afraid for children's safety at school.

[highlandspringerdog]

My children are due to return to their primary school next week.

During the last months of the last term at school there were a number of incidents which led to me feeling worried about what has been going on there.

I tried to get them into other schools over the holidays, including private schools, but have not had any success as they are all full. I put it out of my head while we were in Italy for the last couple of weeks but now we are back and I am full of dread about their return.

I do not want to go into huge depth about exactly what has happened as I do not want to be identified and the incidents are all fairly specific, but to give some idea - children are at times - I do not know how often - left largely unsupervised at play time, even young children in the infants - there will be an adult outside, but they will be sitting on a bench, drinking tea with two other adults, often facing inwards, so most of the playground is not visible to them, they intervene when children approach them but not otherwise. I have seen this myself twice and on raising it with other parents, found that others had seen it too.

Children are not always registered properly -on more than one occassion children are slipped into class late after the register has gone and the register is not updated. I know this as I thought this was what was happening on one occassion when I brought DD in late following dentist appointment, but then couldn't quite believe it so checked with the school secretary who confirmed that if a child is too late they don't get put on the register 'but the teacher always knows who's in and who's not'.

Some very dubious punishments are used also - always just about the right side of the line drawn before physical violence. Despite the harsh punishments however, the atmosphere there is not calm, but chaotic and there is a lot of fighting between the children. I have seen bruises and cuts on my own children from this, but when I have tried to speak to the teacher about it, to check if the alarming stories my sons are telling me are true, she doesn't know what has happened, says she is sorry and that is all.

The head teacher is very hostile to anything other than praise and if a complaint is made against a teacher - as many are - the head will not deal with it unless the parent is willing to come and meet with the complained about teacher and complain face to face. This reduces the number of complaints as many parents do not want to risk the complaint resulting in adverse consequences for their children. I have never tried to complain, but this is what I have been told by many others is the standard approach.

I know my children should not go to this place. It has been the subject of numerous complaints to ofsted and the local education authority, and many families have done the right thing and got their kids out. It was the fact that so many announced their decision to remove their children in the last week of the summer term that really made me think that I was overlooking something important.

I have come to all this late in the day - possibly because I have a nanny and so do not take or collect my children from school and so have not been able to find everything out as quickly as those with more regular access to playground chat. I now wish I had been more clued up earlier and sought places in other schools last year, instead of in the final week of last term, which is when it appears to have reached boiling point.

What would you do?

I have not spoken to the children about this.

So..the LEA now has updated its new system and the grand outcome is.......
They are going to send me a letter. They cannot tell me what will be in the letter. THey cannot tell me when they will send it to me. They could not answer any questions at all about either my kids or the school I want them to go to. But they will be sending me a letter. How fantastic is that.

It is stuff like this, I am sure, that has people running into the arms of private schools. I bet when you are a paying customer you don't have to do so much begging and pleading for basic information like:

1. Are we on the waiting list?
2. What number?
3. DId anyone leave our chosen school over the holidays?

I could scream.

Wow! Your LEA sounds worse than normal. My LEA can tell me what number I was on a waiting list over the phone.

Keep persisting. You'll get there.

O I am sure they CAN tell me what number we are. They just WON'T.

swearwords.

To be honest, from what you've said I would take them out. You've said your nanny can't/wont help but what about a childminder? I know it might be a huge disruption to take them out of school AND change their carer but you have to think if it's worth their safety. There are childminders around who also home educate their own children who might not mind having yours too.

"The school in question is a one form entry religious school in London"

I know it's popular to believe that "small schools" are somehow "more human" but I'm a real fan of large schools I went to a 2-form intake primary and an 11-form, rising to 13-form later, secondary, my children went to a 3-form intake primary and rather against my better judgement are at a 4-four intake secondary, which although super-selective (which removes some of the problems of small schools in having insufficient numbers for some groups) still has many of the issues of small secondaries.

Firstly, the heads of small schools have the power of the captains of ships at sea in international waters. They won't have a formal deputy of any substance, they may do some teaching as well, and they are the sole management in the school. In one-form primaries there are unlikely to be heads of year, key stage co-ordinators and so on in any meaningful way: the management chain is classroom teacher, head, end of.

Secondly, small schools have small governing bodies. If you're lucky, they won't just cheerleaders for the head, but they usually will be. The governance will be sketchy. Religious schools doubly so, as once you get past the head, the teacher (unable to speak up because of point one), the parent (probably a cheerleader from the PTA) and the religious co-opted members (not interested in education) there's no-one left.

Thirdly, in a one-form intake primary you can't have your child moved to another class. If they have a problem with another child or with the teacher, that's the low-cost, low-risk intervention, and it's not available to you. You either put up, or leave. There is no intermediate step.

Fourthly, the school can't move children either. One of my children was in a class where, for reasons purely related to the random fluctuations of the universe, the naughty children had all coalesced. In the end, the school found an excuse to do with "rebalancing sets" or something to perform a massive re-assignment in which the troublesome children ended up one to a class, which ended the problem.

Fifthly, because there are no posts of responsibility in a small school other than the head, ambitious teachers move on quickly: they can't become the head, but they want to become a head of year / senco / key stage co-ordinator / music specialist / etc. After a while, you end up with dead men's shoes: a load of teachers who are settled in for the long stay, and therefore have every reason to not confront the head, and who wouldn't be appointed to the headship even if s/he dropped dead tomorrow morning.

Sixthly, a corollary of the above, and the small number of posts, is that staff turnover is very low. Which is great: stability, continuity, etc. Except, there's no-one coming in from outside going "this is crazy, you have to change this" and even when one does, they're just on person who, often being an NQT, is easily cowed. If you watch schools with dictatorial heads, they tend to recruit NQTs knowing that they'll not cause trouble. Larger schools turn over staff in significant numbers, and some of the incoming staff will be experienced (to replace a senco or a deputy head).

The point about large schools is that they have management structures. They don't operate as dictatorships; a head can't ride roughshod over the staff, because the staff have the numbers and the experience. Small schools are cute and fluffy, but if it starts to go wrong (as it clearly is here) there's just no governance in place to deal with the problem.

Tokyonambu .

"Firstly, the heads of small schools have the power of the captains of ships at sea in international waters" - LOL!

1. • true
2. • true
3. • true
4. • true
5. • true
6. • true

I've re-read your post - twice. I feel truly enlightened by it and would definitely not rule out a small school should we have to move again (hopefully only if we move area!)

I'm always open to persuasion and feel I have learned something today so thankyou .