Should I report concerns about teacher socialising with pupil and parent?

[Jblingsmum]

My son dumped his girlfriend. So i asked him why. He said he didn't really want to chat about it but he did open up to his dad. He said that his girlfriend and her mother spend a lot time with a male teacher from school together. Football outing and meeting for the odd coffee together. Hes told her she needs to speak to the head teacher. Shes saying she wont. So he dumped her. I cant have my son mixed up in this. It doesn't feel right at all. Im sure this shouldn't be allowed.
If I report it. Its going to look like him.
advice needed

So if you teach in a small community where you grew up, no new friends for you (not with kids), no school friends for your kids and no more seeing established friends once their kids are at school?

Please have a think about how unfair and unworkable this would be.

The father of my children is sleeping with their teacher.

He’s also married to her/me.

Wow. One of my closest friends is a teacher at DD's school. Should that not be allowed? What if she were a man? How do you know we aren't lesbians? Weird post!

I've read this twice and still don't understand?!

Please can anyone explain 🙏

This is madness some of the teachers have children in the same school, my daughter’s teacher has a son in the year above and is often at parties, are they not allowed play dates?
My daughters friends aunt is also a teacher assistant at their school and has been on meet ups when we’ve gone to the park, it’s just her mum inviting her own sister and niece, it never occurred to me as strange as I met her when our kids were at nursery together before going to the same school, it’s just a job.

😆

You can’t have your son mixed in what exactly?!

You both sound hysterical-what a total overreaction!

Even if this is the case (and I agree with PPs that it isn’t), I don’t understand why OP’s son would be so anti it that he’d break up with his girlfriend over it.

You know when kids are small and they believe their teachers live at school and are staggered when they see them out in the wild? Maybe OP never lost that sense of wonder…

It sounds like you've taught your son to interfere in things which are nothing to do with him.

The PE teacher is friends, or even in a relationship, with the girl's Mum.

That's nothing to do with you or him.

Yes, it's not particularly clear, but I'm guessing that the girlfriend's mum is dating the teacher? Not 100% sure, I am guessing there's going to be a drip feed because I don't know why that's alarmed the OP and her son.

You are being mental as is your son. Two of dds teachers are on my sports team by total chance. One is her head of year.

Actually I know of two mothers who married their kids teachers!

Report them for what? I don't understand what the issue is?

Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like -- I was at a gig with DS and a couple of his school friends when he was about ten and they could not get over seeing their teacher from the year before dancing in front of the stage.

I still don't understand why the OP's son dumped his girlfriend over it, though, or why the OP thinks she should be speaking to the Head.

Can you elaborate? Also, what does the relationship of the girl’s mother with the teacher has to do with the girl and your sons relationship?

When I was at school one of my friends' mum lived in sin with one of the teachers. That was the '80s and even then, while frowned upon by my mum in some quarters, it really wasn't a big deal and certainly not a disciplinary matter.

That's so funny! "I saw you in the park!" "You were in Sainsbury's!" 😂

I understand your son being weirded out by having a teacher present at his gf’s house but I don’t think it’s his place to make those demands. I mean, I’m assuming the teacher is either in a relationship or friends with the mother? Sounds like he isn’t comfortable having the teacher around and that was his way of putting a stop to it, but the girl wouldn’t have it. I think that’s fair enough.

Blimey half my mum friends were (still are) either teachers or TAs or other staff at our DDs village school. If they weren’t allowed to socialise with civilian villagers they wouldn’t have had much of a social life in our little area. My best friend was DDs PE teacher for years and her (same ages as mine) DDs were also in her classes. The number of times one or other of them accidentally called her Mummy/Claire in class was high. And yet, they all survived in to adulthood….

It's really not abnormal for teachers to be friends with parents. Some of them will have grown up together!

A few pupils at my secondary school were the children of teachers. I don't think this is an issue.

I think we need to know what your DS’s concerns are op as a teacher being friends with a pupils parent is not normally anything of a concern unless something has specifically happened to prompt your DS to advise the girl to speak to the head

Teachers sending their own children to the school they work in is a totally different matter.

The same applies to situations where coincidentally parents of the kids they teach are already in their friendship group.

It is obvious that it could create problems if teachers and parents seek out friendships with each other. Here is a random school code of staff conduct:

https://www.budbrooke.warwickshire.sch.uk/serve_file/24300666?

Section 2.11:

“Members of staff and volunteers should not establish or seek
to establish social contact with pupils or their families for
the purpose of securing a friendship or to pursue or
strengthen a relationship.
However, it is acknowledged that staff and volunteers may
have genuine friendships and social contact with
parents/carers of pupils, independent of the professional
relationship, such as when a parent and teacher are part of
the same family/personal network or social/recreational
circle. Those circumstances will usually be easily recognised,
openly acknowledged and should be explicitly declared in
writing by staff/volunteers to the Headteacher. Members of
staff and volunteers should always take care to maintain
appropriate personal and professional boundaries in any such
circumstances.
Furthermore, staff and volunteers should also be aware that
professionals who sexually harm children often seek to
establish relationships and contact outside of the workplace
with both the child and their parents, in order to ‘groom’ the
adult and the child and/or create opportunities for sexual
abuse.
It is also important to recognise that social contact may
provide opportunities for other types of grooming such……”

Your son sounds absolutely ridiculous - and so do you thinking there's something to report.

Isn’t the bigger issue here that your son dumped his girlfriend because she wouldn’t do what he told her to do? 🚩