AIBU to expect confidentiality after raising concerns with a charity?

[HarvestSky]

I was dissatisfied with the teaching methods in a specialist subject at school. I contacted a local charity that specialises in that subject and provides teaching for teachers. I wanted to find out whether what the school was doing was best practice, and how they could improve through training courses. However I must have mentioned the school's name rather than keeping it generic as I wish I had done. Now the charity has fed back to the school through personal contacts that I told them xyz about the school's teaching, and the teachers are annoyed.
Should I have expected a reasonable degree of confidentiality from the charity or am AIBU for dobbing the school in?

The vague reference to a subject that teachers are being trained in by a charity has lead to the assumption that the charity is Stonewall and the training is alphabet soup.

Either the teachers are teaching there are only 2 sexes and OP disagrees or they are teaching alphabet soup and OP disagrees.

Questions have been asked if it was outdated First Aid teaching too but since @HarvestSky hasn't said anything on the subject, no one knows.

I don't understand why you are being so coy about the details of this. The only parties to the matter sre the school and the charity, and they both know who you are?
It's really difficult to answer from the vague outline you have given

Come on op. It’s either sex or religion. Why be coy

Ah, I see what you mean, and I think you may well be right.

I've not been a school governor for some years now but the school used to buy in, or subscribe to certain courses for certain subject. I know there were a few different phonics schemes and several options for maths. They were obliged to stick with them for a set period of time.
Some worked well, some didnt. For those that didn't the school would research alternatives, speak to other schools that used them and try to see what would be best for their pupils, so thay once they could switch, they were fully informed.

To answer the question you actually asked, if the charity has mentioned your name to the school without you having agreed that they could, then they absolutely have done the wrong thing. If you had agreed with them that a team within the charity could come back to you with some ideas, that is what should have happened. Whether the message to the team got lost in translation or whether they are very amateur in their operations, this is not OK.

I can see that whether your plan was good or bad, over the top or not, you’re now in an embarrassing situation and you’ve not had the chance to consider the information provided by the charity and how you might raise it (or not even raise it at all) with school.

I think you should write a short and to the point email to the most senior person at the charity explain what has happened, make clear that you did not ask them to contact the school and you never gave them permission to pass on your name. Make clear that you are writing to raise an issue about their internal processes, and that on no account are they to contact the school again or discuss you or the enquiry you made. If they are any good, they will use this information to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. But don’t pursue it and turn it into a new crusade!

As for what you do with the school, I think I’d say that the charity got in a muddle, that you weren’t criticising the school, you are just very interested in the charity’s work and you wanted to see what they had on offer because you were thinking of mentioning the charity to the teachers if they seemed to have good ideas/resources. And whether you should have done all this in the first place or not, just back off and give up on the idea.

if I felt so strongly about it and it was important I would not have cared if teachers were annoyed or not. I would have cared only if it changed something or not.

they already knew you were complaining so what’s the difference?

again if it were something super important but they ignored it I would start escalating to headteacher and above, so charity would be the least of their worries

bottom line: why do you care?

I'm inclined to agree with pp and think it's PSHE and the OP disagrees with the way it's taught.
If you're not going to give any more details, @HarvestSky , there's little anyone can say.

Chiming in to say we need more details, specifically which subject and what was the perceived problem with the way it has been taught? If it was a H & S issue in PE, DT, or Science that's very different to gender and religious teaching in PSHE and RE.
FWIW all subjects have an advisory body and many of these are run as charities.
Oh, and 'props' to the OP for posting this in the school holidays so teachers are free to engage 😁

I understand why you went to the charity because you felt the school were fobbing you off. The charity are supplying resources and training to the school, so the staff can teach the children. What isn't clear is how you know that staff aren't teaching this subject correctly? Have you been in the classroom at the time? Has your child told you what's being taught?

The charity told you they would pass your email onto their teaching department. However, because you mistakenly gave the charity the schools name, rather than keeping it anonymous, they've contacted the school directly. As you've made numerous complaints to the school regarding the subject, even if your name wasn't passed onto the school, it's going to be glaringly obvious it was you who complained to the charity.

In all honesty, I can't see what the charity have done wrong here. Even if the charity hadn't told the school your name, by your own admission, you know it would be obvious to them, it was you. If the charity did give the school your name, then that's a whole different ball game. The issue is, you didn't know the charity would contact the school without telling you. I'm not sure they were obliged to tell you. You've made a complaint, they're following it through. The fact the charity knew the schools name in the first place, is down to your error.

OP, I've no idea why you're getting such a hard time on here. The charity should have checked what support you wanted and confirmed what action they planned to take before doing it. And this idea that noone can say a word about our public services or ask questions unless they are fully qualified / willing to step in and deliver them themselves is one of the biggest reasons they are in such a mess. Education and health in particular seem to suffer from this culture and it is extremely problematic.

I would go back to the charity and ask for clarity on what's been done.

The charity shouldn’t have identified you at all.

If you have concerns then maybe other people do too, so it might not be obvious to the school that it is you.

I can’t see what you have done wrong here, you have concerns about something, you had addressed it with the school and felt fobbed off, the next step would be to get more information and see if your concerns are valid or not,

I don’t get where everyone think the OP must be a nightmare parent, she hasn’t gone in ranting or raving. She is asking questions, which parents are allowed to do.

Example from my own subject (physics) - teachers are teaching energy types rather than newer terminology energy stores, OP queries it but is given the brush off, so contacts the Institute of Physics to check. The IOP then contacts the school to offer support.

But, @Kepler22B , how would the OP know it was being taught incorrectly without observing a lesson and looking at the curriculum maps? There's a lot of detail being left out here, which makes responding difficult.

YABU to ask us for advice but not tell us what the subject matter is!

If you truly want any of us to assess it and tell you what's reasonable we need to know more about the situation (and you say the school already knows who you are so why the faux-anonymity here?!)

The nature of your relationship with the school is also extremely relevant - are you the parent of a pupil? employed by the school in any capacity? a governor? a local councillor? an ofsted inspector? someone who lives nearby? or just someone who deeply, deeply cares about how this mystery subject is taught across the entire nation?

It's really difficult to comment not knowing what subject it is, if it's a critical subject like maths or English I can understand you getting so involved, if it's a minor less rigorous subject there are many ways to tackle them. I think you need to say what subject it is to get sensible feedback on here.

You sound like a nightmare parent, perhaps the school and their trained staff may know better than you...

@HarvestSky If I am honest, and having worked for a charity with a helpline, I think if you had talked to the school twice and then spoke to the charity and the agreement was that they would come back to you and not the school, I think you need to feed this back to the charity as unless there was a safeguarding issue, this shouldn't have happened.

However it may have been inadvertent, as in the charity had close connections with the school and they mentioned they had had generic feedback (without naming you directly) and as you had already complained to the school, the school connected the dots. Still not acceptable. When someone approaches a specialist charity for advice, best practice, or guidance, the usual expectations are:

• They treat the enquiry as confidential by default, unless told otherwise
• They anonymise any examples they use
• They only contact third parties (like a school) if:
• There is a safeguarding concern, or
• The person explicitly consents to them doing so

Most charities are extremely careful about this because trust is their currency.
So your reaction “Why on earth did they go to the school?” is completely reasonable.

This doesn’t excuse it, but it helps explain the dynamic:

• Some charities see themselves as system‑improvers, so when they hear poor practice they instinctively think, “We should help the school fix this.”
• They may have assumed that you were seeking change, not just information.
• They may have thought the feedback was already known to the school because you had raised concerns twice.
• They may have been careless and not considered the impact on you personally.

None of these justify naming or identifying you but they show how the misunderstanding could arise.

Was it a breach of confidentiality? Morally: Yes. Procedurally: It depends.
Because there was no explicit confidentiality agreement, the charity can argue they acted within their normal practice. But ethically, they should have:

• Asked permission
• Checked whether you wanted your identity protected
• Clarified the purpose of the information you were to be given

Good charities do this automatically.

So the real problem for you is that you feel exposed before you were ready?
That’s the harm here. You weren't prepared for the school to know you’d sought external advice before you decided on the way forward (if indeed you chose to take it forward and now you feel compromised, potentially labelled as “difficult” and worried about repercussions for your child if you are a parent of a child at the school. Those feelings are valid.

I think I would go back to the charity and say something like “I approached you for best‑practice information, not for you to contact the school. I wasn’t ready for them to know I’d sought external advice. In future, please check with me before sharing anything that could identify me.” I'd ask the for the info if they haven't provided it and then contact the school to explain what happened and that you were researching the subject and say it was unfortunate how it unfolded but it was not how it was intended. The either let it rest or discuss any concerns you feel you need to address.

Excellent post! 100% agree. Also demonstrates the difference in culture across the sectors; the default isn't 'Oh the charity can't have done anything wrong' but instead 'here's why it might have gone wrong, here's what they should have done, and here's how to fix it'. I could cry at the responses on here that basically suggest no one can ever question anything otherwise they are 'a nightmare parent'. These attitudes are endemic in our public services and go a long way to explaining why many of them are of such poor quality.

It's not about "not suggesting anything". Do people outside of your workplace make suggestions to you?
Genuine parental concerns are addressed. However, schools do get parents who seek to influence and change lessons and the curriculum, often claiming more expertise than the working professionals.
We don't know what the OP is talking about here.

I'm a teacher.

This is a tricky one. Your expectation is that the teachers' confidentiality doesn't need to be respected but yours does. I assume you would have preferred to make an anonymous report.

I'm also unclear about how you know what you know, are you in the classroom to identify what is and isn't best practice?

In terms of loving your subject and seeing that there could be improvements in teaching, you would need to specify what and how. I know that often I'm frustrated myself because the strictures of the National Curriculum, especially with regard to the volume of content, mean that I can't teach something the way that I think would be most effective. No amount of training around this will change the structural problem that I can't fix.

I'm going to assume that the subject was something sensitive that affects pupils' personal & emotional lives that teachers may not necessarily be experts in (think disability, mental health, gender, sex education. . . ) not something more academic. But it would help if you clarified.

If the charity is there to provide advocacy, educate people about the issue and support those particularly affected then they have been really inept because this has backfired. What you did (talk to school twice with no effect then seek their advice) was perfectly reasonable but of course the school will feel defensive and of course you will be concerned about the repercussions for you and your child.

I would contact someone higher up in the charity (as I suspect this is incompetence rather than policy), pointing out the embarrassment they may have unwittingly caused you and that this has left you questioning whether to seek further help from them or support their campaigns. For me, it's not simply right or wrong and whether they were allowed to do this, it's that they have shot themselves in the foot and done something that has undermined their work and the good relations they rely on. If you care about their work, they need to know this.

Yes, I'm also curious as to the subject, I wonder if it's related to gender / sex education, i.e. a site of contest.