Overreaction about glue gun incident at school

[backinthestoneage]

https://www-thesun-ie.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.thesun.ie/news/8810155/furious-mum-school-son-burn-glue-gun/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16912722078861&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesun.ie%2Fnews%2F8810155%2Ffurious-mum-school-son-burn-glue-gun%2F

Resulting in a teacher misconduct hearing
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-misconduct-panel-outcome-ms-sarah-mead

No wonder more and more staff are unwilling to do activities and trips. If the slightest thing goes wrong there will be a petition at the school gates and a public hounding

I think the hypothesis of some here is that mother was laying the ground for a compensation claim. Hospital visit would be integral to that.
i do agree her behaviour is odd, and it’s hard to find another rational explanation for it.

It blistered.

If you call 111 and tell them you have a burn with a blister, you'll get sent to A&E no matter how small surface area it is.

If you go to a first aider with a blistered burn no matter how small it is, they have to tell you to go to A&E. Possibly whilst rolling their eyes and apologising.

And I'm sorry but a typical 10 year old should be perfectly capable of following instructions for use of a hot glue gun, and a risk assessment wouldn't necessarily ban their use by children. He should also bloody well have shown it to the teacher and have accepted advice to run it under cold water as a minimum. I do think his non-compliance is an important factor here. Had he shown it to her properly, and had he treated it as he was advised to do, she may have prioritised things differently.

It sounds like we have lost a good teacher. We need to be careful what we wish for: we simply don't have enough people wanting to get into teaching to keep replacing them with.

You're not describing the massive company I work for.
Warehouses, handling, glass, chemicals, dogs, drunk people, aggressive people, heavy loads, heights etc.
Minor injuries are a nearly daily occurrence. If we assessed each situation on what COULD HAVE happened... are you havin a laugh?! You'd have nowhere to shop for food!

We'd get a compensation for serious enough time-off-work injuries. No one has ever lost their job over it.

Just got a bloody but minor injury myself the other day. Fetched a desinfectant wipe and a dressing from the first aid kit and cracked on with work despite some discomfort and pain.

That's normal life there ⬆️ and how it should be.

Common sense.

Like I said before, that is why children shouldn’t be making important decisions like whether to receive medical help or not, maybe he was in pain and was anticipating going home to his mum
still does not mean that he shouldn’t have been firmly told that he needs to go to medical, I don’t imagine any child adamantly refusing to go to medical
a lot of information is missing here , how did the teacher tell him to go to medical?
did she say “x you need to go to medical now” or “ do you want to go to medical x”

if she was in a rush and needed to go to a child safeguarding meeting maybe she unintentionally made the boy feel like she was holding her up, maybe he picked up on her being overwhelmed or even annoyed at having to deal with his situation and he didn’t want to cause a fuss
she handled the situation wrong and she then forgot to inform the parent, she was in the wrong which ever way you want to look at it

I don’t imagine any child adamantly refusing to go to medical

Then you clearly don't work in schools.

i can’t imagine the teacher pressed the issue either since she was so overworked and needed to be somewhere else

Mum was on the warpath from the outset - I can’t believe her response to all this was to go ‘sad face’ to the media, rather than speak to the school on the Monday morning to find out what had happened.

Yes, she rang the Sun newspaper the following day. Unbelievable.

It wasn't a planned safeguarding meeting - it was an emergency safeguarding situation.

Maybe maybe maybe. From the facts that are known, these are all minor issues. To the extent she was wrong it did not warrant the expense (to us) and the stress (to her) of professional misconduct proceedings.

Blaming the teacher for the child not doing what he was told is unacceptable.

There are several things that the teacher should have done but didn't. However a child not following instructions in school is a widespread problem, not the fault of a single teacher.

My point is, complain to the school first and give them a chance to respond and try to rectify the situation. Why go to social media and the media FIRST?

It’s worth looking at the KS2 D and T curriculum - which very clearly talks about the use of a wider range of tools and equipment at this age (and the initial rubric for the subject talks about the importance of risk-taking)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-design-and-technology-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-design-and-technology-programmes-of-study#key-stage-2

Also worth noting that many resources available to support DT planning in KS2 refer to the use of glue guns - this is one from STEM.org.uk but there will be others from all the main curriculum suppliers. For strong glue to join structures together that sets quickly enough to be used within the confines of a lesson, there are few options that are suitably solvent-free.

Lessons that were risk assessed as safe only a few years ago, though, are increasingly unsafe due to deteriorating behaviour and a dramatic reduction in numbers of support staff.

This is such a difficult story to read. The pressure on this teacher this year will have been terrible and a huge punishment for what happened. I have enormous sympathy for her and I'm glad that she has stayed in teaching and stayed alive.

I agree that the teacher made mistakes, not just in paperwork (for example in the situation where a group of children took out the glue guns when told not to use them I wouldn't have let them get away with that, just because the not following instructions thing would have made me assess it as too risky if I was supervising different locations). But this is what happens in highly stressed situations. People make bad judgements because they're trying to juggle lots of priorities and in this case more than one set of safeguarding priorities.

The school has failed as well. It should have had a blanket glue gun risk assessment ( you shouldn't have to write your own every time just adapt it), and when the child refuses to show the injury or go to medical or run cold water on the burn there should have been some process to support that behavioural challenge. I think the immediate pressure to resign for not filling the accident report was appalling and am surprised the teacher didn't contact her Union. Yes, a warning perhaps, yes a school reassessment of why things were getting so pressured but you don't just dump a good teacher for a single error after an unblemished career. You try and find solutions. Shame on the trust for running scared of the Sun.

I could see that at home time the teacher might have felt it impossible to keep the child and better to let them go home. When dealing with a non compliant child she could well have thought that keeping them back would have caused a problem (I am sure there would have been a complaint, as someone up thread said she would have been in trouble also had she neglected her other duties to call).

Time is the problem, and teachers picking up too much. With more time or support she could have called the parent or delegated it, or delegated gate duty perhaps. Safeguarding issues would have derailed her thoughts and I can understand how she could have forgotten to call home immediately. Friday night? I'm guessing she was exhausted.

All in all, she admitted she made a bad mistake, and fell down from best practice. She's clearly a dedicated and experienced teacher. She didn't deserve a petition to remove her from school. In her place I'm not sure I'd have been able to go back to another school... no wonder we're losing teachers so fast.

Friday night? I'm guessing she was exhausted.

It was also the end of SATs week. I mean, couldn't have happened at a worse time.

I'm surprised the school told the Dep Head/DSL/Y6 teacher to resign just like that. It just shows that none of us are safe.

And who the hell would be covering those duties the following term? Someone who was already wearing numerous hats, no doubt.

Also worth saying that good, safe DT lessons take time (rare in today’s crowded curriculum, with the additional pressure to ‘catch up’ for assessments that pretend the pandemic never took place).

They also build on previous skills, again a difficult area - hard to use even the most basic junior saw with children who, in KS2, do not use a knife and fork to cut up food (a discovery we made, hence having to fit in a ‘cut up this playdough with a knife’ lesson -a Reception skill - into a sequence of lessons for KS2 DT) or anything requiring accurate cutting with children who missed the key EYFS and KS1 practice of scissors skills and never use them at home.

he is just a child, the problem is that the teacher underestimated the severity of the injury

Or the mother over exaggerated?

The teacher could have been any teacher. Awful reaction from the mother almost ruining someone's career. I'm glad the teacher has another teaching job and the profession hasn't lost her yet.

You have high expectations for a 10 year old child to follow instructions yet none for an adult trained professional employee to follow risk assessment procedures?

I can't remember what we made. There were wooden sticks, fabric, bubble wrap, yoghurt pots, string... It might have been make what you like. We all survived.

This is what KS2 children MUST be taught (National Curriculum is statutory):

”Key stage 2Through a variety of creative and practical activities, pupils should be taught the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to engage in an iterative process of designing and making. They should work in a range of relevant contexts [for example, the home, school, leisure, culture, enterprise, industry and the wider environment].
When designing and making, pupils should be taught to:

• Designuse research and develop design criteria to inform the design of innovative, functional, appealing products that are fit for purpose, aimed at particular individuals or groups
• generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches, cross-sectional and exploded diagrams, prototypes, pattern pieces and computer-aided design
• Makeselect from and use a wider range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks [for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing], accurately
• select from and use a wider range of materials and components, including construction materials, textiles and ingredients, according to their functional properties and aesthetic qualities
• Evaluateinvestigate and analyse a range of existing products
• evaluate their ideas and products against their own design criteria and consider the views of others to improve their work
• understand how key events and individuals in design and technology have helped shape the world
• Technical knowledgeapply their understanding of how to strengthen, stiffen and reinforce more complex structures
• understand and use mechanical systems in their products [for example, gears, pulleys, cams, levers and linkages]
• understand and use electrical systems in their products [for example, series circuits incorporating switches, bulbs, buzzers and motors]
• apply their understanding of computing to program, monitor and control their products“

Junk modelling ‘make what you like’ - an essential part of Early Years learning and ore-requisite to build the skills for the above - doesn’t meet the curriculum requirements.

This is an example of the range of projects (ignore any with ‘craft’ in their titles as they will not be aligned to the DT curriculum) that a major supplier if curriculum materials suggests to meet those curriculum statements:

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/keystage2-ks2/ks2-subjects/ks2-design-and-technology

The teacher in question was juggling an enormous number of different tasks and priorities. She dropped one. She should not gave dropped it - but should she have been juggling that many in the first place (lack of resource, poor management)? Why was she juggling so many (lack of resource; poor management)? Which ball should she have dropped instead?

I can't be bothered to reply to that attempt to twist what I said.

I know what I think of this appalling mother and the child she's raised. No teacher is going to want to see him on their class list next year.