To complain about TA comment

[dungandbother]

Dd was told off by a (strict) TA to untuck her PE T-shirt because it didn't look right.

I am outraged that she would comment on the appearance of a child and how they choose to wear their PE kit.
Yr 6 if it matters.

DD always tucks her shirt in because she doesn't like the feel of the waistband on her skin - no matter which uniform she's wearing.

Should I write and complain ?

My DH is a headteacher in a secondary school and he says that primary schools pass on information about all DC. He says that if there are any particular concerns or incidents with a particular DC, these will be discussed in person.

Says he'd probably give the DC involved a week's detention as soon as they start in September to get this 'king of the castle' behaviour out of them.

So the children who have reacted by cutting the TAs photo out are called awful names and it's been decided by some that they are terrible people who are destined to become awful adults.

But the TA who has history of being horrible to the kids is found to be completely free from blame and we should all feel sorry for her.

Madness !

Says he'd probably give the DC involved a week's detention as soon as they start in September to get this 'king of the castle' behaviour out of them.

Wow, your husband sounds awful.

I suspect that what happened was that one of the children (there were probably girls and boys involved) started this and then their mates joined in. If then got out of hand, that would be typical of children that age, it's a kind of herd mentality.

A week's detention is an appropriate penalty, it fits the crime. The problem is that it will be a long time after the event, so it won't have much impact. If one of my DDs were to be involved in an incident like that, I would want to know so that DH and I could exact a penalty, e.g. docking pocket money or limiting screen time.

I wasn't saying that they shouldn't face consequences, I was saying that they shouldn't be demonised, and that the TA in question might well be a bully.

But they will most likely have difficult bosses or line managers to deal with when they're in the working world, so they need to learn to suck it up.

But they will most likely have difficult bosses or line managers to deal with when they're in the working world, so they need to learn to suck it up.

Difficult and bullying are two different things though. You might suck it up if you had a difficult manager but if they were a bully you would go over their head and have them disciplined. No one should have to work with someone like that and people should learn from childhood they don’t have to put up with it. Childishly cutting up pictures (and they are children after all) obviously isn’t the answer but neither is doing nothing if they really are a bully.

Part of my remit is that oversee P7/S1 transitions and we would most definitely have this information passed to us as part of the formal (albeit last minute!) process. Staff need to be aware of the situation for future reference. And of parental engagement or response - should there be any. Forwarded os forearmed and all that

True, if it becomes bullying then you make a complaint to HR. But you have to learn to hold your tongue in the interim. If you were to lash out verbally, or exchange rude jokes with your colleagues about the line manager in question. If you did anything like that at work you'll find yourself facing a disciplinary.

@Iwasjustabouttosaythat

Nope, he just runs a tight ship where all DC know what's expected of them and what will happen if they don't comply.

He runs a '3 strikes and you're out' policy at his place. This incident would have been strike number 1, and resulted in a week's external exclusion if it had happened at his school.

Cauliflowersqueeze

That kind of thing wouldn’t be written down. It would be explained over the phone.

Not true. Not true at all.

I’ve found in my years doing transition that primaries are happy to tell you everything on the phone or verbally in person but are reluctant to write it down.

I'd bet the Secondary will be prewarned at the very least to keep an eye out for more behaviour like this from this group of charmers

Why assume that they're all going to the same secondary school? Or that they will be together in the same class when they get there?

@SunShades, no secondary school headteacher worth his salt would impose a week's detention on new pupils based on a second-hand account of something that is alleged to have happened in primary school - not least because it would make him look dictatorial and ridiculous.

The "three strikes and they're out" policy is directly contrary to statutory guidance and therefore illegal, if he runs a maintained state school or academy in the UK. Does he?

He runs a free school @GnotherGnu .

In England or Wales, @SunShades? Does he know how the exclusion rules work in relation to free schools?

@GnotherGnu I'm in Scotland and 99% of primary pupils will go to their catchment secondary. Of course they probably won't all be in the same class at secondary but it's still part of effective transition planning to inform of significant events/behaviours such as has been displayed here. I was involved in a similar case a couple of years ago actually. Are you a teacher?

Where we are, in West Yorkshire, there are 2 secondary schools that our DDs could go to, but most are going to the one that is nearest to us, so that's probably where they'll go.

I would think it would be a good thing if an incident like this was reported to the secondary school the children involved are going to. I do think, as I said before, that it's too long after the event for the school to inflict a sanction on the children so long after the event. And there must be quite a lot of children who have behaved badly at primary school, are they going to sanction all of them?

But marking their cards would be a good thing, it could make at least some of them think before they do something like that again. They should have been reprimanded at the time, indeed why didn't the class teacher intervene in the first place??

It strikes me as unusual that many girls would feel so strongly about this teacher.

Maybe this TA is a bit creepy and it has never been dealt with.

Maybe she's an accident waiting to happen

Maybe it's the usual case of teaching staff closing ranks and sweeping an issue under t carpet.

Maybe just maybe these girls' instincts are right. But difficult to articulate. And the only way they are heard is by cutting her face out.

Because people who are supposed to look out for them call them silly or bitchy.

Because when this TA made a weird comment on a girls appearance that could have carried innuendo that couldn't be communicated in the spoken or written form, she was dismissed???

butty it wasn’t girls who did this, that was an assumption of Queen’s. Agree that you’d think the adults in charge (not SunShade’s DH, of course, and why am I not surprised he’s the HT of a free school??) would want to know what elicited such a vicious reaction. BTW, where I am Year 6 kids go on to at least 10 different schools, if you include those going private.

In our local primary schools, pupils tend to spread out to around eight different secondary schools. So you really cannot assume that one particular pupil group will inevitably fetch up in the same secondary school.

Oh God, how could I have missed the creepy TA thing? Its so obvious now.
Creeping away for 6 years and not a murmer from anybody but Lo and Behold, a sharp word about a skirt and its all out in the open.

Creeping away for 6 years and not a murmer from anybody but Lo and Behold, a sharp word about a skirt and its all out in the open.

Most likely, most parents just don't complain so the staff who act like this get away with it. Or schools deal with it quietly, if at all.

so now the TA is some sort of pervert?

Pervert ??????

Not a murmer from anybody? Someone is murmuring now and being told to shut up. Could have been lots of murmers.

Unlikely yes but with the evidence- children have reacted with such hostility to an individual teacher. Is anyone going to ask why?

It''s no longer unusual for children to react with hostility to strict teachers.Too many of them are not used to being told off at home and they can't cope with it at school. Cutting out the TA's picture was a horrible thing to do and must have hugely upsetting for the poor woman. I find it utterly appalling that the OP thought it was funny. And I still can't accept that saying the daughter's tucked in shirt don't look right was so terrible. We weren't there. It may have looked odd for whatever reason and the teacher was trying to be helpful. Some have you have hung, drawn and quartered her without even a hint of a fair trial.