hello, first time poster but have followed a few things on here before so I hope I have the right thread!
I am a mum of 5 yo boy girl twins, son has several learning difficulties including autism both twins born preterm at 29 weeks. My problems at the moment are not to do with my son for once.
Recently we had a multi agency meeting between the school my daughter is at now and the one she will be at after summer, my son was referred a year so only my daughter-in-law call her cc- was in primary 1 this year. The school she is attending right now is a very small school of just over 40 students and her class is a p1-4 class the only other class is p5-7. There are two teachers in the school and one teachers aide. Since her first month of school she had been getting a lot of bullying, round about the time the p7 helpers stoped helping the new p1's. It was to the point where she had started having wet nights again(potty trained during the day from 2yo, night trained from 3.5yo so very out of character for her) she did confide in us within a could weeks, we told her to tell her father if it ever happened again. Within a week we(my husband and I) had a chat with her teacher as she started to cry in the evenins and mornings before school. She assured us that nothing was going on, but with a week we were back. Long story short they assumed her another buddy\helper by term 3 after many more meetings with both the teacher& head teacher(p5_7 teacher) but this was only done because we had started to find her standing in her bedroom in the am setting herself, she admitted that she did it on purpose to not have to go to school, as at brake and lunch time the teachers would not be in playground watching over us(the later did tell us that if the school has less than 50 pupils they don't need a playground assistant\teacher out, this was in a meeting for our son where they basically refused to take him as they were not at willing to hire a special teacher for him or adapt the school to help him, hence why they both are moving to a new school and our whole family is moving to a new home for this) so due to this they agreed to have someone help her. All was going very well again until this last term. Nothing twins had been to a visit to their new school on a Thursday so cc was of course not at her school, by the week after we all got this horrible but that is going around in our area, so she was off for a total of 5 days including the visit. I received a call from my husband telling me that a meeting would be held about her absence and to discuss\hand over her information to the new head teacher this Monday past. So a few days go by, and we take her to the doctor as she had been having problems passing no.2(this is important for later) this was an on going problem so we had been several times before this, and were then told by Dr that we could now go to our local pharmacy for this in future as they had been advised of problem by doctor. So off to school she goes the day after so we are on day 6 off this year's absences. The following Wednesday (a week ago tomorrow) I get another phone call from my husband saying that there is a MAMAP meeting being held right then, i was a 20 minute drive away at my own doctors appointment (this I shall leave for another post as it also involved the school) and we had been told the totally wrong date for this meeting. I was to far away to return in time and just before my appointment so I asked him to send my apologies and that I would phone the new head teacher with the new house information in order to get their records up to date. I did that later in the day.
Fast forward to today. We get the minute's from the meeting in this afternoon. I have read half of them because I simply could not read more. I am appalled. They have given so much misinformation, a few down right lies, and a lot of extra things that do not seems to have any standing(I am honestly not sure it's even the same child they are talking about!)
Here are some of the things they had wrong
That cc was actually 6, but she is only 5, that we had moved from Inverurie to Fraserburgh, back to Inverurie, back to Fraserburgh, then to our current address, and we were now moving again - my family have never lived in Inverurie, when the twins were born we lived in Fraserburgh until we moved to our current home in 2015 we are only moving again due to our son not being able to attend the school here and after all the problems cc has had at this school, and the several issues we as a family have had with them(more than I included above) we don't really want either of our children to go there, I would actually go as far as I wouldn't recommend it to anyone(I know of at least one other parent that is moving her daughter from this school as well, for much of the same reasons and others!)
That she was unkempt, dirty, never had the right clothing - for 90% of her school life she has had a shower before school due to accidents with no 1 so I have always brushed her hair. She always has a jacket, as does her brother + all the following in their bags- gloves+jumper scarf's, suncream, changed of school clothes, gym kit, and they both have Welly boots at the school, and at home, had winter snow boots over the Xmas time, skirts for sunny days and so on. I have been a mum for 5 years, and am also very close with my own mother and I have never not had clean clothes for them! They even have waterproof onesies!
That cc did not attend any after-school programs or any play dates- this I completely agree with but I have explained to them a few times why not here's why- we live at least a 15 minute drive from our local village, no parks or even a shop here, I do not drive due to medical reasons and taxis are £25 return, not including the activity cost. So we do things as a family at the weekend, parks, hikes, baking from scratch. The one activity she did attend was held at the school and she came home very very upsetting because one of the kids that bullied her punched her at said event and when she told her teacher what happened she was called a liar(when I spoke to her later she also called cc a lair to my face in front of cc making her cry again, I have known this other child since my kids were in nursery, he has been rude to me and others so I 100% believe my daughter!) So I removed her and it was only on for one day a week for 3 weeks so she only missed two and she gave it a go! We have play dates with people out with the village as we are not the same religion as them and they find that hard to get past, so any play dates I have tried to make have always fallen through.
Honestly the list goes on.
My worry is that this new head teacher has been told all this, all of this is on paper. If I had been told about the right date I know I would have been there and nothing like this would have been said because they would not have even said that to me. My husband is going into have a meeting with the head teacher of her current school tomorrow to sort all this out because it makes us look very bad and it's simply not true. But it has already been said. I just don't want the problems we have had with this school to carry on to the next. I just don't understand why I have been to more than 10 meetings for my son with people always saying how much of a good job we are doing, and we have asked for help when we needed it and all this good stuff for the school to turn round and say all this stuff that is not true. Have they mixed up a child and given the wrong information to this new school? Somehow I do t think so, and I have a feeling the majority of the stuff they have written\talked about will be taken back after tomorrows meeting. I was already considering writing to someone about this schools let conduct (advised to do this by both my twins doctor and health visitor) but this sort of takes the cake. Should I go ahead with what we have been advised?
Our other worry is that this looks very bad on us as parents, if we go ahead with the many complaints about the school & staff would this be thrown back in our face? We have many many people supportting us including health professionals but this could cause problems with people such as the new school or social work if read without knowing us or knowing all the previous problems we had with the school and knowing all the great things that have been said about us. This letter on its own makes our family look very bad towards our daughter (all meetings about our disabled son are very good and never a real problem, never questioned about his appearance or clothes etc. )
Any advice would be very appreciated! Also if you would like more background info just ask! We have already been told by other school teachers, social workers etc that the majority of the goings on of this school isn't allowed but extra information about who to talk to or how to take it further up or just your own experience would be so much help!
Thanks in advance xx