Head teacher is a ****

[Parentingisnotfortheweak]

I need to know if I’m just being an asshole parent or if I should further a series of complaints….

after a particularly hard morning trying to get 2 kids (5 and 6) to school, whilst feeding animals, getting myself ready tested me. Youngest refused to get dressed so I did it for him! I had unfortunately put false nails on the night before, and whilst pulling his jumper on (in a rush!) I scratched him. There was no mark, there was no immediate crying. He told me I hurt him- I apologised. We moved on. However once he got to the school he decided he was upset and blanked me. His teacher asked if he was ok, and he told them I punched him in the face!!
head teacher immediately called me at work and threatened me with social services BEFORE asking what the actual scenario was. I was understandably upset so she asked me to come in for a meeting.
I attended - it was like a bloody counselling session, and towards the end she called both kids in and he admitted he lied and I hadn’t punched him but it was an accident. Headtezcher agrees this was all a misunderstanding and will not be reporting me!
whilst I agree that these incidents need looking into - because a child could genuinely be in danger, surely to threaten a parent with social services immediately before investigating is absurd and damn right cruel? (For the record I have never had any involvement with SS, but have heard horror stories so naturally as a parent it worries you!)
she promised me that she would finalise the paperwork an email it over- that has never come.

fast forward 6 months to sports day (I was unable to attend) we were asked to fill out online forms for free school meals so that they could have a packed lunch from the school kitchen. I filled it in for both kids as I knew I wouldn’t be going so wouldn’t be sat with a picnic for them to join me with! BOTH of my children (and various others!) were not provided with lunch- and when approached by a friend of mine twice, the head teacher laughed it off and told her it was the parents fault as they hadn’t filled In the form. - she let both children go hungry after 3 hours of sports!
I immediately sent an email asking for clarification as to what happened and she shot me down saying it’s my fault end of. I explained and she ignored the email for a week. So I re emailed and said I was still waiting- she told me she would facilitate a meeting if needed- still not answer. So at this point I requested the paper work from our prior meeting- which she assured me would be with me by the end of next week (this week now).
I collected my children today to say they were both called into the head teachers office (alone) and were questioned about how happy they were at home and what their mum gets up to at home!!!

AIBU to think wtf?! why are they being questioned AGAIN?!

Respectfully, it's extremely surprising that two children have an attendance rate of 99.6% - that is very, very high. Average is about 96%. I'm surprised!

My DS, since starting primary (and despite several years of nursery beforehand to catch things) has had scarlet fever, chicken pox, covid, flu, noro... Maybe it was different pre-Covid because I don't remember being off very much at all when I was little but it's extremely rare for infants to have an attendance rate of 99.6% - they must be absolute little immunity machines!

I'd also expect a head teacher to know every child. That was the expectation in every school I worked in (and I worked in secondary where there were a lot more children to know). My head teacher at primary and secondary knew us all.

My DS's head teacher knows every child's name - I've seen him at Sports Days, assemblies, prize givings, etc - he knows them all. He knows my DS's favourite colour and favourite animal, I've seen him ask about our pet dog using our pet dog's name, he knows which reading group my DS is in and (when I spoke to him about DS's handwriting) knew what I meant (i.e. had seen and remembered his handwriting). He knows DS has a younger sister and her name... I don't think he's just studied up on my kid. A teacher might accidentally slip up and mix up the two similar looking short, brown-haired boys in Green class - but they should know a reasonably amount about every child. I would be very concerned if they didn't know anything about my child.

it's extremely surprising that two children have an attendance rate of 99.6% - that is very, very high. Average is about 96%. I'm surprised!

I can’t speak for averages but neither of my nursery age children have had any time off at all this year. A couple of colds but that’s it.

Knowing a child isn't the same as knowing their attendance figures.

99.6 is not extremely surprising attendance. The average is 96 because some children have very low attendance - one child with 40% really drags the average down. I used to work in a school that did 100% attendance certificates. Around 3/4 got them each term and over half got them for the year. You are right that it has changed a little since COVID, but no headteacher would be falling off a chair about attendance close to 100%.

Plus... It could indicate a parent not coping and desperate to send them in even when they are ill.

Re the lunches-parents not filling in the forms might have been the reason for the cock up-but what was the solution?

Madness that there was nothing done!

Why do posters keep asking why the OP didn't speak to the school about why her children didn't get fed on sports day, or saying she just took her friends word for it?

The OP has clearly said that she did ask the head teacher and that other parents also complained.
The head teacher said it was the parents' fault for not filling in the forms, and even carried on saying that after the OP showed evidence that she had filled in the forms correctly and before the deadline.

So many MN posters are so desperately falling over themselves to have a go at the OP and show how superior they are that they can't even be bothered to read properly.
It's a common thing on MN these days.
There is a see all link on OP posts for anyone struggling to follow the thread.

OP said that the Head knew nothing about her children and was, separately, surprised by their attendance. Knowing each child and being surprised about attendance rates are different points. You’ve merged them into “knowing each child’s attendance rates” - which no one else is talking about.

99.6% is extremely high. Children almost never have 40% attendance rates. You could look these things up on the internet.

Even if one in each class had 40% attendance (which would be absolutely insane - I’ve taught hundreds of students, dozens of school refusers and none had 40% attendance. Anyone who had below 80% was usually a total refuser and therefore not included in the average) then that would only drag the whole class average down to 98%.

I do wonder how long ago you worked in an infant school if you think many, if any, have 100% attendance. I know for a fact no one in my DS’s class does.

To Be fair I think your account of the head teacher nearly falling off her chair because your children only had a total of 3 days off school is an exaggeration. It's certainly a low amount, but your whole narrative about a battle between her perception of you being a bad parent in every way and your narrative about it being obvious that you're a good parent and it's all your son and the school.

Yes I get it not a nice situation, but starting from the title of this thread it's clear which way things are going.
Try to take a deep breath and start from a constructive point of view

but I did fill in the form- and sent proof to the headteacher. There seems to be some errors in the form getting to the right places. It happens. I know it wasn’t done intentionally but at least feed the kids and apologise! And look at what did it didn’t happen so that it doesn’t happen again.

I work in a primary school now. We have many children with 100% attendance. We have a handful with attendance less than 50%. We clearly go to very different schools.

You can't discount them from the average just because their attendance is below 80%, because that's not how averages work. Schools are judged on attendance and can't randomly discount pupils because they have poor attendance.

2% of the school population have attendance less than 50%; I looked it up on the internet as you suggested. That's not "almost never" to my mind - it's one in every two classes on average.

Teacher here. The punching allegation needs to be taken seriously. I hope you sufficiently sanctioned your son for lying, however. I would be furious with DD1 (age 6) if she did this. However, I wouldn’t jump straight to mentioning social services, so I don’t think the head should have done that.

The lunch thing is annoying. If parents hadn’t filled the form out, that’s their fault, but you did, and your kids should not have been left without a lunch.

That’s exactly how averages work - you remove anomalies. That’s how it’s done. Feel free to check. It’s a mean average, they remove anomalies precisely because otherwise one or two students would obliterate the average for a class.

2% probably do have attendance below 50%. I didn’t dispute that at all. I said they’re likely to be total school refusers and excluded when calculating the average. That’s still true.

You are not allowed to remove pupils when calculating your school averages. If your school is doing so, they are not meeting their statutory requirements.

You remove the national averages and the figure being discussed was the national average.

You’re really determined to derail this thread by constantly changing the goal post and inventing new arguments each time you’re proven wrong.

You've not proven me wrong. You've shared your understanding of attendance figures and I've shared mine. You've not given me proof that your assertions are correct. Here is some proof that mine are: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools/2025-week-24 . The average attendance figures for last week were 94.8% in primary schools, and this includes both persistent and severe absentee students (this latter part is something I asked Google as it wasn't explicitly clear from the above link). I looked it up because it's part of my job to understand this, and i want to ensure that I do.

I'm not determined to derail this thread but I found your earlier comments interesting and at odds with my understanding. It's fine if you don't want to discuss it further. I'm completely aware that it wasn't the OP's intention to discuss attendance figures.

Hmm, yes... that figure says that the average attendance rate is 93.2%...

That's several percent lower than the figure upthread...

I wonder what could explain that difference... maybe, just maybe, it's different because one of the figures excluded the persistently absent anomalies...

Yes, quite likely. And to be fair, I used that 96% figure (yours, or another PP - I don't recall) without checking it. I'm not sure where it's from but I think I incorrectly accepted it because it was around that pre-covid. Now it's lower - 94.8% in mainstream primary. The official figure does include persistent absentees but if is not 96%, so I obviously acknowledge that I was wrong there.

Hmm, yes... that figure says that the average attendance rate is 93.2%...

That's for all schools. For primaries it is 94.8% year to date. Key stage matters with attendance because it generally declines with age.

Attendance figures include all pupils on roll (plus some no longer on roll). No students are excluded from the data.

Persistently absent students are not only included in the data, they are a key focus for the data analysis.

The average attendance is 93.3 but what the other poster misses is there will be a few children with near perfect/perfect attendance and some with awful attendance. My DS had similar attendance in primary and his head couldn’t tell you his attendance rate but could tell you the name of our dog etc…

@FishChipsAndVinegarPlease because mn allows them to run riot, derail threads when they are not even making sense in the context of the op.

I don't think it was me you meant to reply to :-)