Year 1 class allocation and complaint, teachers, governors, what are our chances please?

[hollybungalow]

our daughter goes to the village school and is in reception, it’s a great school and we haven’t had many reasons to complain. Until now.

We found out they were mixing the classes the day they chose to do it last week. This isn’t standard practice for them.

Our hold was placed in a class with no close friends and unfortunately a child from another class who has bullied her in an out of school setting. As they are separated currently we didn’t raise with the school as we didn’t know they were going to mix classes.
Our child feels things deeply and there has been a significant change in behaviour. She is convinced she is on her own and without friends because ‘no one chose her’ and it’s heartbreaking for us all.

Other than this i asked the teacher about how they allocated places and she shared who our child had chosen and honestly i was surprised who she had picked, one girl she knows but the other she has never mentioned.
The same day we got her school report and it wasn’t hers, it was for another child in her class with the same first name. Then the choices made sense and to me it’s clear there has been a mix up.

i raised with the head teacher and shared the out of school bullying and the view (backed up by the other parent) that we believed there had been a mix up. He is firm there are no circumstances what so ever (including physical bullying) that would cause him to change a child’s class. His view is that whatever happens ‘we work it out’

I didn’t agree and have raised a complaint with the governors and trustees.
Can anyone give me a view of how likely you think we are to succeed with our complaint and get our child moved class? ( there are 3 in the year and we would take any other than this one).
because of the timing, the only option we have for september is to put her in the class with the bully, keep her off and be fined or move schools. So keen to know how likely we are to succeed or if we chalk it up and get her in another school.

thanks x

If there are plenty of spaces in each class you may find they join classes together once you hit KS2 as you don’t then have 30 pupil limit that you do in KS1. Many schools are having to do this due to falling rolls and budget constraints

There are 4 parts to my formal complaint.

1. we were not told of the mixing and if we had known we would have told them about the out of school bullying and i assume a different choice would have been made?
2. Clear admin errors between my child and a child with the same name, i think this has lead to their preferences being incorrect
3. New starters to the school have been allowed to ask for their child to be in a specific class and it’s been considered, but not for current pupils in any circumstance even physical bullying
4. i might have agreed to a trial of the new class with support but the only support offered was for the teacher to ‘keep an eye on her’

You're being a bit dramatic to put it that way, and actually proving my point that you have no trust in the school to sort it out.
I'd report it to the manager of all 25 people, and keep reporting it until something was done.
I wouldn't go changing my job or walking away, I'd hassle the right people through the right channels until it was fixed.

Advocating for your child is not the same as removing them from accountability and responsibility. People do not need to be subject to harm to understand its effects

you have exactly proven my point.
You think it’s dramatic when it’s framed as you but when it’s a child it’s ok? because they need to learn right? and the hard way is the only way yeah?

What i have done is exactly as you describe I have reporred it to the head teacher and will continue to do so until either they do something or i chose to walk. Thank you x

Because governors aren’t there to deal with who is friends with whom or which class pupils are in. The headteacher is responsible for the day to day running of the school.

If they let one person move, they'll be flooded by a barrage of requests, all thinking their cause is as worthy as the next.

If the caterpillar story is what happened and not a metaphor (slightly struggling to unpack it - it's late!), four year olds don't historically have an excellent sense of this sort of thing. Is it bullying or was it a one-off nasty incident? Your daughter might be feeding off you in this situation.

Maybe try to arrage some playdates over the summer with children from the new class? No doubt others are feeling anxious, and might give her some confidence going in.

Multiple mix ups that have included a GDPR breach. How did they deal with the breach? If it was digital they should have at a minimum requested both families delete all copies.

They made a decision based on preferences given and then attributed it to the wrong child and are not correcting the mistake. That seems very irresponsible. You should push for an investigation into why these kind of things keep happening and a plan to stop it continuing. I'd be tempted to make a complaint to authorities beyond the school, even if you chose the leave. If they can't manage this I wonder what else is going on in the background.

thank you. I’ll focus on the trust and CEO rather than governors

Yep.
You're that parent.
Straight to the top with a list of what they're doing wrong, all guns blazing.
You need to talk to the class teacher, who is the one person in a position to fix the situation. Your child will encounter nasty children in every class. The teacher needs to made aware of the dynamic and will navigate your kid into other mireprodu tive relationships.
They will also hold this bully to account.
None of that will happen if you just keep on about moving classes and how they've set the groups up incorrectly and unfairly.
They haven't.

Have other bullying events happened with this child? Do they pick on your DD at break time as I assume all classes in the same year group have break together

Also sometimes having your best mates in class isn’t great for learning. My heart would sink if DS announced he was doing project work with best friend, they would get bugger all done! They were different academic ability so didn’t tend to sit together for maths and English, which was just as well!

i understand the argument on all for one but it fails when communication is poor and fails to address bullying concerns.
The caterpillar story is true and the worst and latest in a series on incidents as we have now removed our child from the out of school setting.

the class teachers are lovely as is the teaching assistant. They are aware and support my complaint

Trustees are even less involved with operational stuff than governors and you don’t get near the CEO. If the complaints policy states governors after HT then that is the route you need to take, but unless breach of policy then no action will be taken. You didn’t need to know in advance that classes were mixing (every single parent would be in school demanding which children, teacher etc they should or should not be with) The one thing they should be listening to is the incorrect report, and what measures will be put in place to ensure that doesn’t happen.

They’re 5. Friendships are very fluid at this age. I am not doubting that the other child was mean to yours but to assume they’ll bully yours for the next 5 years is a stretch. Bullying behaviour mostly happens at break times anyway so being in the same class or not is irrelevant. Being in class together the teacher will see their interactions, if anything your child is safer.
You are overthinking this situation.
But you should be making noise about the incorrect report.

Other events have been reported by other parents in school, but the classes don’t mix much and those events i believe have happened in breakfast or after school club which my child doesn’t attend.
My Little one has i would say 6-8 friends in her class, boys and girls and then 2 she is really close with. She isn’t with any of them

I think you have a case and I have known a change happen in similar circumstances, albeit a few weeks into the new year when the parent persevered. Keep fighting but be calm and rational. Let them know you will escalate to the LA if necessary. They wont want their data beach to be made public. Ask for responses in writing and keep a paper trail. It’s much harder for them when it’s all there in black and white.

thank you that’s helpful. The HT confirmed that we were the only people who raised a complaint. I am not asking for a particular teacher, class or friendship group.
Is there a lesson for us here that if we had disclosed the out of school bullying, decisions would have different?
The HT is about to become the CEO in our case. Is it worth us seeing if the new HT is more willing to admit their mistake?

You could reframe it as an opportunity to build resilience and make new friendships. Sorry to hear about the bullying but given theyre ?5... is it likely to be a sustained bullying situation or another 4/5 yr old who daily changes their mind on friends and relationships?

thank you. This is a really good point. I’ll make sure i document everything. I kept the email from the HT that said ‘requests from parents like you will always be a no’ because it wound me up like the wellbeing of a child didn’t matter

Is this a very small Trust?

I would see how it goes. As I said if class sizes are small I would envisage classes being collapsed due to budgets in the next few years. So 3 classes being merged into 2 for example

This happened to DD. We had also moved house a year before she started school (her sibling was three years above), so she knew no one from outside of school.
We told her to see how it went until Christmas and if she was still unhappy we'd move her to the primary that was a two minute walk from home.
It took a few weeks to settle in, she went on to gain some lovely new friends and be very successful at the school.
I think ultimately it helped build resilience and gave her confidence. A few years later it happened again, DD wasn't bothered in the slightest. Many parents, some of whom had been dismissive when I'd mentioned it, complained bitterly. I don't know anyone who got the school to change their mind.

i could reframe it. It was re framed to me as child and i was bullied relentlessly from 5-11. probably why i feel so strongly. ripping kids away from their friends and forcing them to placate bully’s doesn’t build resilience. But hey it keeps therapists in a job!

Mind you, if it were racial abuse, or related to disability, religion, something like that... Even if theyre little I would feel differently. Full disclosure, havent read the full thread.
And still not imagining 2x 5 yr olds couldn't be friends despite differences but those kinds of prejudices if they aren't just an off curious comment are fed by parents and a child shouldn't be exposed to abuse like that.

yes it’s a small trust if 2 schools. I did say i would entertain a trial period in the new class with certain support measures but they refused it