Formal School Complaint - AIBU

[Schoolproblemsagain]

NC

Yesterday, I finally submitted a formal
complaint to my DS secondary school.

It has been a long time coming, but I’m having a major panic that I’ve done the wrong thing and they will treat my younger DS differently.

AIBU to have complained?

I won’t go into all the background details as it’s too long, but the catalyst for finally raising a formal is as follows:

DS Year 11, in the midst of his GCSE’s, has an EHCP and a Pupil Profile. ASD Diagnosis.

School phoned me and said:

At lunchtime, two boys were throwing food at him, he told them to fuck off, he was asked to leave the lunch hall, he refused. He explained to the teacher that he would not leave as he hadn’t done anything wrong and food was being thrown at him. This then escalated to three teachers within his space, who were asking him to leave. He was still refusing. He has been suspended for disruption and is not allowed to return to school unless to sit an exam.

The two boys, who were throwing food and their entourage, who were laughing, have received no punishment.

His EHCP and Pupil Profile states that he will not manage public confrontation with strategies on how to manage such events.

AIBU to have raised a complaint on the grounds that his EHCP and Pupil Profile were not followed, that he has been punished when the other students have not and that he is now missing vital support sessions during his GCSE’s?

@Darkgreendarkbark do badly behaved kids tend to throw food at the popular kids, or at the disabled kids or the kids who are less popular?

kids are sometimes pricks.

kids who are just thoughtless pricks who do stupid things indiscriminately need a good telling off.

kids who target, or who are especially prickish towards, those they perceive as lower status or open to ridicule need the book thrown at them.

It's not just because of that, though, is it? It's for refusing to obey the teachers afterwards.

This is irrelevant to anything I've said

If the parents of the other kids started a thread about their kids' actions and the school's reaction (which we don't know about and nor does the OP), I'd be commenting about that.

A ND child refusing to obey teachers who are perceived to be meting out an unfair punishment is entirely logical to many ND children. Applying the same disciplinary rules to ND children in this situation without taking account of their (apparently well-evidenced and well-documented) reasonable adjustments is quite possibly disability discrimination.

But this isn't about the lunch incident. You say there is lengthy and complex background to you complaining and this is the final straw.

Your son was asked to leave and he refused. Staff were attempting to diffuse the situation precisely in line with his formal plan. He was the one they were trying to move from confrontation. You have said yourself this is to his benefit.
He refused. It took 2 additional members of staff and he still refused.

Basic refusal to follow well judged instructions when nobody had told him he'd done anything wrong. And presumably a scene building up around that, not the swearing.

Suspensions are not made lightly. They take a lot of staff time. They are often the result of numerous "offences".
Your son was embroiled in a lunchtime spat and he obstructed staff attempts to manage that. What else?

I'm not sure you should be complaining to the school because that's reinforcing to him even further that teachers are there to do battle with rather than work with. That's what seems to have gone wrong.

Sorry, I respect your story is unique and difficult, but I work with this kind of nonsense every day and spend more time on it than I do on actual educating.
I realuze that's harsh. But equally it is true.
You have every right to complain but you also have a duty to parent.

It has been a long time coming, but I’m having a major panic that I’ve done the wrong thing and they will treat my younger DS differently

Writing an email titled 'complaint' won't cause this. We get fifty gazillion of these a week. I exaggerate (probably), but lots. You'll be told by a member of SLT why the decision to suspend was made, with reasonable adjustments for EHCP. You may well disagree, but you'll have an explanation. There are next-to-no chance of a change in outcome. So you get a chance to vent, hear the schools justification, and that's it.

If that's it, no one will remember within 2 weeks. SLT are too busy to hold grudges. If you end up keeping it going, and taking up lots more time, that's what leads to "It's so-and-so, who-ja-me-flips brother, sigh, the one who..."

They certainly should expect any human who is being attacked physically to tell their attacker to fuck off.

@Darkgreendarkbark so tell us how you would have dealt with this incident on the facts as stated.

But your seeing refusal as refusal.

For someone who is ND it's entirely
Possible it’s fight flight or freeze.

Absolutely this.

A lot of Y11s are on study leave now, so aren't getting lessons. Most of the exams are done.

I think you'd be best to move on.

Asking him to leave wasn't necessarily a punishment. Sometimes people need to leave situations to remain safe and allow other people to manage the situation. Refusal hasn't helped your DS here. ND or not, no one can point blank refuse to follow an instruction and expect no consequence. The best thing to do is leave and deal with it later.

He should be punished for swearing and - more importantly - refusing to leave when asked to do so by the teachers. They should be punished for throwing the food. You should not be told details of their punishment. Their parents should not be told details of your son’s punishment.

Everyone saying he shouldn't have swore..if you were out in public and people were throwing food at you and trying to humiliate you, would you not tell them to fuck off? I certainly would, and I'd teach my child to do the same. The advice to not react to bullies is the worst advice ever. They are little shits and he he sounds well out of that school.

If you started telling people to fuck off and the police asked you to leave, then you should leave. The food throwing can be sorted later.

Fuck off would be the just the start if someone threw food at me, and stood around with their mates goading like that. It’s a perfectly reasonable understandable response! Are parents really so naive that they think kids don’t swear at each other in school? For much less than this?

A group targeting someone on their own by throwing food is much worse!!!!

Yeah I’d tell them to fuck off, but I’d expect to get in some form of trouble if the police asked me to leave the area to de-escalate the situation and I repeatedly refused.

From a legal perspective it is illegal to suspend or permanently exclude a pupil where their behaviours causing the suspension or exclusion were as a result of unmet SEN needs. I would say it sounds like this is the case for your son.

The school will need to prove that they have made all possible reasonable adjustments before they can suspend or exclude a SEN pupil.

If the behaviour arose because the school failed to meet SEN needs, then it is more likely that exclusion may amount to unlawful disability discrimination. The school must be able to evidence that all reasonable adjustments have been identified and attempted and that the behaviour still presented serious issues that could not be managed with support.

Based on this incident alone, I’d say the school is on very shaky ground. It sounds very clearly to me like this was a one off incident where other pupils and school staff antagonised your son and no reasonable adjustments were made for his SEN needs.

If the suspension is for more than 6 days, you can request a Governor panel meeting. I would recommend doing so. I would then explain to the Governors that I am concerned the suspension is unlawful because the behaviour that caused it was as a result on unmet SEN needs. If they understand the law, they will shit themselves.

FYI - I’m an ASD parent myself but know the above because I have been a Governor at a secondary school (not one my child attends) since 2018 and have sat on many suspension/exclusion panels. Whenever a child has SEN, it means we really need to be confident that the behaviour causing the suspension/exclusion is unrelated to unmet SEN needs.

Hope this helps and good luck!

I'm a secondary teacher. I can see your point and I can also see the school's. Ultimately you weren't there and it is very challenging for parents to be able to objectively weigh in on situations like this when you didn't witness your child's behaviour and have only heard their subjective view of events.

You don't know what has happened to the other children so that should not be something you complain about - your son might think the other children haven't been punished, but I very much doubt that is the case.

Ultimately for schools to run effectively, you can't have children swearing and refusing to follow instructions by staff, regardless of SEN. Your son is old enough to know this and it sounds like he must have been very obstructive to necessitate three staff members getting involved.

That being said, he shouldn't have been in a position where other children were able to throw food at him, and there should have been understanding from staff that in his distress he may have not been able to control his behaviour. It does sound very heavy handed to me and unnecessarily confrontational from staff, in a way that has escalated the situation needlessly.

As such, I don't think you're wrong for complaining, but I would encourage you to be open to the school's perspective. They may not have handled the situation as well as they could have done, but you don't know the whole circumstances.

I also wouldn't worry about them treating your other child differently as a result. We don't take out our feelings about tricky parents (not saying you are one) on your children, don't worry.

Exactly this!! Thanks for sharing

This - School leader here and we have to think very carefully about excluding EHCP pupils.

Most of the time, a situation like this arises because the procedures for supporting a child to regulate themselves has not been met.

If it were me, I would definitely have asked the children who had thrown the food to leave rather than your son who was a provoked ND victim.

Agree! My ASD child has such a strong sense of justice and very black/white thinking. They would not have been capable of following teachers instructions after feeling so aggrieved by the previous treatment (food throwing etc). This is 100% a SEN issue and frankly anyone without an ASD child who has a strong sense of social justice just won’t understand how rigid their thinking can be in scenarios like this. They likely would have been entirely incapable of following teachers instructions.

There is a reason autism is classed as a protected disability…..

Otoh there comes a point where you have to just walk away, asd or not.

Asd isn't a free pass to refuse instruction.

Schools may not share that with parents, but the kids share it among themselves if they're hauled in and told off, given detention, etc.

@Bex5490

I agree entirely.

From the sounds of it, the situation was very badly handled and the children who should have been removed were the children throwing food.

I wonder how large this school is and whether the staff on lunch duty knew the OP's child and his needs well enough to be able to manage the situation appropriately in the moment.

If the OP's child's behaviour as a result of this incident was unacceptable to the point of meeting the threshold for suspension, it has to be considered whether that behaviour happened as a result of the OP's child's needs not being met.

You do have to wonder about the general environment of the school and their behaviour management when you have children throwing food at another pupil in the lunch hall anyway. It all sounds very chaotic.