Mum takes daughter out of GCSE exam over an earring

[CatherineHMumsnet]

We've been asked to comment on a story in Leeds today - and wondered what Mumsnetters think of this news story

The mum and daughter are just being silly aren't they ?

both the mum and the school are at fault. If she didn't have any other studs in her ear and what her mum says about uniform policy is correct then they should've let her wear it - especially as it was a 'non-uniform' exam.

But unless it had only just been done and she was risking infection by taking it out then the girl should've just taken it out - it would've been a good lesson in grown up life where we all have to follow nonsensical rules.

Doing the exam should've been far more important than wearing an earring, the mum isn't teaching the girl to have good priorities.

The mother is being utterly ridiculous for pulling her daughter out of an exam for this reason.

There will be plenty of workplaces which would not allow this kind of piercing. Human rights? Pah.

The thing about the tragus piercing is just a red herring.

Robynlou has summed it up perectly- both parties are being petty and both parties (mum and school) have let the teenage girl (a child) down badly.

the child does not seem to have been excluded from the exam, but the mother allowed her to leave so she did nlot have to take the earring out.

I think the mother was in the wrong, the implication is it was a longstanding argument, and pulling her daughter from the exam was just to prove a point.

I feel sorry for the other pupils in the child's group whose drama piece would have been detrimentally affected by her absence.

The mother is an idiot. 'Human rights' - give me strength.

simply put - gobshites all round. The school, the mum and the daughter (who's allowed to be a gobshite because she's a teenager and that's what you do when you're a teenager)

I'd amend that to three parties being ridiculous. At 15, the daughter too should have the sense to understand that this will not help her future.

Presumably if it was a drama exam, it was a practical one (which I'm guessing is why they asked her to remove the earring?)?

Instead of telling Dakota to take the earring out, Rachel, from Skelmanthorpe, took the 15-year-old off the school premises.

She now blames the Huddersfield Road college for ruining her daughter?s education.

Rachel said she asked Dakota what she thought was more important ? the stud or the exam and the teen chose the earring.

So Dakota F**ked up her education, with a helping hand from her mother.

Dakota, that says it all really.

WOnder how many benefits we are paying for her to take Dakota out of exams. Fret not Dakota, Labour may have left the economy it tatters, but I am sure there is a benefit you can claim, when you can't get a job, due to lack of GCSE's

"Dakota, that says it all really. hmm

WOnder how many benefits we are paying for her to take Dakota out of exams. Fret not Dakota, Labour may have left the economy it tatters, but I am sure there is a benefit you can claim, when you can't get a job, due to lack of GCSE's"

jesus wept

The child's called Dakota. Nuff said.

There must be more to this than what we're hearing. Surely?

The mum is being silly (and attention-seeking, by the looks of it), but I find it very hard to imagine the school telling a pupil off about an earring in the middle of an exam, unless there was far more going on.

I mean, surely if she was in the middle of the exam, the teachers would have been invigilating and had far better things to do with their time than peer into students' ears?

Some parents simply don't value education and their children suffer as a result, which is unfair. If the mother was prepared to withdraw the child from an exam on such flimsy grounds then odds-on she's not been very supportive of the teaching staff in the preceding years either. I think it's a shame when parents seem determined to drag their kids down and keep them there....

Rachel said she asked Dakota what she thought was more important ? the stud or the exam and the teen chose the earring.

She said: ?I told Dakota it was totally up to her and asked what was more important and she said she didn?t want to take the earring out because everyone else was wearing one.

?It was her choice and I stood by her decision.?

I am actually speechless.

It was a practical drama module so she thought she would demonstrate her credentials as a drama queen.

Do you need to ask? That mother has completely let her child down and it is HER fault if Dakotas education is ruined. She may not like the rules of the school but she signed up to them when she sent her child there.

Unbelievable stupidity.

Human Rights? I'm not sure having jewellery is a Human Right is it? Because if it is, then SO HELP ME GOD I AM BEING OPPRESSED REALLY BADLY.

There are rules in school which have to be obeyed, and if you feel strongly about a rule being ridiculous then there are better ways to protest than pulling your child out of an important exam.

If she had sat Dakota down that evening and discussed how to go forward, a letter to the head teacher, to the school governers or the LEA then Dakota would have perhaps learned how to object without jeopardizing her future.

Although, tbh, it was a Drama GCSE so it is not as if she is now doomed to a life of misery and unemployment if she does not have that qualification.

Oh it's ridiculous. Wearing jewellery is not a human right. I've been to schools where piercings of any sort were not allowed. Full stop.

If they felt that strongly about it they should have taken it out then complained afterwards about the rule being unclear. THe fact is they CHOSE to walk away, the school didn't make them.

The mother should have supported the school and encouraged Dakota to take the exam (with or without the ear ring). The head suggests in his last comment that he would not have stopped Dakota taking the exam when he says it would have to be exceptional circumstances for the school to do that but that he can't legislate for parents who decide to pull their children out of school.