what the most hilarious and groundless parental complaint you've ever fielded?

[HanneHolm]

I have heard of one parent complaining a member of staff wasn't singing in a parents assembly.

FE is more likely to do vocational subjects alongside / instead of A Levels. We had catering, beauty, travel, car maintenance, etc, as well as English, Maths, Chemistry, etc. And lots of English and Maths GCSE resits.

Love it missmapp!

Thanks shipwrecked. Thought was so transparently obvious I couldn't be arsed to explain. ;)

I once had to arrange parents evening around a right soap opera. Child A's mum had been shagging child b's dad in the village pub's toilets. 4 separate appointments for both sets of parents and they couldn't set eyes on each other in case there was another huge row.

Gee thanks HanneHolm. Hope it never happens to you. Perhaps you won#t feel like telling strangers about it.

at Doubleyew

. Maybe this isn't the thread for you.

DoubleYew. I feel lots of sympathy for your situation but his is a light hearted thread and people are bound to tread on toes.

I have been upset by teachers' comments in reality but I think this thread is a different context. I'm sure HanneHolm didn't mean to make fun; she was trying to get across the complexities of how family situations and school arrangements clash.

I actually think that DoubleYew is making an excellent point.

Light hearted thread or not I think it is horrid to imply that a parent who can't bear to sit next to their ex is being ridiculous. And to imply that the school would always know the full background is utterly naive.

Loving the rest of the thread though :)

Lots of posters have implied that parents who want the best for their children are being rediculous.

I have been into school and fought like a lioness for my kids. I bet they had a right laugh in the staff room BUT I'm still finding these threads funny.

School secretary told me this on friday (we were sorting lost property)

parent phones and insists that he dcs coat has been STOLEN. Have you looked in the lost property box? - no. Is the coat named? - no.
secretary suggests lost property and passes on message to teacher about lost coat.
coat eventually turns up.

About 3 weeks later: same parent phones, someone has STOLEN coat. Is it named? - no. Have you looked in lost property - no.
coat eventually turns up.

about 3 weeks later....

you get the idea. The last time she insisted that coat was unique, and recognisable. When asked to describe it, it was Asda coat. We have large local Asda, there are about 5 of those coats in school. Was it named - no - but the labe was coloured in yellow, so it was easily recognisable (to whom?)

We had worse than that - a parent claimed her son's coat was stolen and literally tore it off the 5 year old child wearing it in the street.

Parents with secondary kids who are lacking organisation skills demand that the school replace the 'stolen' stationery, bags, watches and clothes all the time.

What do they expect staff to do; follow their kids 24/7 and pick up after them?

And the un-named, un-claimed, valuable/designer stuff that's in the lost property box...well..that's another story.

A good friend who's a secondary teacher once took a phone call from a father who was so apoplectic that his son had been put in detention that he lost the power of cogent speech; and ended up spluttering "FUCK - NOW - BOLLOCK - OFF" before slamming the phone down in rage

That insisting a boy purchased a new exercise book and copied his 6 pages of work into it was unfair because the swastikas he'd drawn all over his old one were just an expression of his personality and an Indian peace symbol.

That was the summation of a 5 page letter, btw. The boy's form tutor was in fits of hysterics whilst I read it, as she had a bit of a track record :o

It's a funny one, swastikas. There's something about them that seems to really appeal to a certain type of teenage wanker.

One of the final nails in the coffin which led to me leaving my last school was the time one of my Year 11s drew a massive swastika on his book and displayed it to the class during the lesson. I'm pretty sure it had a reference to me as Hitler too. I had him removed from the lesson and referred him to his Head of House. My Head of Department said I had overreacted and it should have been dealt with with a quiet word after the lesson.

Sorry for the unrelated rant there!

I once taught a student who claimed I was 'picking on her' - the classic all purpose whine of the numpty She started truanting school etc. Parents had just gone through messy separation and mother of child had decided they were going to have a 'best gal pal' relationship rather than a mother-daughter relationship.

So I was hauled into meeting with EWO and my (supportive) HOD and child and mother. Child put on impressive performance saying she wasn't coming into school because of her terror of me. Mother accused me of all sorts

Then we looked at the days she was in school and the days she wasn't. The days she took off were days I didn't teach her and she came to school on the days I did

When EWO pointed this out to her she was then then wept that the EWO was 'picking on her' too.

Poor EWO was suitably apologetic... Mother of course swept out without a word.

Not a teacher but my Mum is. All teachers in her school had to fill in a diary recording any bad behaviour for a specific pupil. When the parents were called in to talk about the lack of improvement in his behaviour the mother produced a diary from home where the son was encouraged to fill in his opinion of his teachers, so when specific incidents were talked about she announced that her son thought the teacher had been rude in that lesson and so it wasn't her son's fault.

A lesson looking at ww1 deaths and imagining a letter home was necromancy. Three page email.

I was very impressed by my colleague who refused to even reply "to such utter tosh "

A mum who will take her son's word over any number of staff member's.

A girl who stayed off because her favourite bra was in the wash.

A 14yo whose dm complained to the school because his form tutor had suggested that going to a mid-week guns'n'roses gig was prob not the best plan if it meant he would need to miss two days of school.

A dm who justifies any nasty thing her ds does by saying ah well he holds grudges and that other child was unpleasant to him at first school.

parents who complain to the school when their (under 13) child has something negative posted on their facebook page by someone they've friended.

and since I'm a cub leader - parents who come in and chat over end-of-meeting notices. parents who drop their children off ten minutes late (v disruptive) but complain if the meeting finishes 2 mins late as a direct result. Parents who tick the no additional needs box on the membership form when it is crystal clear that ds has a number of quite severe additional needs.

The family who sent an absence note 'because they had all been up all night trying to catch a mouse', the clearly forged PE excuse note which when I rang the mother I got the response 'doesn't everyone sign 'Mum' then?' - the student in question was 15.... And the family who thought that rather than discuss their child's A level progress, preferred to spend the best part of half an hour complaining that when their child was too hot I declined to open a window and instead asked that they take off their large woolly sweater. They also felt it was unfair that I complained about lack of homework - 'he works 4 evenings a week so doesn't get much time'......

In my day if you got told off by a teacher, you'd get hell at home too. Nowadays it seems that the first response is hammering on the school head's door (with a lawyer in tow) demanding blood or you'll hear all about it in the press/parents blog.

Bamboostalks Parent wanted child to sit only at lunch table where children were not consuming meat.

At our school this happens. Meat eaters at one table, vegetarians at another and pure vegetarians at a third.