The saddest thing is that l’m not surprised to hear how badly this poor teacher has been treated.

[HedgesNotFences]

The teacher taught a Yr 6 boy how to use a glue gun. He didn’t follow the instructions and gave himself 2 “tiny” blisters from a glue gun burn.
The teacher was unable to tell the parent straight after school as she had to deal with a serious safeguarding issue.
The Yr6 parent took to social media then the newspapers. She then went to A&E (for 2 “tiny” blisters - recorded as such by A&E). She then went to the police. She then went to the Health and Safety executive. Then she contacted the school.
In the week after the incident she was outside the school gates setting up a petition to get the teacher sacked (the teacher had already been asked to resign by then and had left her position).
The teacher had to face a government tribunal where it was found she brought the profession into disrepute and wasn’t safe (because she didn’t have a TA to constantly watch over every single Yr6 who was using a glue gun).
Because of the shortage of teachers and the fact that she was actually pretty good, the tribe kindly allowed her to continue being a teacher. Though God knows why she would want to.

The parent gets to remain anonymous.

I hope the teacher has been supported through her ordeal - her mental health must have suffered terribly.

Shameful. The teacher has all my sympathy. I hope bringing up such a spoilt kid rebounds on the parents when the child makes their lives hell.

Scoff all you like, the CHILD sustained a burn on his hand

Why the use of capital letters for the word child?

Had a similar accident occured in the home, a minor burn, would the parents have been happy to have their child taken into care? Remember, if a child is injured/killed in the care of the parents it's a tragedy, if it happens under the care of a teacher it's a nice little earner.

Out of interest, how did the teacher react when you got burned?

I feel bad for this teacher who was subjected to a witch hunt but I am a little surprised that the child wasn't given medical attention at the time. Yes the burn area was small but in the photo it looked like a pretty nasty deep burn so he really ought to have been given burn cream and the teacher was absolutely wrong to put ice on it, which I'm sure was done in good faith but is not what you're supposed to do to burns.

@SpidersAreShitheads You are clearly very invested in the thread.
Do you have a view on a child losing their right to privacy because their mother is an attention seeking idiot?

The sun ‘newspaper’ is an utter disgrace for publishing that story. Sadly not the first, last or even the worst example of its damaging and debasing ‘journalism’.

This is utterly ridiculous! With current conditions, I would never, ever want to be a teacher. In fact, I would not want to have to supervise/work with children in any capacity. Too many cases of false allegations and once one is accused, even when cleared, some will still insist there is no smoke without fire.

A woman's career ruined because people always seem to need someone to blame.

Funny how the Mum was so worrid about her child that the second action she took was to phone The Sun.

@SpidersAreShitheads “What if the child had fallen and seemed to be OK but had actually broken a bone (which is what happened to my DS - fractured elbow and no one noticed)?”

This happened to a DC of a friend, at home. After playing in the garden, she did not notice for days. Accidents happen. And kids do not always react appropriately to them or communicate effectively either. This friend of mine is actually more of a helicopter parent so it is quite surprising.

I just feel like there is now more paperwork than teaching. Teachers are constantly worrying about protocols, it is too much.

What if we had to start filling in forms at home for our own children, every time something happens, including some emotional trauma following an argument between siblings? It is ridiculous.

I really don’t think a teacher would ever ignore a head injury in a school. That is a head injury they know about. Lots of kids bang their heads on playgrounds every day without any staff realising or being told.

Unfortunately many attention seekers turn into monsters when they have DC and use the DC right from pregnancy to garner attention for themselves. This just continues into school life and beyond. The law needs to protect teachers from overly precious parents in an effective way. If the kid had suffered severe consequences/pronounced scarring etc - otherwise what is the actual loss? Minor misdemeanour not following protocols/paperwork probably because the teacher was distracted by more substantial issues that day.

Virtually every teacher will have had a child injure themselves in a minor way at a point when they weren't standing right by them. And virtually every teacher will have been late putting an accident into the accident book (if you don't have a TA you can't leave your classroom to do it, and there's so much going on in your head when you're dealing with 30 kids, that occasionally you don't retain something).

We 'fess up to it as soon as we realise, and if that parent had gone to talk to the teacher, she would have had an explanation of how it happened, and an apology. And the teacher would have borne that incident in mind in the future (and locked the glue gun away maybe - though it's not clear that it was her class that she was teaching, so maybe its availbility was someone else's error)

This should never have had to go to the professional conduct panel. It could have been dealt with by the head perfectly effectively.
The parent was entirely unreasonable, and the head was too spineless to defend her teacher once it hit the papers. Suggesting that the teacher resign over this seems entirely over the top. There'd be no teachers left if all the teachers who've had something similar (and resulting in an equally minor injury) were told to resign. I would certainly have had to.

IME it’s the inadequate parents who do this sort of attention seeking nonsense. Makes them feel like they actually are ‘great’ parents.

A simple apology should have sufficed with a review of the importance of first aid recording and risk assessment around the use of hot glue guns.

Pathetic over reaction by all concerned.

The parent should - but won’t - face some sort of sanction for this. Appalling entitlement and time wasting.

@MisschiefMaker the doctor at A&E didn't consider it a deep burn. From the documents submitted at the enquiry, the hospital report:

"Very small are[a] of burn to the dorsum of his right hand. 2 tiny blisters. One is oozing. Blisters debrided. Burn is less than 1%. IMPRESSION: Superficial burn."

There are pictures of the burn in The Sun article.

...to clarigy, the area of raw skin is where the nurse debrided the blister. So it looks worse than the injury that the teacher saw.

This.

His skin wasnt 'hanging off'.

People don’t seem to be getting this. The mother acted appallingly imo. But so did the teacher. The mums getting ridiculed for seeking medical attention for a ‘blister’, but I’ve just Googled pics of the wound and 100% would there have been people on here telling her to seek medical attention if she’d made a thread about it. And it’s not like she went straight to an and e for attention. She phoned 111 who told her he needed treatment, he got first aid and medication at the hospital who have given him a follow up appointment to check on the burn, so it wasn’t completely insignificant. First aid or at least some sort of medical attention should have been sought at the time, all the appropriate accident forms should have been filled in and the parent notified IMMEDIATELY. Going to the sun is pathetic, but I’d have been fucked off if my 10yo came home from a school with a burn requiring two hospital visits for treatment and the teacher had failed to even mention it to me.

@MisschiefMaker - the child hid the burn and then refused to run it under cold water.

I’m sure the parent would have complained if her son had been forced to put his hand under the cold tap.

I honestly think that there are people who feel important because they've been able to get professionals in trouble. I've seen it numerous times in my own professional life - not against me but against colleagues. Some people feel big because they put in a complaint and suddenly have high up folk listening to them and taking them seriously. It tend to be people who haven't achieved much in their own lives.

What I found interesting from the report was that the head admitted that previously the Deputy Head and DSL role wouldn't have been combined with a teaching role in order to give the person time to discharge their duties effectively.

Cuts to school budgets meaning that this teacher also had a teaching responsibility, plus cuts to support staff meaning there wasn't a TA available are ultimately to blame for procedures not being followed properly here. One teacher trying to do the job of three people at once. Of course when accidents inevitably happen it's then that teacher who was trying to hold everything together who gets the blame.

God help us if a class of 10 and 11 year olds can't manage a glue gun without an adult at their elbow. What do you think will happen in secondry school when they have to use power tools with a staff to student ratio of 1:30?

Yes, I noticed that in the report too. The lack of funding and lack of staff that means that people are having to carry out several roles at once, are going to lead to this kind of thing. Certainly not having time or the headspace to call the parent and fill in the accident book is going to happen all the time.

Hopefully the teacher at a secondary school will follow the correct protocols. Seek immediate medical attention, report the incident to staff and parents/caregivers, and correctly record the incident/injury under the schools policy. Not tell the child to rinse their hands and leave them to it and hope for the best. The injury overall is insignificant, but anyone’s who’s had similar knows it’s bloody painful. The child is 10 years old ffs, the mums actions are disgusting, but no way would anyone on here be happy with their 10yo coming home from school with glue gun burns with no phone call or explanation.

Yep, there is a huge message in this sorry tale!

We’re stretched so thin, these sorts of events will become increasingly common at the same time as the blame culture becomes more prevalent.

I agree it sounds like a witch hunt. The mother contacted a national newspaper the day after a non-incident before talking to the school before even asking the schools version of events. That tells you everything you need to know.

If she were actually concerned she could have sent a message on the school app or emailed to ask for clarification. If she wasn’t happy she could have emailed the headteacher or governors. It sounds like she whipped herself into a frenzy posting on social media, or saw a potential for a payout.

The mother should be ashamed of herself for perusing it when she found out why the teacher didn’t speak to her straightaway. The teacher was dealing with bigger safeguarding issue that took priority.

No support staff
No adult to call upon for first aid.
1 teacher for a large class trying to do tricky curriculum objectives
DSL requirements
Massive workload.
Child not doing as told.
Children refusing to do as told.

All of these things stood out to me. But the thing that stood out the most was the fact that I could see this kind of thing happening every day in schools as we have no capacity to work any differently.