boys. We were only allowed to communicate face to face with the TA once a week and by email otherwise and did end up removing him with LA support/funding for internet school.

Clearly school staff experience completely unwarranted abuse from unreasonable parents. They also experience uncomfortable questions from reasonable parents with children with SEND/disability. And parents with children with SEND/disability can also be unreasonable.

But school staff are not perfect - they can lie, they can minimise, they can block support and when all else fails they can demonise parents who continue to advocate for DC the school don’t want to support and frankly don’t want in their school.

A school has a child for a limited amount of time. Primary schools don’t give a flying fuck. Parents have a child for life. If only his primary school had supported my son instead of babysitting him and trying to get rid of him they would be able to feel they had something to do with him now studying engineering at uni but unfortunately this only happened through parental support despite their efforts to sabotage.

Waging war against informed SEND parents with legitimate concerns will never stop the entitled parents with NT DC kicking off.

6 police officers attending is hard to understand when there are clear examples of physical and verbal abuse against staff who have followed protocols for NT students and issued detention.

Something was done differently here and we don’t know why. Was it because parents were exaggerating need? Was it because parents constituted a real threat? Was it because parents were governors, media savy, political representatives?

When I didn’t shut up and go away, the school reported me to SS. They wasted valuable resources only for SS to tell me this is par for the course. Schools do this all the time. It’s obvious that the issue is school. But they have to respond. She visited my sons room filled with books and toys and furniture that had been painted and stencilled with a pirate motif and glow in the dark stars and planets on the ceiling and told me how far apart this was from the children that really needed support. She was prevented from doing her job of looking after vulnerable children by schools making claims with no grounds because they did not want to fund SEND kids.

Has this changed or we just now call the police instead of SS.

But it’s all about the feelings of teachers. But it’s all so insular. Not feeling bad about denying or minimising need for a vulnerable child.

Don’t teachers feel bad about taking up limited resources of SS or the police not to mention appeal for EHCP?

It’s also quite clear that many posters have “no idea of how stressful” it can be for parents having to deal with schools like this and the failing education system and having to fight to get their children’s basic legal rights to education enforced, and then being demonised for doing so.

Parents (in general, not a specific judgement on this case) are increasingly demanding of schools and have unrealistic expectations of what can be provided. There are typically 30 children in a class - your child cannot be centre of attention all the time. Not everyone can have a star part in the play or be on the football team. Parents label every minor fall out as bullying. If their child trips over in the playground they complain to the school about their injuries. They message teachers at all hours of the day and expect immediate responses.