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

It’s not a few paragraphs. It’s a rant and certainly isn’t ‘balanced, nuanced, well-explained and rationally argued’

Surely the HT job should have been thrown open to other candidates

The fact that this HT’s response was going to the police over being discussed in private WhatsApp messages. suggests that they know themselves they shouldn’t have got the job and have come out on the attack instead of stating clearly why they were the best candidate for the role

Rant?

A rant is “to speak or shout at length in an angry of impassioned way”.

None of my post was angry or impassioned, not would it be considered to be “at length” unless you’re almost completely illiterate and find reading more than a couple of paragraphs at a time very challenging. It was a rational summary connecting the way that some of the posters on this thread reacted to the evidence about the case in question (notably, the majority of the people who’d reacted in this manner appear to work in the education sector), with why the parents publicising this is important, the vital changes required to the education sector so that it is properly regulated like every other profession/ sector in the UK of which I’m aware, and how this would improve things for both pupils and teachers so it is bizarre that some teachers vociferously defend the dysfunctional status quo that allows the law and regulations to be broken as a matter of course, sets up parents and schools in relationships of animosity unnecessarily (because a proper regulator would be the arbiter of these cases so that parents would not have to try to enforce the law themselves), and would therefore actually improve the working environment for the majority of teachers who are decent people and want the best for their pupils, as well.

If you find expressing such views to be a “rant” then you are clearly part of the problem.

Yes, rant.

The paragraph in your latest post is the same. It’s two sentences long. The second sentence has multiple sub clauses plus two sets of brackets. Yet it doesn’t really say anything.

I beg to differ.

@TheCastleDoesNotReply writes interesting and informative posts, full of relevant and accurate facts that support her position.

And we're not in English class after all.....

Well, I’ve avoided saying anything about myself on this thread since I didn’t think it appropriate to make this personal when we’re talking about a specific case which is not to do with me, but if you want to accuse an autistic woman with an IQ well into the 99th percentile who received no help at school at all of expressing herself in what you consider to be imperfect sentences then perhaps it might be the schools who failed her as a child that are to blame for that given that my writing is almost entirely self-taught.

I also have two autistic kids who have similar IQs but have very significant needs in other areas that have been completely ignored by their school to the extent that they now have serious mental health issues because of how their school treated them, so severe in fact that one of them became suicidal during Reception so had to miss over a term of it with me homeschooling her in the day and working full time at night because this was the only way to safeguard her, so clearly nothing has changed in the last 30 years. And guess what? When I told the school that this was a problem - to have a 5 year old child saying she didn’t want to be alive anymore - the Head Teacher tried to pretend that I was making unwarranted and unreasonable complaints and illegally tried to prevent me from speaking to my children’s teachers so that we could work together to support them. Now that he’s been removed from the situation school staff and my children are much happier and the school staff and I have a great relationship. The EHCPs both of my children have now been provided with prove that this Head Teacher was wrong, just like the school in the article was wrong. Such Head Teachers - who deny the legal rights of disabled children to education, try to ruin their education and demonise their parents for advocating for them - do exist regardless of whether you wish to deny it.

Children denied proper access to education for long periods of time - surprise, surprise - grow up into adults who might not have perfect grammar and whose sentence structure teachers such as you might criticise because people in your profession failed to provide an environment in which we could access that learning. Maybe if children with disabilities could access school properly and safely per the law then their sentence formation as adults might be more to your liking?

And yes, this final post is a rant. An impassioned and angry post. Perhaps now you’ll be able to note the difference between that and my previous ones which were calm, measured, impersonal, and factual.

I’m sorry you and your children have found school difficult but that doesn’t mean that schools are automatically in the wrong as you seem to assert. I’m not a teacher either

Governors or trustees or organisations - because their role is meant to be independent like that of non-executive directors in companies and involve challenging the management of the organisation - are meant to serve limited terms. In at least one of the interviews I’ve seen the father specifically stated that his term (I think he saida 4 years) as a Governor had come to an end. This is completely normal. Nobody should be being a Governor in perpetuity because then they become too familiar with the executive and operational staff (in this case, the Head and teachers) whom the entire purpose of their role is to hold to account to ensure that they are managing the organisation effectively and complying with the law. They become “yes men”, so cannot perform their legal role which is meant to be independent oversight.

It appears, based on your comment, that you have no idea about what the legal role of a Governor or Trustee is or how such processes are meant to function. Any school that does not have a regular turnover in Trustees, that doesn’t have them serving limited terms, does not have effective or appropriate governance procedures in place.

I haven’t asserted that at all.

The opposite is the case. I have stated repeatedly that the vast majority of teachers are very competent and hard working. I have also stated that the majority of Heads would be shocked and dismayed at the reality of how some of their peers behave, that most are decent people and would never behave like this. My posts have repeatedly recognised the difficulties of the environment in which teachers have to work, how education is underfunded, how the legal framework is dysfunctional and this makes the job of class teachers very difficult, who on the whole seem to be very committed. I have agreed that many class teachers are subjected to unacceptable behaviour from some parents: intimidation, threats and even in some cases violence.

I have also stated that none of the above excuses schools breaking the laws and regulations regarding education (as many do - see the record of court cases); driving disabled children out of schools deliberately with behaviour similar to that described in the article; or treating parents of children who have made a complaint or had to contact a school repeatedly about issues - because the school has refused to resolve these issues - as though they are “unreasonable” for expecting schools and teachers to comply with the law and regulations; or demonising parents for doing so and pretending every complaint is “vexatious”; or implementing illegal “communication policies” to try to override legal and regulatory requirements and prevent the legally required contact between school and home merely because teachers find it hard work or “upsetting”; or trying to pretend that parents advocating for their children’s legal rights (which they should not even have to do if the education system was functioning properly) as “harassment”; or that schools can try to make demands about what parents decide to discuss in private conversations outside school jurisdiction and call social services or the police if somebody says something they disagree with, or ban parents from the premises for disagreeing with them; pointed out that it is illegal to misuse private information obtained by any staff member/ member of the Board spying on private correspondence for organisational purposes (even if that correspondence was electronic) and then processing this information for other purposes without written consent; and stated repeatedly that a proper regulator is required to enforce legal compliance in schools and that if this were to happen it is likely to vastly improve the working environment for school staff as well as benefit pupils immensely and reduce tension between schools and parents substantially.

Please specify which part of the this you disagree with and why.

How do you know? Given that apparently, as you stated, it was too long for you to read?

It’s also not about “how they found school”, which makes it sound like some inevitable, unfortunate thing that just happened by accident. Or worse, some kind of veiled attempt to try to insinuate that the problem was with them rather than the school. This issue is how they were treated at school, deliberately, even when the Head and SENCO were made fully aware of the impact this was having on them. And the Head then continuing this behaviour and trying to vilify their parent for protecting them from further harm. Not at all dissimilar to the case set out in the article, minus the police, and not dissimilar from countless others that are documents in studies on the subject should you wish to review them, or the reports of a number of other parents on this thread, or other parents whose cases I have reviewed all of the evidence pertaining to directly.

“sorry… they have found school so difficult”. Appalling.

It is disgraceful that someone could respond with this when someone’s just told you that the way a 5 year old with a diagnosed disability was treated was so horrendous that it made her suicidal and unable to attend school at all for several months as a result. All because of a Head Teacher pretending her disability did not exist and ignoring all communication from her parent, doctors and specialists telling him what severe damage he was doing to her (that we are still trying to repair, a year and a half later).

And your main concern is not disabled children being driven out of their schools, of schools breaking the law and regulations, or their families being disparaged and even accused of neglect or invented crimes due to Head Teachers’ spite and rage that they have had the audacity to advocate on their child’s behalf, but that someone might have typed sentences in a format that you found difficult to follow because in your opinion they were too long (as an aside, I suggest you never try to read any Wittgenstein, let alone Hegel, otherwise your head might explode. But I suppose you think they were irrational and “ranting”, too? Or perhaps no idea at all who they were).

There’s something very wrong with many of the posters on this thread.

If you watch the interviews you will see that he commented on the recruitment process, but most of the difficulties the couples faced centred around other issues, comments on whatsapp related to certificates etc, and they had left the school at the time of the arrest. It is probably worth you watching the interviews in full. If as you say you are aware that school personnel can be "questionable" I do wonder why you are commenting as you are on this particular matter, and also why you are commenting on the other posters' posts as you are - I am not sure what you are hoping to gain?

Specifically, what changes do you think need to happen around parent/school communications, how would you like to see this functioning in future? If you were to "win" (cf your earlier clause) what would that look like, what do you think would need to change?

In relation to the post in respect of which you asked for a tldr, the posts is long but it is clear, it is easy to skim read.

I've watched one of the interviews, I don't particularly want to watch every single one (there have been quite a few). Each interview he gives is obviously just from his point of view so not exactly balanced.

I'm commenting on this matter because I'm not convinced that the school has behaved terribly. I do, however, think he is a pompous twat who has too much time on his hands.

The poster I referred to has posted many very long posts, not just one. I'm not a fan of long posts in general on this site - the ability to be concise is a useful skill.

As for Rosalind, she can't even drink a cup of tea without having to call an ambulance.

Mum's thigh 'melted off' after she drank healthy herbal tea - Hull Live

I am not sure why you are taking the time and trouble to tell other posters you don't like the length of their posts? Please could you reply to the other part of my posts about what changes you think are needed in relation to how parents interact with schools? And what does "winning" look like (cf your comment to the other poster that they thought they'd "won" because of long posts)? There are a large group of posters on MN who are very critical of "parents" as a group, do you agree with them and would you like parental rights about education to be removed and handed over to schools in their entirety?

I shouldn't laugh, but...!

It is the sort of thing which happens when you are stressed. But for the grace and all that.

I'm not sure any changes are needed in relation to how parents interact with schools - most parents are capable of interacting sensibly. My 'winning' point was in reference to the poster saying that the OP had stopped posting on this thread but was posting on another one. What are the 'parental rights about education' that you refer to?

In relation to parental rights in relation to education, you can do a quick google to find out what the position is right now (I am not being facetious - googling is going to be the most useful thing here)

I hear that you think most parents are capable of interacting sensibly so that is good.

If I had been the head here, looking at the interviews and the contents of the emails and online comments we are aware of, I would have called the parents in for a quick chat, talked through their concerns and reached a sensible agreement which they were happy with and which was sensible for the school and met the needs of their child. This would have been the quickest, easiest and most effective way of managing this particular situation. Wouldn't you have done the same thing?

We've only seen the emails and comments that the parents have provided. I'd want to see all of them before I can comment on what I'd have done.

The parents come over as very plausible & sensible. Let's not pretend that schools are always appropriate or ideal. This story doesn't surprise me at all.

I see. So rather than engage with the substantive points about what happened, you want to sling more mud at the parents to try to discredit them.

You then claim you can’t have any opinion on what happened because you haven’t read all of the emails, which clearly no news report is going to publish in full. That doesn’t in any way indicate that anything is being hidden. The police have reviewed them all and concluded no crime took place and, given the publicity, will have ensured they are absolutely certain of this. Are you claiming you believe that the police were wrong? On what grounds?

You “not being a fan of long posts on this site” has no bearing on whether other people are allowed to write long posts. Perhaps it is a quality among a number of teachers to be a control freak over things which they rightly have no jurisdiction or authority. You also conveniently ignored my response explaining that my posts tend to be long and detailed because I am autistic, and my sentence structure less than perfect because - surprise surprise - I was given no help whatsoever to access formal education so my writing is largely self-taught.

You then actually asked another poster about the laws governing education and communication with parents. Surely you should know if you have been a teacher for 30 years as you claim?

It’s quite concerning that the teachers who have posted - with a couple of notable exceptions like @howchildrenreallylearn (who left the profession because she found the toxic environment so unbearable) - have almost unanimously: 1) responded with zero empathy for the child involved, let alone the parents; 2) refused to even countenance that the school acted unreasonably despite all of the evidence of this; and 3) displayed in nearly every case complete ignorance of the laws and regulations regarding the responsibilities of schools to parents and children which govern their own profession, so no wonder these are broken so frequently. It’s been quite eye-opening just how many teachers seem to be completely ignorant of their own legal responsibilities.

Correct, most parents interact with schools very sensibly so most parents do not need to change how they interact with schools. What are needed are changes with how schools interact with parents.

Well said.
It's definitely not a great look for this school, they've simply picked on the wrong people. I'm certain it happens to parents all the time up & down the country.