Dinner lady is sacked for telling parents their DD was tied up and beaten with a skipping rope, but no-one else is sacked for not having told the truth to the parents about the incident

[HerBeatitude]

farkin ada

The school underplayed the incident to such an extent that what they actually said was a lie. Isn't it nice to be reassured that if your child gets attacked at school, the school will lie about it to you and sack anyone who tells you?

I'm so gobsmacked by this. I really hope she wins her appeal.

Yes, ?discussing a pupil out of school? is a very useful catch all term for a school to get rid of anyone they want to at any time really, isn?t it?

If I ask nice Mary down the road who is a dinner lady and playground superviser and also happens to go to my bookgroup and whose DS goes to the same Beavers group as mine and to whom I chat all the time in the way you do to a neighbour, about a specific incident involving my DS in the playground, is she really obliged to say ?I?m sorry HB I can?t discuss it with you??

Does the school ?or any employer or organisation ? really have the right to interfere with personal relationships between adults in this way? That?s one of the aspects of this case that I find really disturbing, the assumption by authorities that they have the right to control adults in their personal lives.

Very sad for this dinner lady and I hope something can be done about her job. That is so unfair.

The one good thing about this I suppose, is that it has exposed how schools carry on.

I don't suppose this dodgy school in Essex is the only one that carries on like this.

Sadly this doesn't surprise me.

Am truly appalled by the school and by some of the stories on this thread - what the hell is happening? Schools, I thought, were supposed to be tightening up on bullying, zero tolerance and all that - perhaps that's just an on-paper situation? i.e. "if we don't tell anyone, it didn't really happen and then we can be smug about our zero tolerance attitude because no one will know any different, except the children and who's going to believe them?"

The mum of one of the boys involved in the incident and who is also a governor has declined to comment.

Smacks of shite to me.

My ds starts school next september and this story and your stories are seriously putting me off.

What exactly do parent governors do? How do you get elected and is it very cliquey? Why would you want to be one (unless is about ensuring your little one is immune from being punished for anything).

My dh was saying that in his home country the police have to investigate where there is any violence - ie the police would have got involved in this case - don't quite get that if kids are too young to be prosecuted.

THB, that's what my dh is trying to do.
he has told them he is not going away quietly and is quite a formidable man.

I hate the way these thugs can get away with doing this to young people.

I think there was a thread on this a while ago when it first came out - IIRC when the dinner lady was suspended.

Shocking that she has now been sacked. And the ruddy chair of governors didn't even bother to attend. 'Oh, it's only a dinner lady...'

School 'spokesperson' clearly doesn't understand English, which doesn't give one much confidence in the whole institution tbh.

"We can confirm that a meeting was held last week to consider an issue at Great Tey Primary School. The detailed outcome of that meeting should remain confidential between the school and our employee, Mrs Hill." [Actually, thanks those lickspittles, she is not their employee any more.]

"However, we can confirm that, subject to any appeal, Mrs Hill will not be returning to work at Great Tey Primary School." [So what was that bollocks about confidentiality then?]

This is absolutely shocking. So we send our kids to prison for 6 hours a day where they get bullied by teachers and children alike.

Fabulous!

Although I agree this is a shocking case, let us keep some sort of perspective.

In the vast majority of schools this kind of thing does not happen.

We only hear about the bad cases on MN/in the media of course.

No-one ever complains when things are going well.

Anyfucker thats what I always say,if you have a good school feel blessed and appreciate it bcos for the majority of children school really is a lovely safe place to be,but also you mustnt be blind to the possibility that things arent always what you presume.

There is nothing nicer than a 6 year old child happy and excited to be in school and a good teacher greeting them with enthusiasm as a home educator I feel sad that ds3 will never experience this.

How do we know that this doesn't happen in the vast majority of schools Anyfucker?

Seriously, what checks and balances are in place to ensure that schools can't cover up bullying and fob parents off and threaten any employee who might want to divulge what is really happening with the sack?

One of the frequent complaints against schools, is that they don't take bullying seriously and that they fob parents off and make them feel like neurotic, over protective, pushy idiots if they keep saying "but... but... but... um,... it hasn't been dealt with yet".

We know that masses of schools deal badly with bullying. And we also know that schools don't necessarily tell parents some of the bad things that happen and neither do chldren. It is the single biggest issue that parents worry about, more than academic stuff in many cases. I trust that this sort of outrage wouldn't happen in the majority of schools, but I certainly wouldn't write it off as a one off.

I don't think that schools take bullying seriously enough either. My neighbour has her kid at the local junior school. They have a policy that parents havce to give their email address and all email addresses are circulated to parents.
She's getting very nasty emails from one parent saying to keep son away from her son etc. - this lady actually feels bullied.

I would havce thought that a school incident needs a school response - circulating emails surely puts the onus on parents to sort out any allegations of bad behaviour and bullying.

Is this common? I will not give my email or any other details to be circulated to other parents - unless, of course, there is another reason for sharing contact details?

Jenni Russell in today's Guardian on this subject.

My 7 year old dd1 was sexually assaulted by a boy in her class when she was in reception nearly 3 years ago. She was 4.

She told me the boy in question was constantly touching her down below and she became miserable and withdrawn and had an infection down there which she had to have treatment for.

The school did NOTHING and in fact begged me not to tell his mum (who was a classroom assistant at the same schoool)The school never told her and suggested my dd was a liar something I was furious about.

My son was also bullied throughout his time there and nothing was done thier either.

Needless to say I took them both out of that school and they are both very happy now in a new school

The headmasters attitude was boys will be boys because if he had done it he was probably copying normal teenage behaviour that somehow he had witnessed at home (he had much older brothers..

yeah very normal

Good grief, sheep.

And 'amen' to every word Jenni Russell wrote, btw. Especially liked: 'Stealthily, and without open political debate, we have moved from the assumption that all adults have a role in socialising children, towards a new and uncertain world in which contact with children is increasingly regulated by officials and the state.'

That's a brilliant article by Jenni Russell.

Incredible that that happened sheepgomeep - the behaviour by that boy should ring alarm bells with any idiot who has done a morning's training on child protection. The school should have referred the matter to SS as a matter of course, because that is what they are supposed to be in such a circumstance. It's not inevitable, but sexual behaviour like that can be a sign of abuse and they had a duty to protect the boy as well as your DD. They failed in both.

They use Child Protection when it suits them.

Think this thread is also pertinent to this debate - if you start thinking about it, the amount of state interference in private family life and the relationship between parent and child is terrifying.

am further appalled, having read Jenni Russell's article. Great article, but I also clicked on the link re. the mother and disabled daughter - and now I think "Lord of the Flies" seems to be the way we are heading.

I said on another thread that it feels like children and teenagers are all about "getting their respect" now - and yet they have no clue what it actually means, because many of them are never taught to respect adults or anyone else at all.

There are times of course when adults are wrong, bad, dangerous etc. and in those instances children should be taught to discriminate and NOT just blindly do what they are told (What is the age of discrimination? Is it 7?) but the majority of Other People should be able to command a basic level of respect. Something that poor woman and her daughter clearly didn't get from anyone, police included.

I do wonder how on earth things got this way - a few years ago my mother had her handbag stolen from the front of her car while she was putting shopping in the boot. She saw it happen but couldn't stop the youth involved, although she managed to grab his t-shirt. When she reported this all to the police, the bit they were MOST interested in was her potential "assault" on him! This grabbing of the clothes constituting assault, without any other sort of criteria, is beyond ridiculous.

My son has not been to school for 12 months because he was being bullied and when we complained we were constantly lied to and the staff just constantly covered their own backs. When we started the complaints procedure we just got more whitewash and more coverups from the Governors although the Local Authority have now after 12 months offered to pay for my son's transport to attend another school, which is some admittance of fault. If that's school though they can keep it, I'd rather he was educated safely at home. Incidently he has made far more progress at home and spends much less time on school work than he would at school. I know of others who have had the same problem. Teachers seem to have developed a knack of making the child out to be at fault if a parent complains about a teacher because they know they are more likely to be believed than the child (which is really rather sad of them)