Daughters water contaminated at school

[ZebraD]

Just that - daughter went out to play at school break time. Came back in and thankfully noticed her bottle had bubbles in it so didn’t actually drink it. However it turns out that someone has put hand sanitizer in the water. (She opened the bottle and could smell it I think)
school didn’t ring me until an hour after school ends (it happened morning break). Daughter was at her dad’s last night so I knew nothing of it until they rang.
they don’t know who did it. The only thing the teacher explained at is that it is dangerous to do things like that - he said they spent 20 minutes talking about the dangers and then carried on with lessons.
how would you feel?

Wow. I'm leaving teaching at the end of this academic year after 15 years in the classroom. If I say so myself I'm a great teacher, with a proven track record and I love the children I teach; I consider it an honour to have taught them and I have loved working with them. But this thread is illustrative of one of the key reasons I'm leaving.

Whole class detentions. Tick
Spiking drinks. Tick
ABH. Tick
Police. Tick
And now we are on smashing skulls. 😂A*

People who don't work in schools have zero idea of how things work. In most cases, at this age someone eventually either tells us who did it or the culprit eventually fesses up. In all cases we have a pretty good idea who did it. We HAVE to take a measured and sensible approach, because 99% of the stuff that happens is down to kids just being kids. Also it helps to show the children that we take things in a measured way rather than inflaming a situation with drama, because that helps no-one.

BTW you would be AMAZED at some of the utterly idiotic things some kids do, even the ones you think are pretty sensible. It doesn't take much for them to do stuff either: indoor play, boredom, a windy day, a full moon, a hyped up class etc. It's not always malicious.

But parents now always want the full Spanish Inquisition from the off and it's often just not appropriate.

When it's a clear and obvious safeguarding concern we would be all over it, right from the off. But this is not at that point yet and I doubt it ever will be.

Anyway, I'm over this now and at the end of the year I'm out. And people wonder why teachers are leaving in droves...

I absolutely agree with everything you have said. I'm a teacher too and this thread just demonstrates the crazy expectations and views that some parents have of what school is like. No wonder nobody wants to be a teacher any more!

I think most people here are living in some alternate universe where police are funded well enough to have spare officers to nip to the local primary school for a talk, schools are funded well enough to afford CCTV (let alone glue sticks!), teachers can discipline children without repercussions from parents, and parents can be reasoned with or 'told' whole class detention or no water bottles, without a million complaints to ofsted and aggressive parents shouting at staff.

It doesn't sound like the school think it's acceptable at all.

They've spoken to all of the kids and pushed the message that it's dangerous and cannot happen again. They can't put thumb screws on to find the culprit!

The two most sensible comments are from the teachers upthread.

This is just not that serious.

Hand sanitiser in small quantities is not toxic. If it were, you wouldn’t be allowed to put it on your hands (virtually all adults put their hands to their mouths subconsciously).

If it is malicious, the children, if found, need a good telling off and a talk to their parents. If not, they still need to be made strongly aware that you can’t put things in others’ food and drink.

But, it isn’t spiking, isn’t a police matter (what would the offence be?!) and doesn’t need any more response than the school gave. Expecting children (even secondary) to behave 100% like adults isn’t realistic and leads to unintended outcomes.

what would the offence be?!

Criminal damage. I’m not saying this should be dealt with by the police, I don’t think is should, but deliberately or recklessly ruining someone’s drink fits the crime of criminal damage.

I love this thread! It's absolutely potty. 😂

what would the offence be?!

Maliciously administering poison (attempted) s24 Offences against the Person Act

You wouldn't love it if your child was bullied and their bully did this. I had to send my ds in with sealed new plastic water bottles every single day, which he would check the seal on and drink in one go, to avoid it being messed with by the bully. When my ds was getting bullied, I developed a health problem - which I did not seek help for, because I thought my symptoms were stress from the incessant bullying of my child.

There was a teacher (on here I believe) who'd had a Y9 kid put iron filings into her water bottle. She then had to ban practicals or something like that.

This stuff isn't funny. We are in a society and people need to behave appropriately to avoid causing stress and harm to others.

But there is absolutely no evidence that this is anything more than a silly prank. If it’s a one-off incident then it isn’t bullying.

Some bonkers over-reactions on here 🤣

Just
a prank
or banter

This is how people excuse bad behaviour and bullying.

OP no one thinks it's ok but as you yourself can't say what you would want done I'm not sure why you think the school could do anything else.

It's a terrible thing to do but what are you going to do now? Stand outside with a picket board? Demand all lessons stop until the culprit owns up? You are being unreasonable

Why exactly am I being unreasonable? What have I said that is unreasonable? Or is it your imagination that is unreasonable with your ridiculous questions at the end of your post?!

No your posts just demonstrates so many teacher’s victim mentality that when a child gets almost poisoned you find it irritating that you’re expected to deal with it and that the parents are crazy for wanting their children safe. And before you start I have spent years working with the public and they’re fucking mad yes but when it’s something serious like this you need to take it bloody seriously. This isn’t Sophie stole my pencil sharpener shit ffs

OP what is the point of your thread? You are seeking something. Do you want us to say 'boo hiss that's bad'?

Ok.

Boo hiss. That's bad.

@Devonshiregal ok I'll take the bait. You have keyboard warriored your way through this thread references to:

Spiking
Police reports
Criminal responsibility
Bullying
Poisoning
Teachers victim mentality

Give. Your. Head. A. Fucking. Wobble.

I’ve pointed out that a child above the age of criminal responsibility [spiked/contaminated/poisoned] another child’s drink and therefore a police report from the mother would be perfectly reasonable and that the school should be instigating a police visit to at the least give the kids a scare.

and I find it concerning that as a teacher you don’t give two hoots because of the extra work something like this would give to you… if that’s not victim mentality I don’t know what is

People live in a fantasy world on MN regarding what schools and police do. Schools do not phone the police for minor inconsequential incidents in primary schools. The police don't have the time nor the resources to do this. Nor would it be appropriate.

Primary school children regularly do things which would be deemed dangerous or inappropriate or even a criminal offence if an adult did it- but if we involve the police in every incident of this kind they would be at school every day 'frightening' children. Children might do things like: flash their penis at another child; hit, kick, bite, push another child; steal money or possessions from another child; send another child an abusive note or message; make racist comments or name call; damage someone else's or school property on purpose etc.

Schools deal with these incidents daily. They try their best to educate the children in the rights and wrongs, provide consequences for inappropriate behaviour, and involve parents where necessary for more serious things.

Funnily enough, most children do not grow up to be criminals. Most children learn to be civilised adults without police involvement, whose childhood mis-dimeaners do not escalate to become 'head smashing murderers', 'serial flashers.' burglars or vandals.

agree

Those people who think this is a police matter- what do you think a 10 year old's actual intent was when they added a little sanitiser to another girl's water?

I don’t think it’s a police matter, but I would think the child’s intent would be to make the water taste bad to annoy the victim and give the child something to laugh about.

At 10, absent significant SN, they would know they shouldn’t be putting hand gel in someone else’s water bottle, so that would be sufficient for criminal intent.

It could be anything from hurting the child to bullying to have a laugh at them etc…
A 10yo can have some really dark intends as we know.

Many classrooms have used hand sanitisers far longer than Covid.
It's useful for cleaning hands quickly before snack breaks, etc as it can take a long time for 30 children to line up and use the one small classroom sink.

Whilst ours is stored on a high shelf, at 10/11 many children could be almost 'shorter' adult size so likely reachable.

The teacher had no way of knowing who had done it and spent a relatively long chunk of teaching time to address the matter,

Kaben - whole class punishments rarely were effective, even back in the day. These days schools know better than holding whole class punishments for this kind of thing.

A 20 minute whole class lesson regarding the dangers of this kind of behaviour is likely to be more effective. Unless there is a back story, then chances are it was not done with the intention of 'poisoning' another child with the culprit(s) not really thinking much about the consequences of their actions. The 20 minute lesson is more likely to make that kind of pupil think more about what they do and the potential consequences.

The sanitiser can be moved out of easy reach and only used with supervision.

Fortunately sanitiser in our country has a very strong taste and smell. So a child would be likely to get one mouthful at the very most before spitting it out and noticing, if they hadn't seen bubbles or similar beforehand.

Oh, and many primary schools wouldn't have cctv in the school corridors ime,

Not to mention that most primary classrooms probably wouldn't have the lockable cupboards available either.