To ask if you’ve ever complained about a teacher

[Justwondering14]

It seems the view is that this shouldn’t ever be done.

I have complained a few times. Once about a male member of staff telling my fifteen year old she looked like she was enjoying that in a suggestive way when she had a lollipop.

Is it always ‘wrong’, then? I’m not a teacher ...

Staples - the first incident is surely a joke? Before they changed GCSE RE last year the course was all about beliefs, morals and ethics. The RE teacher eould say contreversial things to startba discussion.
The second incident vould not have been based in any truth (im not saying the teacher didnt say it) because you can not hold QTS with a criminal conviction. You wouldnt pass the CRB check.

because you can not hold QTS with a criminal conviction. You wouldnt pass the CRB check.

That isn't the case. The enhanced check is designed to check whether there is any criminal history that makes you unsuitable to work with children and young people. Some convictions wouldn't present such a concern, and discretion would be exercised.

There was a teacher who spent time in jail for fraud ... he did his PGCE after his prison sentence

I will add with regards to my situation with ds and the science teacher I did have a thread on here. Maisypops was extremely helpful and encouraged me to enquire further because she could tell things didn't sit right.
For example - teacher told me ds was leaving room in tears and stating that it's because other children were throwing his stuff. (Ds has asd and struggles in some situations). I asked her what was happening then if his version was untrue. She told me she didn't see but didn't believe ds. She also told me he was responsible for 50% of all problems in her class because "he's socially immature and his writing is illegible".
I suggested she read his EHCP which explains his needs due to his asd and cp.
it eventually came to a head when she rang me to say ds had 3 afterschool hour long detentions for adding something to a science experiment causing it to bubble over. I didn't disbelieve her totally but ds denied it and due to his anxiety and necessity to follow events rule to the letter it didn't sound like something he would do.
She told me "well I have 20 students who can all give identical witness statements about what ds did".

All I did was question how it was that my ds was the one never on task, yet out of a class of 25, 20 students were all watching my ds intently (he was working on a table alone) and only 4 were doing what they should have been (their own experiments).

I'm pretty sure when the HOY replied about needing to move him classes he totally believed that ds description of her targeting him was true.

youarenotkiddingme

So you never got to the bottom of whether he tampered with a science experience in a potentially dangerous way? Did it really matter why the other students were watching him, more than it mattered why he did it?

She may well have been a dreadful teacher, but in that situation it's hard to tell.

“If you, as a teacher, lost control of a whole crowd of teenagers, would you not reflect on that and try to think of ways to prevent it happening in the future?“

Of course. I’m an experienced teacher who moved schools & found behaviour a nightmare to deal with initially, especially with one particular class. I regularly removed pupils - up to 6 at a time - to work elsewhere. They have to be the worst class I’ve ever tried to teach (and I don’t say that lightly) They were notoriously badly behaved throughout the school & most staff found them hard work. As a new member of staff, it felt like an impossible task. I had a full repertoire of strategies to use from past experience (10 years of teaching) & tried everything I could think of. Everything I tried seemed to result in a complaint. It was definitely pack mentality. On a one to one basis, they were nice children, but as a class they were awful. On one ocassion, a supply teacher had to cover them & she called SLT for help. When asked who she wanted to remove, she remarked ‘all of them’

''If the sanction system is that you get a warning, then a short detention, then you are asked to leave the room, the kids are very well aware that a new teacher will be frowned upon by senior management for sending more out multiple children. So, they test you. Child 1 and 2 play up, are duly sent out. Child 3 thinks, 'She's not going to send out three, so copies the behaviour.

What they are trying to do is to get you to lower your expectations and stop applying the policy. This would be a mistake.''

Actually this does not just apply to new teachers, in some bad schools i have worked at the pressure is to keep the kids in the class.

boilerhouse2007

Exactly. I've had managers I would regard as effective teachers say, 'We strongly encourage you to keep children in the classroom wherever possible.'

And I am thinking, erm, why? Why isn't a warning enough? Why do Jack, Jill and Francis get to ruin learning for 27 other students, every fucking lesson? Get them warned, get them sanctioned, get them out of there.

It works.

Perhaps its my schools policy then. A clean criminal record is a requirement on the application form.

'' As a new member of staff, it felt like an impossible task. I had a full repertoire of strategies to use from past experience (10 years of teaching) & tried everything I could think of. Everything I tried seemed to result in a complaint.''

Yep if a class are arrogant enough and a school is badly managed kids will throw their dummies out of their pram the second you try to get control back in the class. If you go for help you look like the problem. And the kids wonder why we struggle to recruit staff in our school and teachers keep resigning....

Pengggwn Exactly. I've had managers I would regard as effective teachers say, 'We strongly encourage you to keep children in the classroom wherever possible.'

And I am thinking, erm, why? Why isn't a warning enough? Why do Jack, Jill and Francis get to ruin learning for 27 other students, every fucking lesson? Get them warned, get them sanctioned, get them out of there.

It works.''

The worst is when you remove x, y and z kid and it turns out there is no consequence about it other than them being removed and they just go to their next lesson after....In my experience 0 tolerance with consequence and follow up across the school is the only strategy that works, if not you are setting up staff to fail. Why SLT don't do this is beyond me...

boilerhouse2007

It's ridiculous, isn't it? Blaming the teacher just cements the opinion of the kids that sensible, respectful behaviour is optional.

Don't like the teacher? Piss about and he/she will be blamed, then will leave.

Bored with the topic? Piss about and the teacher will be blamed for not 'engaging' you?

Prefer to be walking around all lesson than doing reading or writing? Piss about enough, and the teacher will start to drop the reading and the writing because you're 'kinaesthetic learners'.

No wonder they fail.

She may well have been a dreadful teacher, but in that situation it's hard to tell

In this instance (being privy to the backstory) she was. It was awful.

Pengggwn Yep worse then is when the label the kid with some SN[the excuse for all bad behaviour today] which is a license to do as they please. Or when managers tell you condescending crap like try some new strategies....if kids are arrogant enough no strategy is going to work.

I laugh in despair not mirth these days as I see behaviour management videos or hear bm advise which is as detached from reality as Santa Clause.... I laugh louder when the media keep asking why teachers keep resigning and leaving the UK.... it is because the job has become a complete insufferable mess. No wonder the schools fail these days too.

No we never got to the bottom of what happened in science. I do know the experiment bubbled over as ds admits it. He doesn't know why and it happened when he'd gone to take his equipment back to the table - confirmed by teacher.
She says he deliberately did something. Ds admits he may have done experiment wrong (ds has MLD and so he could possibly have misread the instructions).
However this came at the end of a whole host of 'incidents'.
Ds loves science - he has always done really well in it. Within a week of being in this teachers lesson he'd scrubbed it off his timetable.
Incidents included:
Putting his hand up to ask where his book was after given out by other student - another student finds in on floor and teacher accused ds of throwing it. (Teacher admits she didnt see him throw it buts there's no other explanation )
Ds leaving class as part of his Sen plan - him explaining what upset him and her saying that isn't what happened. (She told me she doesn't actually know what happened but doesn't believe DS version ).
Supply teacher one day put another student in detention for walking across classroom and putting ds in a headlock. Teacher returned next day and gave ds a double punishment to other kid as when he hadn't let go ds stabbed his hand with the pen he was holding. Ds hadn't moved from his seat the whole time.

The tyrade of punishing him more and more elaborately began after I spoke to HOY re the stab/headlock incident and said I didn't think it was fair to punish ds more heavily - said I questioned why another teacher applied a punishment when my present - but yet agreed ds would attend equal punishment against by better judgement as I support school. It was the HOY who actually decided during our discussion that in fact ds should have a lesser punishment.

The most interesting part of this story is that - the child who gave out books, the child throwing ds stuff, the child putting him in a headlock and the child stood by his experiment calling the teacher over to see what ds has done is all the same student. Which HOY knew and recognised picked on ds.

youarenotkiddingme

I've had students say I was just punishing them for the sake of it. I never, ever am. In every case where a student has complained about being punished 'all the time' in my classroom, the student is doing something to warrant their punishment, even if they can't see it.
But fair enough, if your DS was behaving himself in his seat and someone put him in a headlock, that can't reasonably be seen as his fault. Were statements taken to establish whether your DS stabbed the other boy?

Parent hat on, not teacher hat.
Incidents with children that have SN, as a parent I always backed up every verbal conversation with school with an email that re-stated what they had said, what I had said and anything that had been agreed on. Always in a polite, unambiguous and factual manner. Then we both had a record, nothing could be ‘lost’ or ‘reinterpreted’ as an email gives you time and date. Paper trail is essential.

Pengggwn - being accused of punishing pupils for the sake of it really rankles. Why on earth would anyone want to do that!? At my last school, I was accused of ‘bullying’ a Y9 pupil who wanted to just sit in my lesson & do no work at all. Obviously I pulled him up on it & got his HOY involved. He was actually quite bright, but really underachieving. He kept regressing as everybody seemed more interested in placating him & his parents. A colleague of mine was then accused of bullying him when she had him in Y10. Then surprise, surprise he accused another teacher of bullying him in Y11. All accusations fully supported by the parent. One of the Assistant Heads remarked, ‘There seems to be a pattern here’ Unfortunately, it was too late by then & he did pretty badly in his GCSEs.

There are always going to be things that warrant a complaint, but unfortunately there are a lot of people who waste time, just as there are with complaints in any field, and this makes it harder for genuine complaints to be heard. Then there are people who think they have a genuine problem or concern but they really don't - you see these sorts of threads all the time on here - and they make up the vast, vast majority of issues.

Parents have complained to me about:

• washable paint
• play dough under shoes
• children's pe shoes being too tight because "I didn't put them on properly" (yes honestly, in Y2!)
• lost items of clothing which have been moved to the lost property box
• a child's after school club, which is a totally separate entity from school
• not being able to read a volunteer parents signature in reading book
• having too quiet an atmosphere (during an assessed writing session)

It gets really frustrating.

Many times, parents just need to see what a normal day in school looks like and they are much more appreciative of what is a problem and what is not.

I'd say that most of the sorts of things being described on this thread are part of the 1% of issues that really need sorting, which don't get the time and attention they deserve because of the other 99% of "problems" that the staff are dealing with.

A bit of common sense is what's needed! And be aware that many people will be happy to whip up a drama for no other reason than it's a bit of fun to watch someone else getting annoyed about nothing.

PixieN

Exactly. I have neither the time nor the inclination to bully students. And if I did, what are the chances I would select the rudest, most disruptive children? Wouldn't I choose someone less likely to make my life a misery?

Yes, when DD was in Y3 she asked to go to the toilet. The teacher gave her permission but then as she was getting up told her actually no she couldn't go because she thought the only reason she had asked was so she could have a look at the firefighters that were visiting the adjacent classroom. She ended up wetting herself. I was absolutely fuming, I didn't work every hour under the sun to send three kids to private school for treatment like that! Honestly, even though dd just graduated it still gets my blood boiling.

Staples - the first incident is surely a joke? - actually Loki I've toned it down just for the sake of brevity; the teacher also said a lot of people in this room are going to hell, and said that he personally didn't believe in pre-history. He finished it off with "not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim", I could go on - this was also the man caught watching porn in class, but as the other teacher said, it was ok as it was not child porn. First time my DD then aged 11 had ever heard of child porn so certainly an education yeah? If I told you more, bearing in mind you don't believe me, you would think I was mad.

The teacher "in prison for domestic violence" apparently was lying to make himself look good with the boys in his class; this was the basis of my complaint about him. He also introduced the lads to his writing wherein he described women as being hoes, and outlined the reasons behind taking up teaching so as to pass on his masturbatory techniques. This was part of a stand up act he did, but that's ok as it was funny. Sat in a room of mostly boys my then 14 year old DD didn't find it as hilarious as the rest of them.

I do have more, but hey, we're all lying.