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.

Thank you OP for doing the job you do.

Ummm...

We had a similar situation, though slightly less serious potential outcomes. (Adopter)

I phoned school and asked to see HT.
He knew what it was as soon as he saw me holding copy of paper.
He apologised profusely.
He immediately (got a member of office staff) to contact paper to get online photo taken down.

He then checked how it had occurred.
Paper was meant to send photo for checking with school, and hadn't.
I was satisfied with this plus assurance they read riot act to paper.
I knew school was normally very good on this issue as had had children at school for a number of years and seen how they handled photos.
I believe that now wherever possible school now checks photos on camera before paper leaves site to delete any photos with high risk children in it. (As well as asking to confirm chosen photo).

generally

1. make your child aware they are not to be in photos and any external photographer they should query with teacher whether they should step to the side.
2. make their class teacher and TA aware directly (not via office) of no photo rule and reason for it
3. make sure on forms for office you don't just say 'no' but you put a great big arrow by it too to draw attention
4. before any events such as nativity shows remind teacher / Key stage leader or whoever of your no photo rule

And op YANBU. sorry this has happened to you, must be a scary time. Hope you get some answers

I taught at a school (Not in the UK) where we had pupils who were the off-spring of diplomats at the Israeli Embassy.

Def no photos. In fact body guards were parked outside the school on a daily basis

Am I right that there are two mistakes here?

1. OP's child is photographed in the first place.

1. The school 'liaised with the paper' to supply a version of the pic without OP's child but either sent the wrong one or paper ignored/missed it.

No 2 could be the fault of either school or paper. No 1 is the fault of the school and 'very sorry' isn't worth much.

Can they guarantee that OP's child has never been photographed at any other time? Doesn't sound like it.

As others have said it is a big hole in their safeguarding procedure but it is one which is easily fixed.
Your child should never have been in the photo but the school did try to fix this and it isn't their fault that the paper went ahead and printed.
I would push for an immediate staff training session about this issue to bring it to the forefront of the teachers' minds.
If you still feel the school aren't taking it seriously then take things further, but give them a chance to rectify their mistake.

"2. The school 'liaised with the paper' to supply a version of the pic without OP's child but either sent the wrong one or paper ignored/missed it."

Or the school sent the new picture but didn't say WHY they wanted needed it used and the paper preferred to use the (likely far better) picture taken by their own photographer rather than the supplied one.

Does it really matter if the child wasn't named? The school got lucky in that in this case it's a mitigating factor. What if due to similar laxity in applying their procedures a picture of a child had been published where just their image being out there placed them in danger? They need to overhaul their procedures ASAP and count their blessings.

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?

This is what I'm wondering?

Don't get me wrong - this absolutely shouldn't have happened, because you made it clear to the school it shouldn't. But I can't understand how this puts your child in danger in any way. Can someone explain it to me (hopefully non-arsily, since I'm not trying to be difficult but just don't understand)?

Richard bucket - no, OP doesn't need to explain her reasons to you. But she has valid reasons which she feels affect her child. Nuff said.

As an aside, from the paper's perspective, as a news editor I'd be very pissed off with the school for allowing this to happen.

I'd mentally take them off my "schools that make for a good pic story" list and avoid sending a photographer there again, in the knowledge their safeguarding procedures aren't in order.

The thing is it is a balance for parents.

The OP could reduce risk by removing any OK for any photos at all. That way their child would know to never allow their picture to be taken in school.
However that would mean child never got the fun of seeing their photo internally displayed, or on a copy of their report, or whatever. It would make the child feel even more 'different' than just not being allowed to be in external photos.

It is a balance and the OP needs to decide risks versus impact in her situation. Human error happens. Policies and procedures can only go so far. Which is why I don't just rely on the office but do direct reminding too.

fc301 the point in posting asking for views in AIBU is that you are seeking opinions. If this means that people can only post if they agree with the OP then it makes it rather a useless exercise. RichardBucket asked for someone to explain the danger to the OP's child in a non arsey way - seemingly no chance of that then!

Richard - it is okay to ask. The answer is that I'm not sure, but there are various possibilities. The one that stopped me from my historical response of rolling my eyes when told not to have social media was that facial recognition technology is now becoming more easily available and it's accessibility and power is increasing over time. Photos will linger and what is not a risk right now may be a risk in 5 years time. Something in the public domain, particularly online, can be searched using facial recognition. If someone I work with got hold of a photo of me with my family, they can carry out such a search. I'd never post a photo like that online but have little control over my extended family. So say the grandparents put a photo up of us all, there is an immediate link between me and child. Offender searches regularly for my last name. Finds photo due to shared last name with family. Run search on all individuals in photo, find child's face in that school photo, turn up at school and wait.

Unlikely? Yes. Highly, highly unlikely. But offenders can have a lot of time on their hands and some have a lot of money to indulge their rage. Some become obsessive.

If I didn't make a fuss about this, it also lowers the bar, so people think it's ok to post various stuff online etc, making it even easier for somebody so inclined to join the dots. A photo like this is a puzzle piece. Alone, it isn't the end of the world. But it is contributing to lowering our safety, and it was wholly unnecessary.

Technically for this to be a high risk situation, an offender would only need to link my face to my child's face, or my child's name to my child's face. Unlikely, but made more likely by school allowing this photo to be published.

Does that answer your question?

shake Excellent answer that also covers the risk for adoptees of facial recognition software.

We'll probably revisit this issue in December when we get all the 'why can't we take photos of nativity and post them on FB threads' including the perennial 'why should one child's need for privacy outweigh great aunt maud seeing my special snowflake on social media' and 'the adopted child should just not be in the show or they should wear a mask' comments.

Why on earth was a press photographer allowed into a school classroom to take photos? I can understand that a school wants good publicity, but they shouldn't use children just as a commodity to achieve that.

And why didn't the school first make sure that no vulnerable children would be included? Given the massive (and quite right) emphasis on safeguarding, the school should have organised their publicity a hell of a lot better.

It's only through Mumsnet and friends of my adult offspring who have adopted that I've realised why some children shouldn't be photographed/used for publicity/filmed at school productions. The risk is unquantifiable, so should be reduced to zero.

As for the idea that children (even at secondary schools) should publicly absent themselves from photographs because the teacher doesn't know if they're potentially vulnerable - well, that's a "good" way for that child to flag up to others that there's a problem. Cue unwarranted questioning or even bullying.

Whatever any parent's reasons for their child not being included in a publicly available photograph, the school is seriously in breach of just about every protocol I can think of.

Schools should be a safe place for all the children.

To those asking why it matters when this is a relatively small breach (e.g. the child's name was not published), it matters very much. This incident was small potatoes. If the school's policies and procedures are insufficient to stop it then they will be woefully inadequate in the face of a major breach.

I know it doesn't feel like it, OP, but positive things can come of this. You will have a clearer understanding of what went wrong and of what you can expect from the school in the future.

icy our school standardly has press in at Christmas for nativity shows etc. You also get press in when school has won a competition, had a good Ofsted or whatever.

Lots of children can't be photoed for various of reasons.

• parental separation / custody issues
• parents work in police/SW/etc
• adoption
• parent just hasn't bothered to return consent form

At our school when doing a cast photo they pull them off stage and they do a job / watch / help photographer (my DD particularly likes that). It is done naturally with no big fuss. One year my elder was made a school councillor for the day to show round VIPs to avoid TV cameras. She thought that was fab.

It really is a balance for schools and parents. It is nice to see pictures of your school in the paper, and the majority of kids and families love to see their child in the paper. But there need to be steps to ensure those that shouldn't appear, don't. Each individual parent will have their own assessment of the risk to their child.

The biggest problem imo is still other parents and social media.

Op, I completely understand your concerns here, however as you have said, the risk is minimal.

In this situation I'm sure your priority is to ensure there is no repeat. The best way to address this would be to worm with the school, a letter with your concerns, and proposals would be sufficient. I don't see how legal advice would help in this situation. I wish you all the best.

OP while the school have made a mistake here it seems they have made an effort to rectify it and have kept you in the loop and let you know as soon as possible when the wrong photo was published. Rather than going in all Gina blazing o would use this as an opportunity to work with the school on their safeguarding policy. Speak to the headteacher definitely because you do want this to trigger a review of their policy including things like better training for staff on the reasons for not taking photos of some children etc, ensuring the adequate dissemination of information on the children who can not be in photos. Staff should remind themselves of which children these are before external photographers can take photos. The school should make sure it has pre approval for all photos after they are taken and again before they are published.
You need to find out exactly what was said and agreed on between the newspaper and the school after they realised your children were included in this photo, who at the paper made the decision to publish the wrong photo? Use a solicitor to speak to the paper to ensure that the photo is not available anywhere online.

Use a solicitor to speak to the paper to ensure that the photo is not available anywhere online

Don't do this. The paper hasn't done anything legally wrong, so why involve a solicitor? Just speak to them yourself and they'll sort it.