that the school didn't tell me about my SEN child being left unattended

[myheartskipsskipsabeat]

My son has SEN and full time support in school, he's in year 3.

He has a TA assigned to him who we know very well socially for over 20 years. We have kept this relationship quiet from the school.

A new headteacher has recently joined and seems to wants to change all the staffing structure and has made a lot of changes and some staff have been forced out.

The TA left my son unattended in a room for a minute while she went to get something from another room. My son was fine and was quietly doing an activity. The TA was caught by the headteacher who is now dealing with the whole incident as a disciplinary matter. The TA is no longer working with my son.

I know of this incident as the TA told me in confidence.

AIBU to be annoyed that the school haven't mentioned this incident to me at all and it has been 3 weeks now? Does the school have an obligation to report this incident to me?

For the record I don't believe that the TA has done anything wrong and agree with her that they seem to be using this as a way to force her out but feel uneasy that they haven't reported anything to me.

I can see why you want to help the TA but I think you are unwise to get further involved.
It will get messy and actually might make it easier for them to dismiss e.g discussing this issue with a parent outside school might be a sackable offence in its own right.

As a Senco, I would be concerned if a TA who was working as a 1:1 had not informed me of a personal relationship with the child's family. There is nothing wrong in having this relationship, but not informing school about it is very unprofessional. She has then obviously been talking about confidential matters with you about an incident with your child, and strangely you're supporting her.
Firstly, does your child have it stated in his EHCP that he needs full time support? Is she employed for this precise job? It's actually very rare for children to get full time support.
Second, having a single person carrying out full time support is very unhealthy for a child, for all sorts of reasons.
Third, she's now taking the piss being off with stress for being disciplined for not doing her job. It's not the job that's causing her stress, it's her NOT doing the job leading to a disciplinary that's caused it. Her being off is costing the school a great deal of money. The LA don't give the school additional money to cover a TA being off!
Your friend is now using you to stop herself getting fired. Believe me, she's not covering herself in glory here. If she keeps her job, and she most likely will, she will not be put with your child, ever! It's not up to you who works with your child, it's up to the school. So my advice, back off from this. Do not get involved. It will not end well.

The TA is being extremely unprofessional in showing you correspondence about the disciplinary procedure. I would expect her to be in much more trouble if this was found out.

I don't think she is taking the piss for being off with stress. Disciplinaries are extraordinarily stressful. But I do feel that you are putting your friendship before your child's needs to an extent. Schools don't discipline lightly : perhaps another TA would be better all round?

I cannot get beyond the unprofessionalism of your friend showing all the confidential documentation about her workplace!!

I am close friends with someone who has an interest in the school I work in (ex colleague and parent). We have discussed her child and had generalised gossip about the school, but I would not ever forward an email about him, show her a letter, or discuss confidential things about him or me if I taught him and they were related to him. There's the line.

Cross post with nooddsocks there!

You will have no idea of what else has happened. There could be other areas of concern or issues that she had been monitored for.

Whether your son was ok or not is irrelevant in some ways. if she was supposed to be with your son and in fact chose to go somewhere else ( leaving a child alone who is supposed to be supervised at all times- it is not acceptable), then she has will have to answer for her actions. School staff have to be where they should be for safeguarding - they can't just take themselves off somewhere else.

You don't need to be told if there was no concerns about your child and it is fact concerns about her doing her job properly.

Your friendship is clouding your judgement - which I would suspect the TA is relying upon!

Have a closer read of all of the preceding posts... and imagine it is someone elses child they are talking about!

You are mixing things up between her role as a TA for your child and the fact sh is a close friend.
You want to help her a friend (which is fair enough) and you fully trust her (because she is a good friend).
But I’m not sure you would have wanted to know so much if she wasn’t a friend and yher I didn’t know about the reason for the disciplinary action.

FWIW I suspect that your friendship might have affected the way the TA reacted in that she might have had the feeling she knew your ds better/had a different type of relationship with him therefore was more ‘relaxed’ on some of the procedures (because she knew, maybe with very good reason, he would be fine).

Your friendship is clouding your judgement - which I would suspect the TA is relying upon!

Ex SENCo here - like other SENCos who've posted, I would be very disappointed that the existing friendship had not been disclosed. It's unprofessional.

Not disclosing a personal relationship is really serious. It completely changes the boundaries unless managed extremely carefully and transparently- which isn’t happening.

The TA should have disclosed the friendship and ideally not been placed with your DC, or if that was unavoidable, only communicated about him/school in exactly the same way she would with any other parent.

If you get involved in this disciplinary, you will make it worse, because she will then need to explain why she didn’t tell anyone she was BFF with child X.

Really daft behaviour from a professional.

She also should not be showing your correspondence from another member of staff without asking them - you are a parent of a child at the school.

There's all sorts of sanctionable behaviours in such a short post. Ihope OP will be able to take on board what is being said and rethink her position.

I deal with disciplinary issues with school staff on a fairly regular basis. Your friend has breached confidentiality in showing you the documents. She's failed to declare your persona relationship. It sounds as if she's probably also been critical of the school in conversation with you (HT... changes... staff forced out). Your best bet is to do nothing, at least that's your best bet for your friend's sake because if you start talking about any of this she's in even deeper trouble.

If she thinks it's ok to leave him for a minute, maybe she's done it before and just not been caught. Probably she would do it again. It will never be a problem until something happens.

That is why the head is right to take action. She failed in her care of your ds. The fact that he was unharmed is not really the point. The head is following safeguarding procedure. An adult who is paid to supervise a child and fails is not a safe adult for the child.

I'm surprised that is not your first concern tbh.