Asked to resign

[Mossiebonbon]

My husband works in a secondary school in pastoral care, whereby each year group is assigned a support member of staff. There are 5 Members of staff with the same role as him, he currently works with Y11.
Next year he has been assigned to work with Y8 , the year our daughter is in. My husband does not feel comfortable working with our daughters year group , potentially having to reprimand her friends for behavior or liaise with parents that he knows personally.

The head teacher has suggested he will have to resign if he doesn’t work with this year group. There is no explanation , to our knowledge, for why the other pastoral members of staff can’t swap to be with Y8. Headteacher just says she wants consistency.

AIBU to think headteacher cannot threaten my husband like this? I appreciate your comments

It’s a normal request for your husband to make. I get the feeling head teacher likes a bit of drama and doesn’t like being questioned even if they have made a stupid decision.

Telling an employee to quit if they’re not happy with something is the sort of thing an inexperienced manager does. I’m assuming they are new to role?

The OP's husband may well be 100% professional, and able to compartmentalise work and social lives, but the situation is open to others' perception of there being a conflict of interest.

Placing him in a position where there is the potential for other people e.g. other parents, to accuse him of bias and/or unprofessional behaviour, could reflect very badly not just on him but on the HT/school as well.

You don’t generally jump straight to resignation! Is there a back story here? And/or is the HT woefully out of their depth in their role?

How is his being moved from yr 11 to yr8 'consistency'?
I'd have thought he'd be back to yr7 following the pattern 80smercedes describes.

Could he go to the governors with a plea for it to be considered? Sounds like he is being reasonable.

Surely if he's with departing Year 11 now, the most sensible thing would be for him to take on the incoming Year 7s? Then all the other staff could stick with their current group and move up with them.

Unless the Head feels there would be some benefit to working with his daughter's cohort? But she does, she hasn't explained it well.

You'd have to ask a lot of staff to leave their roles in schools if that is the case- or have a national ban on appointing locan people to work in schools.

I would seek advice from his Union. He’s in no way refusing to do his job - he’s actually being very professional about it.

Ugh. Sounds awful. I’ve never known anyone to teach or pastorally manage their own child. Bad practice. What will happen if your daughter gets bullied/ has a problem? Does she have to suck it up and suffer for all of secondary in case other parents claim unfair bias?

However our current year 11 head of year is by far our strongest, so if that’s your husband, tell him to call headteacher’s bluff. He will easily be snapped up by another school.

I would ask Unison for advice (if Support Staff role).
Pastoral is always interesting - either:
A Five Heads of year stay in fixed roles and become experts in y7 transition, y8 consolidation, y9 options, y10 work experience and y11 exam prep.
B Heads of year move up with "their" year through all of the above
C One Head of year stays with year 7 and does all the Primary Links visits/collates info from primaries/sets standards The other four move up each time.

I'm guessing yours is model C and they have a bespoke head for Year 7 newbies.
Nonetheless, given staff turnover, it isn't unrealistic that a student has more than one Head of year in their five years.

It would therefore make sense that your DH took the year 9 group that would have kept their HOY normally and sees them through their remaining three years and the current Head of year 8 stays in role for your daughter (as year 8 would have been getting a new HOY regardless).

It's an easy and reasonable adjustment and I am not sure why the current HOY 8 would have any issue with it unless the current year 7 cohort are evil

Pastoral care means hearing quite personal stuff about kids and their families. Surely it’s in everyone’s interest to make this as impartial as possible?

I completely understand his logic and he is professional to raise it. It might not work but it should at least be considered.

Not sure why the HT is so reactive. Does she dislike him and is looking for an excuse to get rid of him?

I’m on the fence with this one, i assume your husband is a pastoral lead for a year. If the other pastoral leads expect to move with their years and have spent a year building relationships then it’s a bit unfair to expect them to move to the year 8s again, if they don’t want to. However, I do think it would be awkward for your daughter.

Overall, if he has this much concern about it, it would be better to just not work in the school your kids are attending.

It’s poor form on the HT’s part to not want to enter into a dialogue about it when it’s clearly a valid concern. I would suggest putting it into writing, in a reasonable and non threatening way but ensuring concerns are clearly explained. If this isn’t acted upon, governors can be copied in. Then, he’s covered himself if (when) issues arise.
Has he got history with not being in the HT’s favour? As usually things like this are to force people out or because a leader is digging their heels in as they don’t like or value the other person.

My mum taught me at secondary school for two different subjects. So yes had to bollock me if I was naughty, bollock my mates, etc. she was professional. I just accepted it. She treated me no differently to any other kid in that school.

It's his job. He should be able to do it, in a neutral way.

Our local secondary's admissions policy says staff of children are top of the list to get a place so this must be quite common. And probably fair to assume it is their local school.

The Head is power pissed ( hate that expression but sums it up) She has decided therefore her word must be followed. after all she is royalty don't you know.

What a crock of crap! My friend was English teacher and taught all years, she didn’t take the early years group, but certainly once they were in sets etc she taught my dc and hers. Another parent of one of dc friends taught another subject at some point, it’s not an issue. Personal and professional lives are different

sounds like your h is being too oppositional on too many things

why not try it and see how it works.

Entirely possible that Mr Year 11 is power pissed too and thinks he knows better than the head.

Who would your daughter turn to for pastoral care? Hopefully the head would allow some flexibility there.

I can imagine my daughter’s friends would not want to divulge sensitive stuff to her dad if they knew him out of school.

I think there's a very strong possibility that OP has heard an abridged (or exaggerated) version from DH.

Maybe he's rubbish (or difficult) and head is hoping he'll leave. Maybe it's really OP who's worried about him working with their friend's DC and he hasn't actually tried that hard to have the situation changed.

There's nothing inherently wrong in the situation, I'd expect head to listen to concerns without making threats but we don't really know how that situation came about.

I don't think it's fair on the students. They might feel uncomfortable talking about private matters with a classmate's father in case he accidentally says something to his daughter. I know he wouldn't but they .ight not be so certain.
I think the head is being very short-sighted and rigid.

Is that his only role @Mossiebonbon or is he a subject teacher as well? If so could he just step aside from the pastoral role if they won't offer him a different year group?

My friend was English teacher and taught all years, she didn’t take the early years group, but certainly once they were in sets etc she taught my dc and hers.

My father taught me in what we'd now call year 8 and for A level. It was fine apart from not being able to call him either dad or sir! But I think regular classes are a significantly different matter to pastoral care, where personal/family issues may arise.

Do you work in secondary? Students aren’t going to want to take to their mates dad!