School want a letter of apology

[GlassesOn]

My year six son got picked for his schools football team, the team train one day a week and sometimes have matches on those days too. (We all pay £30 per term).

The football coach is quite young, a bit impatient, never speaks to the parents, even after a match, quite dismissive when the boys try to talk to him and I’ve seen him mostly on his phone during training pausing to look up to comment how rubbish they’re are playing is one example.

There have been a few incidents that I haven’t been completely happy with and I told my son I didn’t want him to go back to the team after Christmas but he said he wanted to stay on the team because he had friends in the team etc

First day of January training my husband turns up to pick our son up at the Astro turf pitch (in the school) but no one was there... my husband was confused and went round the school to find them, as no notice had been given to us that training would be held in another place.

After 5 minutes, he found our son in the after school ‘kids club’ because training had finished early (for no reason we’ve heard yet,) he was placed in there as he wasn’t allowed to hang around on his own to wait for his dad, we were told we were being charged £10 for this.

My husband explained to the kids club manager about the training finishing early and if the training had finished at the advertised time on their website then our son wouldn’t have been put into kids club, she agreed to leave off the charge.

Last week my eldest picked her brother up and was told no training had taken place at all, as during the warm up some of the boys were laughing and joking and as punishment they had all been placed on benches in the playground and sat there for over an hour.

My daughter said my son was freezing cold and I phoned the kids club to clarify what had gone on as I was still at work.

I was advised to email a complaint as she wasn’t in charge of the after school clubs, just the kids club which I did.

I received a phone call the next afternoon while at work and got a barrage of attitude by the after school clubs manager, she told me she had investigated the incident throughly that the coach said the kids were acting like animals and put them on the bench until they were ready, I told her I would accept what you’re saying until I’ve spoken to my son again when I got home and if this was the case why didn’t he make them all run around or do some sort of physical exercise as their ‘punishment’? That’s what his old coach used to do if one of them played up, (run around the pitch 3 times etc as that soon made them calm down.“)

It was near freezing that evening and if I stuck my son in the garden for an hour and a half to sit on a bench as punishment I’m sure social services would be called by the school.

I then asked about the previous incident of the coach just packing up whenever he feel like it and she said reconsidering it now she would be charging us £10 for that, as my son wasn’t signed out until 4.50pm even though it took 5 mins for my husband to find where our son was as no note had been left to say training had finished early or moved to another area, but she didn’t want to discuss that.

The head teacher also pulled all the children into her office and told them that they are lying about the incident and it hadn’t been just giggling and that the coach said that they were really naughty.

They have been instructed to write a apology letter to the coach, they also miss their playtime on Monday and are barred from playing on the Astro turf pitch for the rest of term.

So even though all of them say it was just a bit of giggling they are being punished for weeks on end and that’s (after the original punishment of sitting in the cold) & missing their training. Oh and they’ve also being threatened by the head teacher that their year 6 PGL place may be taken away from them (we’ve paid nearly £400 for the trip).

It’s basically the boys word against the coach and the head teacher has decided that the kids are lying.

Am I being unreasonable to ask for clarity regarding the two incidents? I’ve told my son he isn’t going back to training but this time he is also okay with it.

Or should I just let it drop? WWYD?

TheBrilliantMistake

Jogging around the pitch and other activity based sanctions only work if the children can be trusted to do it sensibly.

Refuse to pay the £10 because it was not authorised care by you and was forced upon you by a coach who lost control and made the decision to put him in there. Had he run the club to the advertised times it would not be an issue.
Get son to write apology letter simply dear coach, sorry for being cheeky. From ds.
As to the multiple punishments, that is ridiculous. Punish once then move on. They were punished in the club so there is no need for anything else and to do so is bang out of order for a bit of cheek.
Schools will threaten removal from trips but they also know the value of them. Don't worry too much about this aspect.
You all need to complain about multi punishments, the short sessions and the experience of this coach when handling boisterous kids.

Beneficial health wise, I doubt they'd actually enjoy doing it (ergo a punishment).
Yes, of course if they can't behave well enough to do that, then there's no alternative but to take them indoors and wait for parents (not to palm them off to an after school club). He could have waited for parents to arrive and explained to them precisely why the session was abandoned.

If the school have accepted that the children were made to sit for the bulk of the session in freezing temperatures as a punishment I would focus my complaint around that following the school complaints procedure.
My son is hard as nails and has carried on matches with blood dripping from his face but I had to take him home from football training early a few weeks ago as he was in physical pain from the cold due to the temperature and it not being a session where they did much running. The coach has been careful to make sure all players have been kept moving for the entire session since.
If they have been made to sit for a long time in zero degrees as punishment that is abusive and the level of messing around is irrelevant. I wouldn't care if my child had been dancing the jig with his pants on his head using the pain of freezing cold is corporal punishment and unacceptable.
And it goes without saying that the after school club could whistle for their £10. I may consider an apology for rudeness when I saw if my son was going to get one for the appalling way he was treated.

I think there are several separate issues.

1. You should not be charged for DS going to the after school club as he was only there due to football training finishing early and without prior notice to parents that this would be the case. It seems this is not the first time and there are other concerns about the competence of the coach.
2. From what you've said, the children were playing up a bit and your DS was somewhat rude. I agree that an apology for this and ONLY this could be offered. However, the children were punished at the time (harshly, IMO) by having to sit on the benches outside for a long time in the cold. I wouldn't be too impressed with this punishment- and would let the school know that I was unimpressed- but it can't be changed so I would expect that to be the end of the matter.
3. Having already been punished, the school are now applying further punishments. Why? What changed? I don't this is an appropriate way to manage what sounds to have been a reasonably low level incident of children mucking about and then being somewhat rude. From what OP says it seems once school were challenged, it all kicked off: the payment which had been waived was suddenly demanded again; extra punishments added and further sanctions threatened. This is odd to me- sounds like someone in the school doesn't like anyone questioning their actions.

In OPs position, I would be sending a letter querying the schools version of events and why they feel the need to impose further punishments than the one they were given at the time of the incident? And request a meeting with the head teacher- within the next few days. That is ample time for her to be able to arrange a meeting.

I would also refuse to pay the £10 and explain why- if they take it any further I would go to the governors. If you don't get a satisfactory response regarding the reasons for extra punishments, then I would also complain to the governors.

When there's a national obesity issue with children, let them run.
Each unto their own, but if you can combine a punishment with a workout - why not?

As a kid, I loved football, sitting in silence would have been an easier option than jogging round the pitch for me though. Hated that!

No problem with punishments being dull but being sat still in 0 degrees for a while training session will have been painful. Especially as the boys would have been dressed for running around. Not on at all.
And the whole attitude of the schools stinks. Deciding to change their mind about charging for the after school club because the op complained about something else. The after school club that the op hadn't even asked for him to attend.
I would follow the complaints policy as far as you need to op. They need to know they can't treat children and parents the way they are doing.

It sounds like the coach has behaviour management problems and the school needs to pick another provider, TBH.

I think this needs to go to governors with a concern expressed along those lines.

I wouldn't care if the boys had recreated fight club, you don't make a 10 year old sit outside in the freezing cold for an hour as punishment. I'd be livid.
I am a teacher so I would support the school if I thought you were being unreasonable. And probably, I do imagine the boys were probably being very naughty (the amount of times I have heard "but we were just laughing/picking my pen up etc etc), but there are no excuses.
I'd get the other parents together and write a formal complaint to the governors about what has happened. In all likelihood, he is probably a self-employed coach and not a member of the staff at the school so there will be very little the school can do other than fire him.

It's not his job to train them. He isn't paid to do it.

Is the ASC (not the football coach) part of the school or is that run by a separate organisation? Our school does that so in that case you'd have 3 separate entities. The school, the football coaching firm and the ASC.
The ASC shouldn't have accepted a random child when the football coach left early.
The football coach shouldn't have left early unless it was an emergency in which case there should be a procedure to follow and parents notified.
The football coach doesn't sound very capable at his job.
The boys shouldn't have been mucking about but the football coach should be able to handle it and if it's too bad they should be 'expelled' from the club.
Assuming the ASC is separate and the boys behaved there then it's really not the head's business. The football coaching company should pay the ASC.

If it was my kids school it wouldn't be a problem as he wouldn't be allowed to volunteer anymore.

And it being a parent volunteer makes perfect sense to me. I doubt they'd fanny around with letters of apology if it was a teacher who was cheeked.

I'm not sure if he is a volunteer, I'll be able to find out, I think our fees pay for him? The pitch is in the school grounds, so no fees to hire that. He is also there in lunchtimes on the pitch to supervise the kids.

To be honest, it's not all that clear which body is responsible for this...

I have been assuming the 'coach' is a teacher running the school team, especially given the 30.00 a term charge which sounds much more like a school covering basic costs of nets / balls / kit, but I could be wrong.

Then there's the after school club, which may be run by the school, or some private firm. It would make some sense, if the teacher (the guy in question) had detained them in the afterschool club which is still under the control of the school, and it would explain why the headteacher is claiming a 10.00 charge (if it was a private firm, the headteacher wouldn't be the one asking for the money).

We've not really had the clearest picture of who is who here!

I am a social worker and I actually think that a LADO referral should be made about this football coach. LADO is the designated local authority officer who deals with safeguarding issues against professionals who work with children and it is definitely a LADO issue.

You can make the LADO referral yourself, OP. You don't have to rely on the HT to do it if you aren't confident that they will deal wirr the issue properly (which they haven't)

It sounds like he's a teacher if he's supervising the kids at lunch too!
I don't know any 'hired' sports supervisors who supervise kids on lunch!

OP I would definitely go in and speak to the Head on Monday - fuck the "no discussion without prior appointment" bullshit, I would be going to the school office and refuse to leave until the headteacher came to speak to me, even if it meant that I had to sit there all day.

I would also go with everything written down because you have 3 very distinct issues - 1) Your child being sent to ASC (and the safeguarding issue of not telling parents of changes to the schedule) 2) Excessive punishment 3) Not getting the football training you're paying for - that can all bleed into each other but all require 3 different responses.

1. You did not put your child into ASC so you are not responsible for any "attendance fees" incurred. If the coach decides to end the practice early then that is his choice, but he is still responsible for those children until the pre-agreed time for parents to collect their children. If he sends them to ASC to bridge that time then it is his responsibility to cover any fees incurred as it was his decision to send the children there, not the parents'.

Also there's the safeguarding issues - 1) I would assume the ASC has ratios of supervisors/children ... if they suddenly get an extra load of children dumped on them from the football session, then do they have adequate adults to the new children ratio? 2) The parents weren't informed where their children were - if I went to pick up my DD from her club venue to find it empty I would panic that something terrible had happened. A note pinned to the gate saying "Unexpected emergency, session cancelled, children are at ASC in Room 123. Apologies, Coach" or even having someone from the ASC keeping an eye out for the football club parents is better than just letting parents wander round the school looking for their children 3) Just because a child is allowed to walk home alone, doesn't mean you can just let them leave if the session finishes early - some parents I know have their kids stay for extra curriculars because they won't get home from work until 4.30/4:45 but by the time the child has finished and walked home it will be 5pm so they know they will definitely be home to let them in. If one of those children was allowed to leave the school at 4pm, they would not be able to get in their house and would be left unsupervised when their parents think they are being looked after.

My DD stays after school most days, some days it is ASC because I need the wraparound care, other days it is purely for clubs because she enjoys the activity. If a club ended early I would rather they phoned me to collect her early because we only live 5 minutes down the road and I am available so she doesn't need to be there ... if they put her in ASC on those days then I would not be paying for it as I have not agreed to this arrangement.

2. The boys were made to sit outside in the cold for 90 minutes, were told off by the HT, missed play time, banned from using school resources (astro), have been ordered to write an apology and have been threatened with losing out on (again, paid for) PGL trip places. All because they were messing around and being cheeky. That is OTT, and I used to teach that age group myself so I know how hard work they can be!

Firstly, either the club is run by the school or it's run by an outside company, if it's an outside company then the school should not be giving further punishments relating to in-school activities as they are not related, and if it is a school run club then they should be abiding by the existing policies regarding consequences for bad behaviour, of which this is clearly excessive.

Secondly, I would expect that any good coach would not just abandon the session if they were being minorly disruptive - there are many other ways to punish children whilst still doing something productive with the session. They could have been made to do laps or repetitive drills and skills activities for the whole session, or the coach could have said that they wouldn't be playing their favourite games/drills that week or if they normally spend the last 20 minutes playing a 5 a side game (for example) then the coach could have reduced the game time to 10 minutes and used the other 10 minutes for them doing something boring etc. If they were being majorly disruptive to the point where "sitting in silence and not doing anything" was a reasonable punishment then the coach should have taken them inside (whether to the sports hall, the changing rooms or some part of the school building) to carry it out.

I used to teach extra curricular English classes when I worked abroad and if I had a session where the children just. would. not. listen. or. behave. then we would occasionally have to sit in silence and do nothing but I would inform their parents of what had happened ASAP. For those children who were picked up I would speak to the person collecting them and explain we had made less progress than usual that day because of XYZ behaviour which culminated in them having to sit silently for the latter part of the session. For those who went home by themselves, I would write a note either in their school planner or put a sealed note in their bag to say their behaviour had been less than impressive and therefore they had not done any work because they had been punished, and the parents were more than welcome to contact me if they had any questions, issues or wanted any further details.

3. You have paid for these coaching sessions (even just £30 a term) and yet your child is not getting those sessions - there has been 4 weeks since the start of term so 4 potential sessions (assuming extra curriculars ran as soon as they started back). Of those 4 sessions at least one has finished significantly early (it would have taken time to collect up any equipment, get all the boys' kit/bags together, get them from the pitch to the location of the ASC and get them settled before their parents arrived so it's not like the session finished just a couple of minutes early) and another was spent doing nothing so your child has only actually received a maximum of 2 full sessions. This is not acceptable when you are paying for your child to receive a full session every week and I would be asking for them to either fulfil their obligation to provide a full coaching session every week or refund your money.