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

Please enlighten me as to where you believe these words are missing given that the post you quoted contains only factual statements.

Other than where I said “I think…” which means the same as “In my opinion”, in case you don’t realise that. I hope you don’t work in a school.

I hope you don’t work in a school.

Oh dear, and you were doing so well.

But given your stance you probably believe that being the parent of a child with SEND excuses you from being rude.

But you do you,.

They already had! It was months after emails were sent, that they were arrested but only days after the child was removed from the school!

I will say with a certain degree of experience that there is usually a LOT more that goes on behind the scenes in these types of story, than the media is printing.

Remember the school are in no position to give their honest version of events. They have to be professional and distanced which the parents can say whatever they want.

Have you read the article? They did nothing wrong.

“Doing so well”?

Did I ask you to mark me?

Based on the condescending attitude and attempt to belittle me, I conclude that I was most likely correct that you are indeed yet another teacher posting here who sadly believes all that SLT tell you, that the type of behaviour that the article describes doesn’t happen even though I and several others on the thread have described very similar cases of gross misconduct by senior school staff, and despite the documents regarding the many thousands of court cases on these matters. There is no way to convince those who refuse to use their eyes.

I said nothing about myself so I’m not sure why you are attempting to make this personal. What a disappointing response.

Rude is a subjective judgement, but the law is not.

I also suspect most people might become far from friendly eventually if watching their child’s health and education being destroyed and the law being broken and repeatedly gaslit and blamed for the situation. So many of these posts - as a poster who’d been on the receiving end of similar behaviour pointed out - seem to focus on the feelings of school staff who are adults, without the slightest thought for the impact on the child involved, let alone her family.

It would be quite the coincidence if Ofsted stopped doing its job at exactly the same rate as parental complaints are increasing.

However we also know that for example over 80% of headteachers have reported an increase in vexatious complaints over the last few years, and that parents are having an increasing tendency to complain to multiple institutions at the same time while not following the school behaviour policy, thereby creating a huge and unnecessary workload.

And you think "I hope you don’t work in a school."

Was this anything else than to belittle me.

I said nothing about myself so I’m not sure why you are attempting to make this personal. What a disappointing response.

You are the one that made the personal retort

I hope that you enjoy your hypocrisy.

Why do you think this has happened? Genuine question.

Has something happened with schools, or have all parents changed?

Because my theory is that the teachers are now so overstretched due to overwork and underfunding that they see little option but to become defensive to survive, and that the schools are under so much bureaucratic burden that they feel they have to play the few cards that they have available to reduce the load.

But, if you think instead that parents have just become nastier, what do you think is driving that?

My theory is that people in general have become nastier, they’ve learned that if they complain they can get what they want quicker/cheaper/upgraded (whatever it might be) they’re stuck in their own little echo chambers online and it’s easier now to send an email that have to speak to someone face to face.

How amusing to have someone posting in support of this egregious and illegal behaviour by the school in question, stating that they work in a school and that parents speak about them unpleasantly, yet in the same sentence accusing parents of “cunty behaviour”.

I’m not sure there’s a cure for that level of cognitive dissonance.

For a start you have to bear in mind that this is what Head Teachers report, and 98% of the complaints about the provision for children with SEND (which applies to this little girl in the article) that these Heads have refused to act on are later upheld by the court when taken to tribunal, with an EHCP then put in place requiring the school to do what the parents and the child’s doctors were saying they needed to do in the first place, per the law.

It absolutely is caused by a lack of funding, but also this type of behaviour being tolerated which it wouldn’t be in any other profession. A very harsh regulator is required to replace OFSTED, and funding absolutely has to be increased. Instead, we have cynical Head Teachers employing these appalling tactics to try to blame parents for their own failings, to try to ration resources, and then bully some of the most vulnerable children out of the school if the parents stand up to them, as appears to have happened in the case in the article.

It’s grotesque, and needs to change. Education is enormously underfunded and our spending priorities as a nation need a significant shift towards the young and education if there is to be any improvement in living standards in the UK. In the meantime, however, it’s outrageous to be blaming parents for the failing education system, or excusing such behaviour from teachers. The NHS and many other services are under similar pressures but they don’t break the law deliberately, repeatedly, and then try to deflect blame onto the victims of their behaviour, and get away with it. Education needs very serious reform and absolutely zero tolerance of legal breaches by schools and Local Authorities.

No, this was a factual statement. I really hoped you didn’t work in a school given what you’d posted. I had no reason to think you did work in a school when I posted that comment.

Sadly for children, based on your subsequent responses, I think it is likely that you do, which is will be terrible for very many of them if you actually believe the things you have posted here.

Again a personal post.

How hypocritical of you. But it is very you.

But you keep on posting opinions as facts.

But again you do you. Its doesn't make you big or strong but it does explain why you would support other bullies.

Would it? What a strange assumption.

When a regulator stops doing its job of course the level of complaints increase because the people they’re regulating are aware that they can get away with misconduct. That is why regulators are required.

Regardless, I did not state that the cause of schools not complying with the law, necessitating growing numbers of parental complaints, was caused by OFSTED’s failings. OFSTED has always been useless. As school budgets have been cut, without an effective regulator and appropriate penalties in place for legal breaches and misconduct clearly many schools have escalated this behaviour in an attempt to control budgets hence rising complaints. The point is that an effective regulator that clamps down on this very hard and provides sufficient disincentives to this behaviour from schools and local authorities is required to stop this and reverse it. Without such penalities schools have a financial incentive to continue this behaviour and complaints have to be made by individual parents (who are then demonised for doing so) and are ignored with impunity so of course the volume of complaints will rise until an effective regulator is put in place that will not tolerate this at all, penalising individual staff and schools and Local Authorities, like regulators do in other industries where there is higher legal compliance and a far lower level of complaints. Meanwhile, as I also said, schools require significantly more funding. However, that is absolutely no excuse for such egregious behaviour to parents to try to deflect blame, no matter how much financial pressure they are under; that is still totally disgraceful and far more common than you and several other posters in your profession seem prepared to admit, despite all the evidence refuting your position.

Hilarious post full of personal attacks accusing me of making personal attacks.

The referenced cognitive dissonance in action.

The report says they were already barred from attending previous events.

You are limited to the reasons you can bar a parent which includes abuse to staff or others. This does not seem to be just about complaints online/ emails etc

There's a general sense that people have become less tolerant and more aggressive since covid. There's a huge rise in mental health issues https://ifs.org.uk/news/various-indicators-point-deterioration-population-mental-health-likely-contributing-rising and it's not just 'people mistaking being anxious for anxiety' - more people are dying of drugs, alcohol and suicide.

People are worried about poverty, cost of living, climate change, war.

So I guess it's natural that more people are taking it out on those around them.

In addition, and accelerated by covid which pushed more people online, social media is putting people in groups where they can whip up bad feeling and egg each other on to complain about things that they wouldn't normally consider worth it. You certainly see this on MN.

Obviously school provision has deteriorated significantly in the last decade due to persistent underfunding of both schools and adjacent services. But we are talking about the increase in vexatious complaints, not genuine ones.

Or we can conclude that Ofsted are not fit for purpose..

Or maybe people aren't following the correct processes?

"Over 80 per cent of school leaders have been abused by parents in the last year – with one in 10 having been the victim of an assault, a new poll suggests, prompting calls to review complaints procedures.
A poll of 1,600 National Association of Headteachers members revealed some have been pushed to the brink of quitting the profession by the vitriol, threats and violence, while others now suffer from anxiety and depression."

The NAHT said the results exposed “widespread reports of trolling on social media and in parent groups on Facebook and WhatsApp – as well as appalling instances of hate campaigns and harassment and intimidation”.
One school leader told how “malicious and vexatious complaints made me want to leave my job and made me ill”.
Meanwhile, another “felt very low and dreaded opening my emails. Another member of the team said they might have to resign to avoid reading the emails.”
Eighty-six per cent of those polled said parental abuse had increased in the last three years. Only one per cent thought it had decreased.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/calls-for-school-complaints-review-as-80-of-leaders-report-abuse/

Looks like I am not the only one suffering from cognitive dissonance.

But then I would expect nothing less from someone who complains about personal attacks when they dish it out first, but then then bullies often like to accuse the people that they are attacking.

So at least you are staying true to form.

I’m not sure the mental health link is relevant. It would have had to increase by extraordinary magnitudes to be relevant to this on a societal level.

Im also still not convinced, from the statistics on reporting issues, that it’s not due to over pressured schools and teachers.

You say “we also know that for example over 80% of headteachers have reported an increase in vexatious complaints over the last few years”. From that you can either take away that more complaints are vexatious … or that more head teachers are reporting (genuine) complaints as vexatious, which one could argue that they would do if they were under pressure and just needed it to go away.

I think we should be improving things for the teachers, which will in turn improve it for the pupils and parents.

What are you even talking about?
“In my opinion”, you’re digging yourself into a hole.

Read what I just posted about 1 in 10 headteachers reporting having been physically assaulted by a parent in the last year and try to suggest again that the problem is the perception of parental complaints being the issue.