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

Can you give me an example of something that my Head might ask me to do that I would just go ahead and do, without realising it was illegal?

My job does not require me to have extensive knowledge of the legislation relating to education and children. I do the safeguarding…

Jesus christ.

This should be utterly terrifying to all parents reading this.

Clearly you cannot “do the safeguarding” if you don’t even understand the law.

Every single post you make is just emphasising my point even more, and I’m so glad that all other posters reading this will be able to see what you’ve said.

<Whips self and emails resignation letter immediately>.

Yes. Your earlier comments in the thread where you were defending that you thought it was reasonable for parents of a child with SEND not to be able to talk to their class teacher directly or have regular contact with the school, which is an enormous breach of safeguarding and in breach of multiple laws and statutes. If school staff follow such illegal policies implemented by schools in an attempt to circumvent the law then they are putting children at risk, and you seem to be so utterly clueless that you didn’t even know that this was illegal until it was pointed out to you.

Good. Education will be much the better for you being nothing to do with it.

Let’s hope a proper regulator is put in place to get rid of any other incompetent people who won’t resign voluntarily.

Give me an example that might apply to me as a secondary school teacher rather than referring to this case.

😂

The fact staff in the sector think the effect on children of them repeatedly breaking the law is cause for a laughing emoji (not the first time in this thread actually that has been the case) and that it is so unfathomable to them that a proper regulator might ever be created that puts a stop to this illegal behaviour backs up the case for exactly why one is required.

True, even if they aren’t a teacher

That’s fine. If you want to continue to make personal attacks on me because you can’t defend the indefensible and irrational comments you’ve made on this thread and to try to deflect attention from the fact that you have no evidence whatsoever to support the untenable assertions you’ve made, go ahead.

It won’t convince anybody who actually reads your comments that you have any plausible, rational argument for your position, any capacity for rational thought, or any grasp at all of the law.

Oops.

Indeed. Mumsnet staff clearly not reading the many insulting and personal posts that have been left to stand and deleting a perfectly reasonable response for no reason at all. I shall post it again later when I have time, as there is no reason it should have been deleted other than that certain posters didn’t like it.

Strange huh? It’s almost like teachers think that nobody should criticise them and try to censor perfectly valid communication between other adults about their behaviour…

I didn't report it. Have you reported the posts you consider to be 'personal and insulting?'

@TheCastleDoesNotReply MN will generally only delete comments brought to their attention, I think. Some posters report posts far more than others - seigists (I think I might have just made up that word...) report a lot I have noticed - but I didn't read your post here though so not sure why it was deleted - it is worth checking with MN to find out why your posts were deleted, because if too many get deleted you might have your account suspended - if you want other posts to be removed, you need to report each one separately to MN. The "oops" comment will be to do with the fact that that poster has experience in relation to how the removal policy operates probably! (If not they can say!).

@dapsnotplimsolls I will come back later to explain the French thing I referred to.

I didn’t say that you reported it.

And no, I haven’t reported the personal comments made to me mocking how I write because of my autism, or the spiteful comments made laughing at one of the parents in the article scalding her leg with a cup of tea, or any of the other completely inappropriate posts made on this thread by school staff because a) I’m not that petty; and b) I think it’s important that they are left to stand, because they are very revealing about the vindictive and hostile attitude of many school staff towards parents, which cause precisely the type of issues that the thread is about.

True, it may conceivably be that by “ooops” @dapsnotplimsolls meant that Mumsnet has clearly made an error of judgement in deleting what I wrote. I may have been misinterpreting this “ooops” as this poster gloating about having had one of my posts deleted for spurious reasons. Given this poster’s previous comments on this thread I doubt it is the former, even if this poster didn’t report it themself as they have claimed. If @dapsnotplimsolls wishes to explain herself and state what she meant by “ooops” then she can clear up that she wasn’t in fact gloating about someone having convinced Mumsnet to delete one of my posts, if that is the case…

Thank you, I know that I can report posts if I want them deleted, but I don’t think it’s productive or that censoring discussion is helpful. It makes the thread hard to follow for people reading it and I think it’s important that people can see what has been said even if it is offensive, per my comment above, as it really just re-emphasises the concerns that many of us have to see teachers and other education staff saying unwarranted and unpleasant personal things about people simply for having had the “cheek” (as one of them described it) to criticise the behaviour of some members of their profession. It’s quite enlightening and revealing of the mentality; that schools/ teachers must automatically be in the right when the evidence is clear that this isn’t the case, per all of the court cases which I keep referring to where schools/ LAs lose 98% of disputes with parents involving a child with SEND. And that their response to this being pointed out is often to attack the person raising the issue, or try to shut them up by silencing them.

Thank you. I had a quick Google but couldn't find anything specific.

This article makes some interesting points about WhatsApp and privacy.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/whatsapp-group-messages-arrest-rights-law-police-131624073.html

The 'oops' was me being facetious. Of course the post was going to be removed again.

This article fails to note one key point. While there is no law - as it states - against a person who was part of that private conversation taking a message from a private conversation and showing it to another person, if an organisation then obtains that private data and processes it for organisational purposes, without the written consent for change of use from the data owner (the person who provided that information in a private context) then the organisation using that private information for their own purposes without consent is in breach of GDPR and is breaking the law. The fine for such misuse of personal data is potentially unlimited.

I thought so. At least you’ve had the decency to admit your facetiousness, on this occasion, unlike in your many other posts.

Which is why the illegal policies that many schools have attempted to implement, trying to tell parents who are also staff or Governors to report to them private communications between other parents that the school doesn’t like, are illegal and an attempt to override the law, and no school staff or Governors can be compelled to comply with such illegal policies and in fact is breaking the law themself if they report it to the school with the intention that the school will misuse this personal data for their own purposes without the written consent for this change of use from the data owner (the parent who shared this information in the private messages). In this context both the individual who provided the data to the school and the school itself have breached GDPR and are liable to be prosecuted.

If another parent who has no professional connection to the school and is just a busy-body reports private communications between other parents to the school, if the school then processes that personal data from the private conversations and uses it for organisational purposes the school is still breaking the law. In this scenario the person who reported the data to the school cannot be prosecuted but the school still can be if it processes this data without the individual’s consent.

That is why this case is so amusing (aside from the horrific impact on the child who was forced to change schools, and put at risk by staff breaching other regulations and implementing an illegal “communication policy” and refusing to communicate with the parents of a child with a disability except by email, and the horrific impact on the family of having been falsely arrested): the school has inadvertently admitted to multiple breaches of the law and regulations i.e. GDPR, the Children and Families Act 2014, the Education Act 1989, the statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015. The police have found no evidence that the parents have committed any offence at all, yet the school has opened itself up to prosecution if the parents were so minded because its own public statements confirm it has broken the law multiple times, most likely through utter cluelessness amongst both the teachers and Governors/ Trustees about what their legal responsibilities entail.

These parents don’t seem vindictive so I doubt they’ll want to go through the hassle of prosecuting the school, having already moved their child to what I hope is a better school, where proper safeguarding and legal compliance will be in place (not much to expect, really….).

However, this case should make schools think twice and perhaps take the time to read up on the law governing their profession. They have a duty of care to vulnerable minors so you’d think legal compliance would be high on the priority list. Less reasonable parents, if treated in this way, could very easily have the staff hauled up in court.

The fact that you think another regulator is what education needs is what's laughable.

What education really needs is more funding, better behaved children and parents who support school.

Its also the fact that she wants another none supportive regulator that will just put more pressure and stress on teachers.