AIBU to be furious with school?

[shakethatcake]

Name changed, of course.

Background: Both myself and DH work in professions where we are in daily close contact with serious violent offenders. We are both in positions where our decisions have a significant impact on the lives (and freedom) of these individuals. I have received death threats on occasion, including specific threats towards my family.

School are aware and various measures are in place, for example we have a list of people who can collect the children (with photos). Another thing is that I do not sign the consent form for photos of the children to be put on the website or included in newsletters etc.

A few weeks ago, school rang me to say that a local newspaper had been into school, and taken a photo of the whole class of one of my children, including my child, which they wanted to publish. They asked if I would consent, and I said no. The school liaised with the paper, and arranged for an alternative photo to be supplied which did not include my child.

Today school called to let me know that the newspaper has published the version of the photograph that includes my child. I'm furious. I realise this is the newspapers error, but I have no idea why school even let my child be in the original photo, considering they know I don't consent to the photos etc.

What do I do? I haven't spoken to school yet, they just left an answer phone message then spoke briefly to my DH, who didn't comment, just waited to discuss with me. I realise it wasn't intentional, but this should never have happened. I need Mumsnet wisdom as to how to handle this please.

I have no idea which of my students have consent, so when photos happen on the spur of the moment I ask students if they don't have consent to remove themselves, and double check after. More than once students have not done as asked - sometimes they didn't know about it. - How old are your students? There may be valid reasons they are unaware of it, perhaps they are on a witness protection programme (from perhaps birth and it hasn't been explained to them?), could be that one of their parents are a danger and there are reasons they don't know about it? I'm really gobsmacked that parents ask the school not to take photographs of their children and the teachers then leave that responsibility to the child.

You email.

Dear Headteacher,

I explicitly expressed no consent was given for photos of my child to be taken and further explicit instruction was given that they shouldn't appear in a public newspaper.
The picture has been published and so a safeguarding failure has occured

Please inform me with immediate effect how you are going to recify this problem.

Yours.....

I agree with PP - your agreement is with the school, not the paper. Take it up with them and be very firm.

This is fantastic advice, thank you all so much. I am going to make a list of all the things I need to do.

On a side note itsmine you do realise that people in responsible positions aren't by definition superhuman, still have ordinary anxieties, queries, and ohmygodwhatshouldido moments? Just because I have extensive knowledge and experience in one area does not mean I am an expert in how to handle school safeguarding issues! Sometimes out of work I can be quite socially inept because working with the individuals that I do distorts your perceptions of a great many things.

I don't think you have any grounds for suing the school. It is the paper's fault.

Of course it's the school's fault - they were the ones who knew OP's dd should be photographed, they should have had procedures in place from the moment the photographer came through the doors to protect her.

Unless they have named your child nobody will know they are anything to do with you.

But how can OP be sure of that? I don't want to be paranoid, but if someone with a grudge against her saw her out and about with her children, he now knows where her daughter goes to school and that OP or her husband are likely to be turning up to collect and deliver her. He can then follow them home and find out where she lives. This was appallingly irresponsible of the school.

OP, find out who the safeguarding governor is and make sure you write to him or her.

Crikey!

Hopefully, as your DC was not named in the paper, no harm will come of this incident. That doesn't mean it's OK it happened though!

My 7 year old nephew is not allowed to be photographed at school. In his case, it's because he was adopted by DB & SIL and appearing in the local paper or online could result in his violent, abusive, heroin addicted birth father tracking him down to his school.

Lots of children sadly cannot be photo'd for similar reasons - schools really should be watertight with things like this! Mistakes should not be happening!

I suggest you try and assess the risk, your children was not named and your address was nt reported, how will these offenders link the photo to you ?

You also need to examine how many times have people in your profession been targeted ?

One thing you may also wish to make clear that in their workbooks ( primary which I assume this is) which often contain a photo of another child, that the same photo maybe in the other child's workbook too, which goes home with parents at end of year, this may be an issue, sometimes these contain first names. Also if school has fb I'd check that too for any photos, I've seen full names used by some schools on fb. The fact they rang to ask indicates they aren't aware of possible serious repercussions.

"I don't think you have any grounds for suing the school. It is the paper's fault."

How on earth is it the paper's fault? The school knows the child should not be photographed, it's up to them to make sure the child is not in the photo.
Papers are only as good as the information they are given, and in this case the school failed to tell the photographer that said child should not be photographed.

It was a mistake. Your child was not named. The school tried to put it right and there was a mix up. Personally I would ask the school to take much more care in the future. You could put this in writing to them, telling them why you are annoyed and upset. They will then apologise and take more care. Some of the hysterical responses on here about solicitors etc are utterly ridiculous and would be an over reaction, particularly given that your child was not named.

How on earth would a violent offender know a)what your dc looked like and b) able to track you all down from an unnamed photo of an unknown child in the local paper?

YANBU
I agree with most. This is huge. Absolutely unacceptable breach of procedures by the school. These rules exist because of people like you who need their data protected.
To add to the list of possible actions :
Notify OfSted of the breach in data protection.
The school should be registered with the ICO (data protection organisation) so again you could look into informing them (or threaten the school with the above until they take you seriously).

TBH, this is such a massive failure of safeguarding that I wouldn't be inappropriate to cc the letter of complaint to OFSTEd, as well as the HT and governors. Frankly, the school should have ensured the photo was not posted online the moment they found it had been published.

Where does it say that the school isn't taking it seriously?? They alerted her and tried to sort it out by sending an alternative photo. When the paper printed the wrong one, they let her know. It is clearly a mistake which I am sure they are sorry for. What would reporting to all and sundry do? There is v little risk as the children were not named. I must be very dense as I do not see the reason for all this. I think the OPeople should report it to the police just in case though...

It wasn't a newspaper error. At least, it was, obviously, but they should never have been allowed to take the photo in the first place.
Shockingly lax

I would be asking the school to clarify how they dealt with it when you asked them to remove the photo- I find it hard to believe the paper printed it anyway if they were asked not too. Cynical by nature this sounds like bullshit. They never rang the paper.

Secondly ofsted, headteacher meeting to ensure it is explained fully (again) WHY your children cannot be photographed. Secondly to ensure they are watched and handed over ONLY to approved people at all times- recruiting someone specifically for this if necessary and thirdly to ensure this can NEVER happen again.

I wouldn't go down the legal route- it will take money away from the school- but I would threaten if if such a breech happened again.

Can you not change your child's name for school purposes only? I have no idea?

Thank you OP for doing the job you do.

I imagine the school could be placed in special measures if Ofsted got to know. Safeguarding is absolutely fundamental. I'm saying this just to reassure you that YANBU. At the very least they must look at systems properly to ensure it cannot happen again. We are going through an ISI compliance inspection in my independent school right now & would categorically fail over such a serious issue.

It isnt a case of them being sorry but of them taking a serious look at their safeguarding procedures.

Allowing a photographer to even photograph pupils without moving the OP's (and quite possibly other people's) DCs was a failure of their procedures. That was the point at which the system failed.

The OP absolutely should be having very formal meetings with the school. As PPs have demonstrated, some people just dont 'get' the risk. It has to be explained very clearly to them.

My DCs' school had a lot of experience in dealing with complex safeguarding issues. As a result anyone who went into the school to take photographs was supervised very closely.

V worrying and would chase up with school. Don't think I'd be suing tho... Surely that would only draw attention ... And clearly there were no names, so really, no way of I'd ing ur kids, so while bad mistake made, there are no real consequences.

Legally, the newspaper has done nothing wrong here (unless the child is a ward of court, which I'm presuming is not the case). You can't sue them.

You can, however, ring them, ask them to remove the photo from their archive (so it will never be printed again) and ask them also to take it off the website if it's there. They don't legally have to do this, but they most likely will.
Ask to speak to the picture editor. If it's a small paper they might not have one, in which case ask for the news editor. They're your best best for Getting Shit Done.

Your problem, though, is with the school. Newspaper photographers go into schools each and every day of the week and schools should have an up to date list of those children who cannot be photographed, so situations like this never occur. This has been a huge oversight on their part and I would be asking for a meeting with the head ASAP.

I also agree that the school probably never rang the paper to ask them to use a specific photo. If they had, the paper would have spiked the photo with your child on it immediately, purely to stop anything like this from happening.

Don't complain to Ofsted, they do not deal with individual complaints and you must have exhausted the schools complaints procedure first and then LEA, DFES etc.

You need a meeting with the head to find out what happened and what measures they are putting in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. Have they investigated thoroughly etc.? Depending on their response, then you may choose to take it further - formal complaint, ICO etc. You need to feel confident that this isn't going to happen again.

itsmine I'm not sure why you are being unnecessarily pissy on this thread

Anyway OP, you are definitely not being unreasonable. You've had some great advice here, best of luck