That teachers do NOT always get it right.

[callherwillow]

1. This is not teacher bashing. Teacher bashing would be criticising people just because they are teachers.

1. I am a teacher. I know children misunderstand things, a lot. I know what can sound awful was actually nothing after establishing the facts. I would never recommend a parent goes in 'guns blazing.'

1. I know teachers work hard. I know it can be thankless task, knackering, the odd mistake can be forgiven and indeed expected and so on and so forth.

Now to the crux.

Whenever someone complains about a teacher on here there are so many replies that assume the parent is unreasonable, that assume the teacher is right (because they are a teacher) and it's getting to the stage where I know opening a thread where someone asks about a teacher (which will happen a lot as so many have school age children) will have numerous pages insisting that whatever they are concerned about either didn't happen at all or that if it did, it's fine and excused on the basis teachers work hard.

No.

Teachers lie. I had a teacher tell a lie about me that could have been very serious indeed. Luckily, enough students were brave enough (and it was brave of them) to be truthful. The teacher in question was their head of year and it was a horribly awkward situation. I have known numerous Headteachers and senior teachers lie. They started their careers as ordinary classroom teachers. Do not kid yourselves teachers won't lie. They might lie out of awkwardness, out of anxiety, out of misplaced loyalty or just to be spiteful.

Teachers do sometimes take against a particular child. I haven't seen this happen a lot - only a handful of times - but it does happen. Again I am NOT saying if you think this is the case to go in 'guns blazing.' I am saying that while it's rare and probably is not the case, it is nonetheless a possibility.

Teachers don't know everything, that should be obvious. However, if you have real concerns about the education your child is getting, it does not stand that because the teacher has a degree and a teaching qualification that they know everything. I nearly missed out on my university place due to not being taught a vital part of the curriculum on one of my A levels. I am sure the teacher did not mean this to happen, I am sure they felt really bad about it. But still, if the university hadn't let me in anyway, that would have altered the course of my life. It certainly affected some other students in the class. It is acceptable to ask questions, to ask on here first and then raise concerns with the teacher. It is not acceptable for a load of ITS A TEACHER DON'T BE DAFT NOW RUN ALONG.

Teachers sometimes make a bad judgement. Nine times out of ten it's probably just a normal human error and I'd say let it go. If it's upsetting your child - raise it. A good teacher won't mind talking to you and sorting out whatever the issue is.

It's the end of term. Teachers for the most part do a brilliant job, but amongst them as well as the kind, intelligent, supportive and enthusiastic are the sinister, cruel, lying, bullying and incompetent. Rare? Yes. Never heard of? No.

Mumsnet is a great resource for sharing ideas about children's education and I think parents should be able to enquire about it without angry teachers slating them for having the gall to ask.

Well this is my experience.

Full of the 'teachers are working so hard, you can't ask them to do more' and 'they WILL know what your child is able to do' etc... I followed my dcs progress through primary school carefully.

dc1 no issue but then he is very able. Yes one teacher clearly disliked him (and told me so!) but overall OK.

Then dc2. Redception teacher was a nigthmare, even MN jury said so at the time (Various reasons incl completely inappropriate comments). She also told me that dc2 was at a good level in reading and had no issue with communication. Teacher in Y1 had words with me within two days because 1- dc2 couldn't read at all and 2- his speech was not understandable so she wanted a referral asap to a SALT..... That was the reception teacher lying to try and protect herself (she knew I would want answers as she was supposed to have him for another year)
Then move through Y2 to Y6. Being told again and again, yes dc2 is doing well. His english is OK, comprehension is OK blabla. Very patromizing when I asked questions and raised the issues I culd see at home. All that to find at the start of Y6 that 1- his inference was so low it was unbelievable it had never been picked on and 2- the middle of the class child actually was right at the bottom and needed a lot of extra help.

I'm now angry at myself to not have been more 'pushy' and to not have asked more pointed questions because I have let my dc down by not making what my feelings re his real level of understanding and ability were. I thought that 'teachers knew best' or 'I am expecting way too much from dc2' etc etc. The result is that it's him who is struggling, having to put a LOT of extra work in, has his self esteem bruised/suffering anxiety etc...

So, moving on, leaving the teachers alone, trusting them fully and completely, thinking they should never be criticised? Nope sorry. My experience tells me this is not how it works....

YANBU I've had a couple of instances where firstly a TA has lied, thankfully she was stupid enough to document her lie in dd's liaison book and so it was easily addressed and the situation amended and secondly where a teacher has denied receiving information from me resulting in a safeguarding failure again easily sorted as I was able to forward both the email and a copy of written communication to HT proving the safeguarding failure wasn't because the school were unaware more the teacher didn't bother to pass on information to safeguarding lead.
Thankfully these two situations have been anomalies in my many years of having children in school though.

Verbena and then, I have seen the excellent Y1 teacher dc2 had who took care of him on a pastoral level in a way that no one ever did.
She was fantastic with him even though he had some issues with faecal incontinence/soiling.

Being a teacher and dealing with 30 kids doens't stop a good teacher to provide that 'pastoral care'.
It might not be what you would see with a nanny but then who would expect that? But it doesn't stop them from helping a child at that age in the most caring and aprropriate ways.

There are also excellent teachers of course but there is a hell of a lot of pressure from the govt, Ofsted etc. This does help to root out the 'coasting' teachers but TBH I'd prefer a 'caring' teacher for my dcs to a highly efficient robotic type. Especially when they're little.

I've seen a teacher pull a chair out from under a student for not listening to him when he said to take her coat off (she was deaf and only just sat down).
When getting a friend to report bullying, I've been told by a deputy head teacher (taken aside) that it's better for me to not be friends with her and just let her be bullied.
I've been bullied by a teacher, to the point of being kept back and yelled at for having "smiling eyes" ?!?!? What on earth does that even mean?
And the sane teacher gave me a detention for talking, which doesn't sound bad until you realise I'd just had an op and couldn't even open my mouth. She even tried to argue to the head that I had definitely been talking (my mum went to the head to complain) until he mentioned the operation.
I did have some amazing and wonderful teachers as well. But yes some teachers are just assholes

• same not sane lol

No, it's the same with the NHS, everyone who works there are saints. When I've seen some appalling nursing, no justification for it. Teachers are good and some are rubbish. The same as any other job. Just because you are trained to be a teacher doesn't mean you are any good at it. But there is a lot of rubbish teachers have to put up with. I don't need a detailed log of everything my son has done, I just want them taught. We never had it years ago. I feel sorry for teachers now. But that doesn't mean they should not be criticised when necessary.

But you see this is teacher bashing,

Most of us mind dealing with parents who are genuinely concerned about issues that a relevant and necessary to address.

Making comparisons between teachers and child care underlines the problem. The thread about the teacher who according to the OP vindictively stopped her son having a drink as a power play does too.

It was perfectly acceptable for the child's viewpoint to be put across, yet it was "private" when they had spoken to the teacher.

There are always going to be cases where the parent has to push for things from a school, sadly schools and teachers are over burdened playing so many roles and undertaking so many different tasks that sometimes thing slip by.

Yet the MN collective IS full of people who make issues over minor or trivial events like the one mentioned above.

There are plenty of "That" parent types kicking about.

I totally agree OP. Some posters seem to be unable to accept that teachers or sometimes school policies are not always totally sensible and correct. Any criticism of teachers seems to be met with accusations of lying (either the parent or child) and frequently posters are "told off" for their attitude as if they are young children.

So interesting that not allowing a thirsty child a drink of water is considered minor. To the child it wasn't minor. There are quite a number of posters on MN who think children don't (or aren't supposed to have) feelings . Very strange.

But again, it wouldn't be minor if we had the full story.

Were the children allowed to drink on the bus?

Was the teacher dealing with other things at the time etc.

A child being thirsty for two hours is very minor compared to the things that can and do sometimes go wrong on a school trip.

It was totally avoidable. smallfox

My dd2 had an accidental injury ( a scratch across her actual eyeball) on the way to an outing. No one rang me. She had to walk about for the whole day in pain. I had to take her to hospital when they got back, but she wasn't bought out to me especially That was bad judgement on behalf of the teachers.

Yes worse than being thirsty and I didn't complain I've never forgotten her little face though

I have to wonder how the all teachers are perfect brigade feel about more serious incidences, e.g. pedophilia. Obviously only a tiny, tiny % of teachers are pedophiles, but a lot of pedophiles are drawn to jobs where they will be alone with and in charge of children.

When I was 12 our technology teacher was very obviously a pedophile and molested several of my classmates (never did anything untoward with me). He would openly touch girls' breasts and bottoms and make sexual remarks in front of the entire class. 12 years old!! All-girls school. No one in authority believed us even when it was a case of 20 girls all standing up saying "yes he constantly touches us inappropriately" because "he's a teacher."

I sincerely hope none of the "awful teacher-bashing/'that parent'" types ever have complaints about a teacher who is genuinely a predator.

Most of my teachers were fabulous btw so I'm not teacher bashing. I'm just saying teachers are people just like anyone else, and like anyone else can be good, bad or indifferent. It's important to judge every situation on the facts and without bias in either direction.

smallfox you won't ever finish that circular argument.

Like you I was saying that until OP had spoken to the teacher she could not know what had happened...

Many posters kept on and on and on about the DS not having been given water, why that was unacceptable.

I kept trying to say: but the OP does not know that is what happened... there were so very many other possibilities and, in the face of it, it sounded odd, wrong, not something m/any teacher would do - go and ask before winding yourself into a complete fury, find out, then act accordingly.

But the teacher scathing posts continued... and then the OP chose not to make the teacher's version as public as she had made her son's version... leaving the 8 year old boy a nasty lying little shit and the teacher a mean, power playing bitch...

The real message - ask, cos that really doesn't sound right - was lost in page upon page of pps justifying one side or the other, to no avail. This post is a symptom of that, I think.

We teachers, ex teachers like myself included, aren't either Caesar's wife or the Very Devil, but that is the give polemic here!

As others have said, teachers, nurses, GPs and others get much the same treatment here - and it is as weird and unrealistic for each of them as it is for teachers!

The difference is 'bad' parents often have the ability to do serious mental and economic harm to the teacher. Whereas parents have the ability to move their child or make complaints in the case of a 'bad' teacher.

I really don't think that's the case. The reality as encountered by many parents is that entering a formal complaint is pissing in the wind - headteachers and governors almost invariably back the school. On the other hand, if a child is left in the class of a poor or bullying teacher, that teacher knows full well that the parent can't prove what is going on and tha tthey are likely to get away with it, and it is the child who is left permanently harmed. In many areas it really isn't that easy just to move the child to another school, and it's not particularly fair on the child that they should have their education disrupted in that way due to one incompetent teacher.

t4gnut Tue 19-Jul-16 09:48:32

"99.9999% of the time its excessive parental fussing.

0.0001% of the time its a genuine mistake."

One of my dc's teachers is currently under a suspended jail sentence for sexual offences concerning children (including children he was teaching), another has been found guilty in court of sexual offences concerning children and a third (at a different school) was sacked after sexually inappropriate language and ditto touching of his students. So which percentage would you say that was? Parental fussing or a genuine mistake?

The scary thing is that in the first case it took decades of complaints, at more than one school, before the matter got taken further, because the default assumption was that parents were overreacting and precious, and that children were just trying to get the teachers into trouble.

Sadly, my own dd refused to tell me for many months that she was not allowed to use the disabled toilet and was left without maths tuition because the school wanted her set taught in a non-accessible classroom and didn't want her to go into a lower set: I only found out when a junior teacher naively mentioned about the maths (not realising that this discrimination was illegal). Dd assumed that I would take the attitude that teachers must be right and it was useless to complain if the school had decided something.

I am 100% supportive of my dc's teachers until I know they are at fault, and am always willing to go in with an open mind. But teaching children that teachers (or any other human being) is always right is foolish and dangerous. Much better is to stay calm but to make sure they know what right and wrong look like.

I feel in retrospect that I may have gone too far in the direction of teacher is always right- possibly because my own parents (teachers themselves) would tend to blame the teacher.

It wasn't totally avoidable, say the children were told to drink before they got on the bus as it wasn't allowed. The boy might have been thirsty but any teacher knows if you let one do it, then all the others will, so it was just refused.

We don't know because it wasn't told to us what the teacher said.

There are always going to be legitimate claims and grievances, as in the same way there are illegitimate ones too. I'd say that there are about 50/50 splits here.

The drink one was unreasonable, the issue with the eye only if the child complained and said she felt unable to go on.

Also its interesting to get the perspective that HT and governors back the school. That certainly isn't the feeling among staff who believe that they are often hung out to dry.

Slippery slope arguments regarding predators also don't come in here.

There are legitimate concerns and there are ones that aren't.

Those raised here seem to be about 50/50 either way.

littleprincessara that is just awful.

Absolutely

But this is MN where teachers are saints

As others have said, teachers, nurses, GPs and others get much the same treatment here - and it is as weird and unrealistic for each of them as it is for teachers!

If someone criticises a healthcare professional, other health care professionals don't all jump in to accuse the OP of lying. The OP is not accused of being disrepectful to all health care professionals, nobody says " I hope you aren't passing your attitude to your children" or suggests that they are one of "those patients". That only seems to happen on thread involving teachers.

They aren't! There is as much teacher bashing as the opposite goes on.

There are also people who come on with very minor complaints, and I'm sorry in perspective the "my child was thirsty for two hours" complaint is not major, is it? It isn't worth getting angry over, especially as what was said was: "Find out the circumstances from the teacher."

I'd say there was as many posters with chips on their shoulders regarding teachers who make judgements and jump to conclusions (e.g the teacher was having a power trip ) .

It is absolutely not a slippery slope argument to point out a teacher can be a sexual predator.

It's a very relevant point.