to be shocked at what this teacher said to a pupil?

[Vallhala]

I'm just sharing this as I was shocked (and it takes a lot to do that). Nothing I can do although I hope that the pupil's parents act.

DD1 (14) came home today to tell me she'd overheard a conversation between another 1pupil and her head of year. DD is adamant that she heard correctly.

The HoY told the pupil that in all the time she had known Mr X, (another year head), she had never known him to have such a grudge against a pupil. She continued to say that if Mr X had his way the pupil would not be taking or passing any GCSEs.

I don't know if I'm more shocked at the comment or at the teacher's indiscretion as I'd have thought that regardless of what a teacher thinks of a colleague's opinion of a child it's most unusual for one to say anything.

Am I reasonable to be shocked or is this par for the course in our schools nowadays?

That's disgusting.

So Teacher 1 was telling pupil that Teacher 2 held a grudge against said pupil?

Sounds a bit wrong tbh, is that a stress a pupil really needs?

Could have been a 'buck your ideas up' kind of pep talk?

what is the student like? was it a conversatin that was heading/ discussing the exclusion of the student?

did you dd heaqr all or part of the conversation?

I really don't know tbh. DD told me it in the midst of many things going on, then the phone rang and the subject changed. I don't think that there is any liklihood of the pupil being excluded - I don't know her personally but AFAIK she's not the school swot but neither is she the pupil from hell.

Will ask DD more tomorrow, but I must admit I was a bit at what I did get told.

I can see why this has concerned you, however I think you should forget about it.
You are hearing a third hand conversation out of context and you don't really know exactly what was said.

That's the trouble with eavesdropping -so easy to get the wrong end of the stick !

Quite agree Jasper (hey, thats my cats name! ). I can't do anything even if I thought it was my place to and knew the entire story from start to finish. As I said, I don't know the girl personally.

I still wonder what goes on in our schools though. Just read a Chat thread about a teacher who had to leave her class in tears owing to their behaviour... it's all a far cry from when I was young.

Just wondered if maybe the pupil was complaining to her HoY that Mr X didn't like him/her ... and HoY was telling them that he'd never known Mr X to hold a grudge against a pupil (i.e. pupil's worries were unfounded and Mr X had raised genuine concerns) and that it was up to the pupil to buck up their ideas because otherwise Mr X was suggesting that he/she would not be taking any GCSEs (i.e. because they were not capable/not working rather than because of an imagined grudge!).

Which is absolutely the type of conversation you WOULD expect a HoY to have with a pupil and not a million miles from what your DD heard (bearing in mind she heard half the conversation in passing).

Valhalla when was in p7 two schools had joined tog so we had two classes with a mix of kids from the 2 schools in each.

In the first week of term I overheard my teacher(Mr B ) say to the head (miss L) that he thought he had not been given enough of the "more able" pupils, and had more than his share of thickos (I paraphrase)

Subsequently the classes were reshuffled and I was ejected from Mr B's class! I concluded I was one of the thickos he wanted rid of.

Mr B turned out to be a paedophile who abused several children in his care but that's another story

This was 1973

In my last year in high school (US) I had a teacher who didn't like me. He discussed my performance with ANOTHER STUDENT and told that student that I would fail a rather important exam (I didn't). There are a lot of good teachers but sadly some are pretty crap and pretty unprofessional as well. I wouldn't worry about it too much, your DD will soon learn which teachers to stay away from.

My mum taught at a prep-school in the 70's.

The nastisest child in the school was the dc of the headmistress/owner. He had a grudge/used to bully a nice bright boy in his class as he was jealous of him. The other teachers were afraid for their jobs - he once stabbed my mum in the hand with a compass and smiled while he was doing it as he was aware that his mother would do nothing about it.

The headmistress gave the nice boy a very poor and unfair reference on his grammar school application form - saying that he was not grammer school material. He didn't go to grammer school, but he ended up doing well.

When, my mum heard that the nasty boy ended up in Medical School - she said "hope he doesn't become a gynaecologist".

I am wonderig if it was the type of converstaion redsky is describing, which \i can imagine happening in a school.