school calling me a liar

[noodels2002]

Hello im new here. my dd ages 4 had the chickenpox for 2 weeks and i provided medical evidence for the school. however when she was well enough to return to school her grandfather died. i went in explained to the school and filled in all necessary forms. we went out of town to be with distraught mil which we told school we would be. my daughter took the news very hard and obviously was upset over it so my husband and i decided to take her to butlins for the weekend friday to monday and on our return we were greeted with a letter from the school dated Wednesday of that week informing us she hadnt been off due to bereavement but infact a family holiday and they had information could i come to school by friday when they broke off for half term ( impossible as we was out of town and which they knew we was) as they had been "given information".

the hakf term went by and i went to the school this morning to ask the head what the meaning if this letter was and what evidence she had to suggest this. she replied weve been given evidence by a reliable source and would not stipulate any further when asked by whom.

i also asked who had hand delivered the ketter to my house again to which she would not answer. i informed her the claims are incorrect and she said the school believe you are lying due to this reliable source. i said how can i defend myself if you have no evidence to give me. and she said she had evidence but wouldnt share it with me. i again explained about the bereavement and why we went out of town i also honestly told her we went to butlins at the weekend and showed her confirmation to which she said thats fine but we dont believe dd was where you said she was during the week. so at this point i got very distressed and said she had no proof and things got heated which resulted in me being escourted off school premises. ive shiwn her medical proof of rhe illness and proof we went on a family holiday friday to monday not the monday to friday she is questioning. this isnt the first run in with the head as the first time they accused my mother if child abuse and breaking my dd arm on idle gossip which resulted in a visit from ss to which they closed the case instantly and said the school was wrong to accuse people of this on idle gossip and no evidence. the second time the school called me and another parent in as a teacher had saw us arguing nor me or the other parent knew each ither or what she was even talking about as said parent wasnt even at school that day.

anyway back to original point. am i wrong to ask for their evidence and for the head to withold it from me before making these false claims. any help or advice appreciated as i feel i am being harrassed by the school and feel the need someone had been to my house and hand deliver a letter knowing we was out if town totally unacceptable. i feel due to the death of fil i have been hounded and harrassed by the school a trespass has been commited and a total lack of compassion shown from the achool in these difficult circumstances.

Who talks of having "run ins" with staff. You aren't seeming very reasonable

This is with the HT who throws someone out of her office on a daily basis.

Is this a state school in England?

I'm very surprised that any HT would authorise a family holiday in writing without including the exceptional circumstances, were they in the letter?

Is it normal to have top sets for 4 year olds, it's been a few years since I had a reception age child but that doesn't sound right, what are they basing the setting on? I'd not be happy about that.

One concern for me though is that your DD thinks she was being kidnapped or stolen, I'd be very worried about how she even knows about such concepts. There's no way any of my dc at age 4 would have even been able to form that opinion. Does she watch age inappropriate TV or anything, school might pick up on that

@noodels2002

I would look at your council website to see if their is a parent partnership. Has your daughter a formal diagnosis of autism?

Obviously it wasn't good that things 'got heated' with the HT so that you had to be escorted off the premises, but for her to accuse a grieving person of lying is lacking in empathy. It almost sounds as if she wanted confrontation.

It does sound as if the relationship with the school has broken down. Unless you think you can mend it I would be looking for a new school. And mending it will no doubt involve you apologising for the heated exchange - I doubt the HT will retrench at all.

Do you have a really calm friend you could take with you to a future meeting? Someone who will put their hand on your arm as you get upset, to stop you from saying the wrong thing - or what the HT can choose to interpret as the wrong thing? You really need to keep it all really calm and factual from now on. As someone suggested earlier, write down a timeline and list what happened.

Why does my gut tell me that
A) the Butlins break was booked before the passing of MIL
B) the OP reacts inappropriately, gets very het up and has had numerous experiences of people "calling her a liar"; treating her badly; giving her evils etc etc

If it was me I would consider that my relationship with the school had broken down and I would pull both children out for the rest of the year. You don't have to send either or your children there!

Produce copy of death certificate. Then complain to head of governors in writing. However think pushing it slightly re attendance to take her to Butlins if she has been off sick recently. Though school attendance not mandatory until the beginning of the term after they turn 5

TBH I would have had a similar reaction to many posters - there must be more to this, she can't have actually called you a liar, etc. I was a teacher for years and used to take a lot of threads like this with a pinch of salt.

However, my sister has recently had a very similar experience with the HT of her DS's school. Having seen all the evidence and heard accounts from teachers who were present too, I can only conclude that the HT is question is bloody nuts and has an actual vendetta against several parents at the school! She made an error in the first instance with my nephew and has basically refused to back down, making wilder and wilder threats then trying to involve SS (who were bemused). She has since gone out of her way to find anything she can jump on as 'evidence' of further problems, refused to discuss matters calmy (literally screaming at my sister in the office in front of staff) and threatened to call police when my sister asked a perfectly simple, polite question that she didn't like. So I do believe that some Headteachers make mistakes and are then too embarassed to apologise, or just take against parents from the start for no reason (this is very unusual though, most are extremely professional and follow procedures!).

My nephew has SN too, and I strongly suspect this HT is making my sister's life hell so that she'll move him to another school. They can't deal with his needs properly and don't like being called out on it. This really does happen.

OP, others have given you good advice here on how to write to her asking for clarification. I would give her the death cert and make a formal complaint to the governors, then go higher if you get no joy from them.

Couldn't you just ignore everything?
She is 4 so unauthorised absence is fine.
On the face of it 2 weeks off for chicken pox plus bereavement then Butlins looks a bit unbelievable but I would walk away.
You need to move on so the stress doesn't impact on you and your child.

Butlins was just a weekend, surely?

Blinky, I agree.

Though it was the FIL who died.

It does feel as though there is way more to this.

OP wasn't escorted from the premises and then not allowed back in later for the hell of it. SS were unlikely to have been called on a whim either.

That was a huge chunk of absence all at once.

OP said Friday to Monday so weekend job.

I'm afraid at 4 I would remove her as it's not legal age anyway and look at somewhere else starting Sept.. it's only a few weeks till they break up anyway. Get them both in another school and a fresh start.

i have read nearly all comments and have not been deceitful or left anything out. headteacher has various confrontations with parents on a daily basis. this s the first time ive sat with her and things have got heated. both my usband and i have been asked to attend a meeting with her in the morning so we are taking dh auntie with us fil sister who thinks the whole thing is ludicrous. she also has a child at same school and her daughters absence was authorised for the bereavement. so shes coming to find out what the so called evidence is and ask for all our evidence to be looked over there and then and documented on their system.

When was the Butlins trip booked?

Butlins was booked in january was going to cancel and lose money for it but husband and mil decided to go ahead with it anyway as mil and fil was coming anyway. sorry if this was not made clear been a lot of info passed and answered.

Don't do anything. She's 4, she doesn't LEGALLY have to be at school until she's 5. They haven't a leg to stand on

I suspect the fact it was booked before hand (and I know it was a weekend, so fair enough) sent bullshit bells ringing for them as unfair as that may be.

How often have you encountered the HT or had run ins with staff up until this point? Have you been in contact with SS before she started school? If the HT isn't bonkers (and from just your evidence it seems like she could well be) then somewhere along the line they are looking at other factors from a longer timeline.

Did she use the word "liar"? I asked that earlier.

Most teachers are very professional.. But I've seen HTs behave in the same manner, as Roomba said. I also had a HT accuse me of fraud when we paid our dinner money by cheque, which was cashed, and then she accused us repeatedly of trying it on with regard to getting free school dinners.

I kept going in with my cheque stubs and bank statements to prove it had been paid. That was not enough for her. She demanded the bank get the actual physical cashed cheque from its offsite storage facility to prove it had been cashed. (We are talking £40 here). Bank were incredulous, nobody asks for cashed cheques for such trivial things, apparently (it's a village, they all knew her). I told her this and refused to comply, saying she had the information she needed and she should double check her own records.

This went on for a few weeks until it came to a head and I stood in the school office and said 'The leadership and management of this school leaves A LOT to be desired' in a particularly withering way, which caused her to more or less melt down. So yes, things got heated. I am sure if I wasn't a senior figure in education, she would have claimed I was being aggressive or something and got her attack dogs to escort me off site as well. These weaker HTs think they own the school, quite frankly. Little Hitlers, they are.

After the Local Authority got involved, it turned out the school office had made a mistake in the records by not entering our name against the payment and consequently the council had put the £40 down on a separate budget line on the spreadsheet. Because she was a complete turnip she was not able to realise the two amounts of money - the unallocated budget line and the amount of the cashed cheque - corresponded to exactly the same amount of money, which meant the money had been found and the mistake was at their end.

I never got a sorry and in fact she never missed an opportunity to get the knife in after that. I pulled my kids out of the school as there were lots of other things she was getting wrong as well, from the teachers (and indeed this very woman) frequently not showing up for work because their absence policy was a mess, to my child getting a broken limb because she didn't think it was necessary to supervise 210 mixed age children outside at lunchtime, so all the teachers were in the staff room having a nice cup of tea when an 11 year old grabbed my reception age child, held him upside down and bashed him against the slide to see if he would cry.

Not a well run school. So never assume it's the parent until you have the full facts.

BTW you are perfectly within your rights legally to take your child to Butlins for a long weekend as she is only 4. I took DS3 abroad for two weeks in term time when he was 4 on the grounds that he was below compulsory school age as well. He has however had 100% attendance since it was compulsory for him.

Don't do anything. She's 4, she doesn't LEGALLY have to be at school until she's 5.. While you are quite correct, I can't agree that doing nothing is the way to resolve this. Given the social services history I urge OP to try and be co-operative.

As I have said before, being obtuse is only going to lead to further involvement of SS

Were your dh's cousins (?) in school when dd wasn't perhaps? That may have raised eyebrows for example. Can I just clarify that you have 2 dd , elder is the 4yo in question with autism? How many days did she miss due to bereavement/holiday and has all the absence occurred since Easter?

hello keiraknightly yes she actually said well the evidence we hold which we will not disclose woukd suggest you are lying on this occasion so i must call you out for being a liar. mo contact with ss before the school involved them at school over the arm incident and none since warranted a visit and case closed with no further action needed within 24hours. never had a run in with anyone in my life but to aswer your wueation no run ins with staff or ht even when they informed ss about dd arm gave all evidence kept school in the know and complied with anything they asked of us and still do to this day. the chickenpox was a long illness but thats because it got infected and provides school with a letter from GP regarding this. and they was happy with that. however the headteacher has taken to saying im a liar about fil death due to some evidence which she wont tell me about just that its from a reliable source i dont know what it is i e conversation photo ect either way can be refuted as wasnt on family holiday when she claims we went the friday to monday then it was whit week so my daughter returned today which is when all this happened.

The Op's DD isn't legally obliged to attend school but the fact that she does means the school have to safeguard her. If there are red flags they can't just ignore them.

OP, the detail of this is almost irrelevant. She will have you running around justifying your every breath if you let her. The way forward is to make a formal complaint to the Chair of Governors whilst also putting in a Subject Access Request to see your child's school file. That will scare her into behaving hopefully. Then while that is all happening you can sit back and plan your next move. Take control!

lizs my eldest ( 4yr old with autism) youngest 3 (due to start nursery september) and dh aunties child was all absent that week. hers was authorised nothing said. my daughter not. and all this aftermath.