Legal advice needed please - school policy on babies attending events (Long, sorry)

[greenbeanie]

Would be really grateful if someone could give me some legal advice. The primary school that my ds's attend has a policy of not allowing "pre-school" children attend school performances/assemblies. In December last year I contacted the school to check that it was ok to bring my then 3 week old daughter to my son's school performance (which was in the morning and lasted approx 25mins). I was told that I couldn't as no other children were allowed. I stated that I would remove myself and her from the hall if any noise was made. I was told that this wasn't good enough as some parents would not do that and my daughter had the potential to be very disruptive!!

i managed to arrange for someone to look after her (I have no family nearby) but returned to find that she was upset and hungry - she is fully breastfed and at that age I had no was of telling when a feed was due.

Anyway it has since come to my attention that the Equality Act 2010 which came into force in October 2010 protects the status of breastfeeding mothers and their babies upto the age of 26 wks. My understanding is that descriminating against breastfeeding mothers is akin to descriminating on grounds of race, gender or religion.

I want to try and get the school policy changed so that other mothers don't have to go through what I did. I wrote a letter to the Head teacher, chair of governors and LEA. The response has been that the policy is not changing as they are not descriminating specifically against breastfeeding mothers but all parents as no one is allowed to take their child in. From my understanding this is wrong due to the "special" status offered to women upto 26 wks postpartum particularly if breastfeeding.

Don't know what to do now. Thank you if you have managed to read this far, if anyone knows anymore about this I would be really grateful.

Sadly there are too many parents who don't take out their noisy children. That is why so many schools are having to come up with these rules. They are generally acting on the wishes of parents of the children on stage who can't be heard.

Whilst a toddler's chuntering is cute to its parents, it is just annoying to the rest of the audience I m afraid, especially if it is your little one who can't be heard as a result.

Stupid to have a policy like this. Why not just send a communication to all parents saying you can bring younger siblings ( my 3 year old is transfixed at his brothers ) but please go and stand outside if they start crying or making a lot of sustained noise and be aware that a member of staff will come over and ask you to go outside if you dont. That's what our school does and it works fine. Not many parents would be thick skinned enough to endure the public humiliation of being asked go leave or ignoring the heads rules.