What would you think about this email from school? Sudden change of class teacher.

[Junglemoon]

We had an email yesterday evening from our (primary age) child's headteacher saying that his class teacher Mr Smith had left and that as of tomorrow his teacher would be Mrs Jones. No further details as to what on earth was going on, the email was literally three sentences.

Mrs Jones has been teaching them the last couple of days but our son was told and believed that Mr Smith was just off ill. He and most of his class were very upset in school this morning that there would apparently be no chance to say goodbye to Mr Smith, who is much loved by the children. Neither the children nor the parents were given any notice of this or any preparation.

On top of this the headteacher and the deputy head are apparently away at a conference and unable to answer phone calls or answer any questions and none of the other staff appear to know anything about the issue. The student counsellor was in the classroom this morning trying to reassure the children but she had no answers for them or anyone else.

Some of the parents have phoned and emailed (we are in contact with each other) to express concern and unhappiness about how abrupt this has been and how little information we've been given and the head has replied to an email from one father saying that Mr Smith had left suddenly and she couldn't provide any further details.

Obviously my mind is going all over the place. I can think of a few things that could be sudden and confidential, but if it was something that had to do with the children's safety, the school would have to inform us, wouldn't they? If something awful has happened to Mr Smith I suppose we wouldn't be owed that information but it does seem very hard on the children to just be like 'Mr Smith is gone, you won't see him again, Mrs Jones will be your teacher now'. Which is all they got.

@GeneralPeter you have to follow protocol though, innocent until proven guilty. Many education staff have malicious claims made against them. School will follow policy, teacher may be suspended whilst investigation takes place but if claim is unfounded teacher can return, although some may stick two fingers up at education and move on

So why do you need to know for a teacher?

It's really none of your business. If the school asked intrusive questions about your life, you'd be outraged.

It’s more important to me to protect my child from abuse than to protect my money from fraud, and I think most parents would say the same.

So I’m actually a bit surprised that you see the legitimate interest for a fraud arrest but not for an abuse one.

I guess one might say “parents should trust that the system will tell them of a risk to their child, if and when they need to know”.

The way I see it though I am part of the system there to keep my child safe, not a passive observer of it. The interests of my child won’t always coincide with the interests of institutions, even ones there for good reasons in aggregate (like procedural presumption of innocence).

Hence I’d want to know if my child’s teacher was arrested on suspicion of child abuse.

That seems like normal sensible parenting and a million miles away from vigilantism.

If the teacher was arrested you would know as it would be in the papers.
Also if there was a police investigation and this was made public it could invalidate any findings.
A teacher leaving mid year does not indicate abuse.
All you would be doing is validating gossip.

They are not telling, because they do not and should not have to divulge private details about a member of staff. Why should they? It could be any personal or health reason at all. It could even be that the teacher has been bullied out by the Head. I've seen that happen more than once.

Yes of course it's reasonable for the children to be upset, OP. Presumably if they really liked him they would have been upset whatever the reason he left. Saying goodbye would not have stopped them being upset.

Teachers' private lives are not public property any more than any other type of employees' are.

The times a teacher has to leave for safeguarding or inappropriate behaviour is dwarfed significantly by the times a teacher leaves for completely normal personal reasons. Just like any other occupation. Even alleged assaults against children are still extremely rare.

If someone in your job suddenly left, you’d never jump to “it’s most likely he left because he punched someone in the office”. You’d think it was due to a health, illness, divorce, relocation, child issue etc. or possibly a grievance or friction with management or a pay dispute. These are such obvious and painstakingly normal and common reasons why people would need to leave a job suddenly, I don’t know why anyone would jump to the worst possible scenario and not consider more obvious other reasons unless they were extremely unhinged.

If it was a safeguarding issue, the parents of the concerned student would have been informed as soon as the incident happened. Non-safeguarding issues are nobody else’s business.

Anxious parents make anxious kids. Just explain to your child that the teacher has to take care of some personal or family issues, you wish him well and now the new teacher will take over. Tell them it’s a normal action for an employee in any job. Honestly, so many parents are complete nutcases these days.

You don't have any more rights than any other individual though, do you? Therefore, you have no right to know anything about a teacher's (or anyone else's) personal circumstances. Anyone remember the teacher in Batley?

l agree that I don’t. It’s one of those cases where the interests of the whole system differs from the interests of individuals in it.

Privacy is fair and important for the system to respect. Procedural presumption of innocence (even for sex abuse arrest, in our hypothetical) is too.

Those are questions about what the system should look like, for the best interests of the system overall. What I should consider as a parent for the best interests of my child will be different. That’s not vigilante logic, it’s just recognising that the interests differ.

But to go back to where this started: the only thing I’ve argued for on this thread is that the convention of adding “friendly formality” (or not) into a leaving message is a useful one, i.e. parents don’t need to know any personal details etc of why someone is leaving (I certainly don’t care to know anything about that), but having the conventional signal of whether someone is leaving “under a cloud” or not serves a genuine purpose.

Obviously a school cannot divulge when there are suspicions of serious wrongdoing that aren’t yet substantiated.

But they can signal when it’s nothing like that at all. That’s useful info for a parent.

Also no one has considered the fact that the school themselves didn't actually know the full details at the point they had to email out to parents.

I definitely think sticking to the bare facts is best at this stage because look how the rumour mill went into overdrive anyway.

Other than giving the full story, nothing will stop rumour and speculation and they clearly couldn't give that for whatever reason.

So sad that parents instantly jumped to negative conclusions about a teacher they & their kids apparently respected and liked though. 😞

@GeneralPeter but what would constitute ‘under a cloud’? Many teachers are breaking down under stress and leaving the profession. What happens if they were suspended whilst something was being investigated. That might be final straw for teacher so they leave whilst suspended, but the investigation finds it was malicious so the teacher was exonerated. What would the initial correspondence to parents say.

Useful or not is irrelevant. The parents have no right or entitlement to know and a 'signal' is not appropriate.

What part of 'the possibility... would go through my head' leads you to jump to 'this person is obsessed'?

Have you never briefly wondered something without becoming obsessed by it?

I agree. And why would such a "signal" be needed when the teacher leaving is liked & respected by the kids up until that point?

Why the assumption that his leaving must be down to some terrible "crime"? So ridiculous.

@cloudtreecarpet Communication is always a signal. Good luck railing against that.

A competent writer knows that a stark: “Cloudtree will not be returning to the school.” will be read as an indication that something is amiss.

Not even four words could be spared to say “We wish her well” or something equally anodyne. It’s the conventional style for someone who has been dismissed for something serious.

A competent parent at that point should want to know what.

Your idea that if a teacher is “liked and respected” by children then that should be good enough reassurance in such a scenario is silly.

Happens at lot, that teacher has the right to privacy over what,might, be very personal subject.
I was speaking with a teacher friend yesterday, and they had a teacher quit Fruday. Officially on sick until Easter but will not be back after. No warning, no explanation, just quitting- had enough.

Would you know if it was a serious safeguarding, not necessarily. A local HT was removed from the school. Staff (and parents, families became aware) obviously knew they d gone , obviously serious, but did not know the reasons until it was reported on local bbc. This is why gossiping is rife!!

You are making the assumption that ths SLT are not the ones that have created the problem for the teacher to leave, and are giving them more power over those that they have forced out by saying that they should write something or by making things up in your own head when they don't.

You're reading too much into it. Additional comments are used by some schools to both mean exactly what they say and to disguise the exact opposite. As is the absence of additional comments.

It's this sort of thing that shows how it's impossible to fully protect staff from all parents - whatever is or isn't said, somebody will always use that as an excuse to pry further and make assumptions, spread rumours and generally do everything in their power to make staff/ex staff's life awful under the guise of 'but I'm a parent and have the right to know'.

No, an interfering parent would want to know. A reasonable parent would understand that they shouldn't know. It's none of their business.

Is it "silly" though?

What's "silly" is making a big drama out a competent teacher being replaced by a likely equally competent teacher & instantly assuming the teacher leaving MUST be leaving under a cloud rather than leaving for a difficult personal reason.

I reiterate my point from before - whatever the school put out would not be enough for some parents and simply tacking "we wish him well" on the end would not stop the rumour mill & gossip.
Better to keep it as simple as possible.

This post is absolutely ridiculous! It’s none of your business. I taught for 20 years and saw this happen a few times with colleagues. The reasons weren’t even shared with staff initially on some occasions. Teachers can leave suddenly just as any other employees can. Reasons I saw were, police investigations over safeguarding incidents inside and outside of school, viewing adult content on a school laptop, death, a terminal diagnosis, failing performance reviews, a new job, needing to care for relatives to just waking up one morning and thinking ‘fuck this shit’ One guy actually said those exact words after 4 weeks in a school after quitting half way through the day! In an ideal world teachers have notice periods but there’s nothing stopping them quitting at any time just as there isn’t in other jobs.

Well actually there is. They have to hand their notice in by specified dates to finish at the end of term

In normal circumstances, yes. But if they want to burn their boats and just walk out, there's nothing stopping them. If they're not going to stay in teaching, the lack of a reference won't be a problem.

We had a career change teacher in his 40s, who'd been in business but had fancied a change. He discovered pretty rapidly that he'd made a mistake, things were going badly, and he'd had enough. So one random Monday he just didn't come back after the weekend.

@OhWise1
You clearly don’t have a clue if you seriously think that all teachers work their notice periods! 🙄
Assuming that they don’t care about a reference there is nothing stopping a teacher from walking out and not giving notice. Schools can sue for breach of contract but in reality this rarely happens (I’ve never known it to happen!) I’ve seen cases of a teacher leaving with a few days notice with the agreement of the school. Seeing as you don’t seem to be aware of that I’m also
assuming that you are somehow unaware of the large number of teachers quitting the profession due to current conditions? It really is that shit at the moment that people are prioritising their sanity over a reference.

Exactly! I saw this a few times. I remember a career change teacher who just made it to the first payday in September and after 2 lessons just literally did a runner. I actually admired him because I’d never have the balls to do something that brave! I stayed in really shit schools much longer than I should have. I know of someone else who hated the first month in a new school and was asked to return to her previous school so she just left on a Friday and returned to her previous school on the following Monday. She just didn’t put the school she’d been at briefly down as a reference for future jobs.