I don’t know what to do.

[Howisthisok1]

i work as a TA in an inner city primary school. Three weeks ago, the children went on a residential to Wales. I opted not to go. A few days ago, one of the girls told me she’d left her accommodation on one of the nights and slept elsewhere with another group. I reported this. Her parents were called in.

The following day she told me she was angry, because another girl had done the same but would not be getting into trouble. I told her she should report the other girl. She then told me that three of them had gone to the DSL to report it and were told ‘keep this to yourselves, you are too late to report it - stop throwing others under the bus.

AIBU to think this is totally wrong and you never tell children to keep quiet about safeguarding?

Edited to add he did tell the girl she could bring it up at her forthcoming meeting but that he did not wish to be involved.

Click on the three little dots at the top right corner and look for PM.
It is anonymous

OP, you really need to think of yourself and your family now. If you go above the HT and the SLT then it is going to end badly for you, however well intentioned and principled you are. Don’t risk your own financial stability on the advice of strangers on the internet

It all sounds like a dreadful situation. I really feel for you.

I can’t believe that it’s known for a DSL to ‘have form’ for lying and covering up. That is absolutely awful and desperately worrying for the children in that school.

I’ve seen that a kind HT / DSL have offered for you to DM on here, I really hope they can offer some valuable guidance and clear steps on why to do next. I’m sure they will.

Just as an aside, I would also perhaps look for another job.. I know it sounds like personal life is quite tricky at the moment but I couldn’t work in a school where I couldn’t do what was required of me morally and professionally for fear of losing my job. That’s truly dreadful, and I’m so sorry that is the position you are in.

With all due respect, if this all comes out later down the line that OP has not reported a safeguarding concern that was disclosed directly to her, then she won’t have a job anyway. And it will be very difficult for her to find another one in a school, ever again. It is really serious to not uphold safeguarding procedures, and to actively choose not to report disclosures. It is a huge breach of duty of care.

Don’t be ridiculous, she is a TA who has reported it to the HT and the SLT. I think that is due diligence done on her part.

I reported within the hour to HT. she backed the DSL.

Oh I’m really sorry I must have missed that. Apologies! Well done for reporting it so quickly. I can’t believe the Head backed the DSL.. ugh. Please do keep the thread updated with how everything works out.

@IcyRubyHiker
No need to apologise. There’s lots of messages and easy to miss.

@captainflash

it won’t let me pm you. It won’t let me type in the message bit

But even if you have spoken to someone you should still record your side of things.
I record everything that happens involving me - even if I have verbally told someone.
I normally state what the child said (keeping to the facts) and we then are told to write 'action' and what we did e.g. in this case you would say I thanked the child for letting me know and I immediately went and spoke to the DSL and headteacher.
If they directly told you it's too late, I would also record that.

I've sent you a PM. Hopefully you can reply to it

except none of that happened so it matters not one jot.

honestly its a mountain out of a molehill. Jobsworth people making out things are worse than they are. Just forget it and do nothing, im sure people have real things to worry about.

Why do half the people on here think the main purpose of safeguarding is to find bad things that happened? The main purpose is to stop bad things happening, and for that it doesn't matter one jot that nothing happened.

hmm. You've clearly not worked in a safeguarding role.

You don't get to pick and choose what childrens words to report.

3 children went to the DSL in school. That has to be noted whether you think it matters 'one jot' or not.

Britain in disaster capitalism after 40 years of impoverishing ordinary people so that the rich can build more superyachts. Great isn’t it.

Can you get any evidence - written or recorded - of the HT telling the girls that it’s too late, recorded somewhere where he can’t destroy it. Then if anything comes to light later, plead innocence and thank god you’re a TA not a teacher.

And fwiw I’d get out of schools at your earliest opportunity. I know how poverty and being female restricts choice but really, have a good look at what else you could be doing in 5 years time. They are toxic as hell, run as little fiefdoms by wannabe local elites in many places.

That's what I don't get. You can't stop bad things from happening! No amount of policies and procedures will ever keep kids 100% safe. And if you say it's better to have a 96% chance they're safe than a 94% chance, I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe we should just accept that risk exists, perfect safety is impossible and learn to cope with it.

I don’t think you will get very far with ‘acceptable risk and learn to live with it’ while encouraging men to act like petty local chieftains, not when faced with the mother of an abused child.

Can you expand on "learn to cope with it"?

You cannot expect a staff member to stay up all night on a residential.

I know someone, a primary school teacher, who more or less did this. The children were staying overnight in a hostel which they had used several times before and usually had sole use of. Then on one occasion they arrived to find that some of the children had rooms on a different floor and other people (adults) were also sleeping on that floor, sharing the same bathrooms. The teachers ended up taking it in turns to do two hour shifts sat on a chair on the landing.

Having said that I couldn't get too concerned about 10 and 11 year olds swapping pods in the night, assuming that it was a secure site with no other groups staying. And yes, yes, I do get that the issue is that this DSL appears to be doing nothing about it in retrospect and has, apparently, told kids to let it drop. But do we actually know what was said. Maybe they did get a stiff talking to and told never to do that again but they haven't mentioned that to OP.

At the end of the day I would tell OP you did your bit by passing the information on. Nothing bad happened. Now put yourself first and don't risk your job over this.

Just get used to the idea that no amount of policies, frameworks, procedures, initiatives etc can guarantee safety. That risk is something we have to live with.

This thread is a good example of how over-reliance on policies can cloud a person's judgement. OP is confused, worried, she doesn't know what to do. She has had the importance of following procedure drilled into her so deeply that she has lost the ability to weigh up different risks - so she is not sure which is worse: the very real danger of losing her job, with concrete consequences for her own DC, or the totally hypothetical danger of a bad situation happening to another child in future, which she has not even seen any warning signs of.

@Melarus well said! Best comment yet….

Exactly, and she is being encouraged by random strangers online to put her livelihood on the line by escalating the issue.
They don’t care what happens to her.

I'd probably focus on what you actually know for certain rather than filling in the gaps with assumptions.
You don't know for sure that the DSL said "forget it" or that it was too late to report. That may be how it was interpreted, but none of us know the full context or what discussions took place afterwards between the DSL and Head. You've already done the right thing by raising your concerns with them, and at some point you have to trust that they are the people responsible for investigating and making decisions.
As a mum of a Year 6 child myself, I may see this slightly differently. I spend a lot of time teaching my children about safety, making sensible choices and understanding consequences. In my experience, 10- and 11-year-olds generally do have a sense of their limits. Personally, this sounds more like a group of children making an unwise but fairly typical decision than a major safeguarding incident. Going from one pod to another on a school trip is the sort of adventurous thing many children have always done. I certainly did at that age. Part of growing up is having some independence, testing boundaries and learning from mistakes.
I think there is a risk of making this bigger than the facts actually support. No child was harmed, and a lot of the concerns being raised are based on what might happen in future rather than what actually happened in this case.
If you're still uncomfortable, I'd go back to the Head before escalating externally. I'd simply say that you're concerned by the suggestion that some girls felt discouraged from reporting it, and that one girl appears to have been dealt with differently from the others. That gives the school leadership a chance to explain any facts you may not be aware of and, if necessary, address those concerns directly.
To me, that feels like a more proportionate approach than escalating further when it's entirely possible that the DSL and Head have already dealt with the matter appropriately behind the scenes.

Where are the pms? I have been sent one and can’t find it. Thanks

Look at your complaints procedure & raise this with whoever you report your HT to - usually governors I believe. At my school we have multiple safeguarding contacts so maybe another one of them?
As a teacher, yes you need to report it. Adding it into whatever online safeguarding system you use (we use CURA) could tick that box, however if your DSL is particularly shit, they could delete your entry…
TAs in my area are like gold dust, do look around & don’t stand for shit & slack procedures, if this is the normal routine, to cover up safeguarding reports, then your school is on a VERY slippery slope that you won’t want to be a part of!
Well done for standing for what’s right, ignore posters on here who have either misunderstood or are saying it’s no big deal. They clearly haven’t ever had any sort of safeguarding training! If my child was at your school, I’d be bloody grateful they gave staff like yourself who follow correct & safe procedures!!