Complaint to school

[gwenig2]

Yesterday my 10 year old was grab on the wrist in a attempt to force her from the floor to go to the headmistress office. This was a male teacher in her school. I did post on Facebook I was upset by this but did not name the school. The new headmistress TOLD me I had to remove this or she souls report to police for slander. I have removed post, but feel more angry now as they did not apologise or give any justification for the incident, which to me is assault. I have a meeting on Monday arranged after much foot stomping today. Need advice on how to handle as feel little overwhelmed and emotional.

See, if my child came home and reported this having happened, my response would have been "well, you should have got up the first time you were asked then." Closely followed by, "and what the hell were you doing on the floor in the first place." My only query with the school would be to ask what sanctions they had put in place and to inform them that I would be following suit at home.

But then, that might be why neither of them have ever behaved in this way.

It is for the governing body to establish whether the teacher acted within the law when reaching a decision on whether or not to take disciplinary action against the teacher, as stated above.

We have no idea if the school has reached this stage or not.

I can see how the TeamTeach approach to a child of 'caring c' to put a child's wrist to her sides could be interpreted by a child as 'grabbing'. I have been accused of 'grabbing' when I have used a hand on elbow to steer, and almost every incident that has ever been reported to me, real or imagined, has used the phrase 'he/she grabbed hold of me'.

If the teacher has attempted to use reasonable force, they will have documented this. Hold your fire til you speak to the school properly.

Tethersend you must be in a different LA to me. Where I am Head would decide disciplinary against staff, governing body would only decide disciplinary against the head.

It might be, clam.

However, children with difficulties beyond their (or parental) control will sometimes need physical intervention too, so it's right that there are laws in place to ensure that everybody is kept safe and that physical intervention is never used as a punishment. Although, as this thread shows, they could do with being a little clearer

finallydelurking, have a look at the document mrz linked to above, point 8.7.

You'reAll, I'm certain that removing the child from the floor by the wrist is not a TeamTeach technique. But yes, the term 'grabbing' is often wrongly used.

It was wrong of your child to be rude
It was wrong of your child to sit on the floor and refuse to get up
It was wrong of your child to refuse to go to the headteacher
It was wrong of the teacher to bruise your child (but I bruise like that from a tight but not hurty squeeze)
It was wrong of you to post about it on facebook
It was wrong of the head to threaten you with slander

There seems to be quite a lot of provocation going on and it doesn't seem to be the school that is doing the provoking. Presumably your child was disrupting the learning of others and setting a bad example to the other children.

Just because children are having a hard time at home does not justify bad behaviour. To make excuses for it does not help to prepare them for the real world. If an adult behave like your daughter in the workplace they get dismissed. If you aren't setting standards and expectations around behaviour at home then perhaps the school needs to on your behalf.

If children like your daughter are allowed to misbehave without sanction what sort of message do you think that gives to the other children?

My LEA is the same finallydelurking and the DfE say report to head or in the case of the complaint involving the head then the chair of governors.

"She doesn't know it's true, she's going on what she's been told by a 10yr old who had been in trouble for being disobedient"

It completely depends on what was posted on facebook. If it was "my child said this happened at school, and I'm upset about it" then that's fair enough.

"Slander is a very serious thing"

No it's not, it's usually a silly threat made by someone who doesn't like things being discussed in public.

One very important point you're missing - the OP says she didn't name the school, so unless it's easy for someone else to tell what the school is then there's no issue. And even more to the point; you can't libel a school, only a person, so unless the individual teacher was identifiable then there's no possibility of libel.

And one other thing - the headteacher said they'd report it to the police. That's a stupid and bullying threat. Libel isn't a crime. For a headteacher to do that based on something on facebook, when the school and teacher aren't identified, suggests nothing good about them at all.

I'm not getting drawn into judging the child or the parent; but I've seen schools try to hush parents up before and in every case I've seen the school has been wrong.

It obviously was easy for someone to recognise the school if they informed the head of the OPs facebook message

"the OP says she didn't name the school, so unless it's easy for someone else to tell what the school is then there's no issue"

The people reading the post are highly likely to be local friends and family who, of course know what school her dd attends.

Slander is a serious thing. Whether or not the HT had grounds fro threatening action against it is a different point.

"Trying to hush parents up" What exactly do you mean? Your very choice of words indicate that it's a dodgy scenario. If you are suggesting that a school is wrong in "every" case you've seen of a difference of opinion then I'd have to say that, in 27 years of teaching, I beg to differ.

Quite mrz the op has published to a third party and the fact that another parent knew which school to report the posting to proves that the school/teacher was identifiable.

Fortunately the op has removed the posting so is now able to work with the school through the correct channels and establish exactly what has happened and ensure the best outcome for her child.

Hopefully she has also saved herself the indignity of the LA/GB discussing if they wish to ban her from the premises.

Many schools take screen shots of such postings and while I think the head's threat to report the post to the police is silly the OP should be aware of the possible consequences of malicious allegations

A former colleague of mine had the fact that they'd posted unflattering remarks about co-staff "used in evidence" in their subsequent dismissal (for other things). The fact that they'd removed the posts was irrelevant - a number of people had seen them already.

Depends what the post said, defamatory posts should go to GB/LA/Legal department. Threats of illegal actions to the police.

Tethers is right that grabbing by the wrist is not a TeamTeach technique! However, adults in schools are usually only trained in TeamTeach if they have a significant number of children who need physical intervention/restraint. And any TeamTeach trained adults would know that the first thing you do is try to de-escalate the situation - you would only physically intervene if the child was putting themselves or others at risk.

It sounds unusual for a child to have a bruise from being "grabbed" by the wrist. I would have perhaps expected a red mark if the teacher had grabbed very tightly

The OP did say her daughter bruises very easily

Would you really be expected to leave a tantrumming 10 year old on the classroom floor, completely disrupting the lesson until she decided for herself to stop her nonsense?
I couldn't be a teacher...

LA are certainly toughening up their attitude to defamation on facebook (and other social media). The LA I work with would instruct a barrister if you didn't respond to a request from the head.

Seriously? Most libel lawyers would tell you to think very long and hard before contemplating legal action. Not only is it incredibly expensive, but it is an absolutely certain way of spreading the libel far beyond the few people who might have read the original statement. Or does your LA only instruct lawyers in order to intimidate parents with no actual intention of following up on it?

I must say, I would have quite serious concerns about a school which is as heavy-handed as this about shutting down criticism.

I find the attitude of the op extremely frustrating. Your daughter was behaving badly, but yet you are angry with the school. I am not a teacher myself but I get so frustrated at the attitude of some parents such as yourself to teachers. They have such a hard job, and the likelihood is that this is not a one off incident from your daughter. This is a genuine question, but why are you not addressing your dd's behaviour here, rather than being angry at the school?

"The people reading the post are highly likely to be local friends and family who, of course know what school her dd attends."

Fine. But the actual damage stemming from those people knowing which school was involved would be very small.

And they still might not know the teacher involved, so no libel.

"Slander is a serious thing."

First of all it's libel, not slander, because it wasn't spoken.

Libel can be serious when it's clear who the person is, when there's genuine harm to that person's reputation and when the allegation is false. But in most cases, like this one, it's just a thing people say when they don't like what's been said about them.

""Trying to hush parents up" What exactly do you mean? Your very choice of words indicate that it's a dodgy scenario. If you are suggesting that a school is wrong in "every" case you've seen of a difference of opinion then I'd have to say that, in 27 years of teaching, I beg to differ."

I've seen schools try to prevent conversations among parents that they don't like. I've been told by parents of them trying to bring up critical things at Parent Councils and being shut down. I've seen a headteacher act like an infant because they were questioned by a parent at a Parent Council. And then, on Monday, my wife was talking with another parent about acts of idiocy from the school and council in the cloakroom at the school nursery and in the playground, and as she was leaving the school grounds the headteacher came rushing out to try to scold her for it.

Parents have every right to communicate with other parents about what they think about the school, and it's control-freakery from schools to try to shut that down. For a headteacher to threaten a parent with the police because of something they said on facebook, in which they didn't even name the school, is offensive and preposterous.

What the OP put on facebook may have been wrong - neither of us have read it so we can't know. But if you don't see a problem with what the headteacher did about it, if you don't see it as dodgy, then you maybe need to ask yourself if you're not just being a bit tribal.

OP what do you think the teacher should have done to ensure your daughter followed his instruction to go to the Head's room?

Seriously. Though it would have to be ongoing harassment. No-ones going to take action if it was a one off incident of a parent being upset and it was removed on request.

When someone's published to several hundred it's not a few people.

I'd be far more concerned about the behaviour of my DC that led to this. I certainly wouldn't want my friends on FB to know how my child behaved, whatever happened next.

I'd be looking at ways to avoid it happening in future and asking the school how we can work together to help my DD.

In my day she would have got the ruler over the palm of her hand.

Children need to respect authority NOT have Mummy go in every two mins.

I would have sent my child in to apologize to said teacher for disrupting the lesson.