Toxic headteacher

[Autumn777]

Looking for some advice really. The headteacher at my son’s school is toxic. Parents keep out of her way. We have had a total of 9 teachers within the last 18th months. The current teacher was lovely, really kind. She has told all the parents that she has been bullied by the head & has had to resign. The kids are hating go to school & are really unsettled.

There was a parents meeting & a parent asked about the allegations of bullying. They have now received a threatening letter saying it wasn’t the right forum to discuss these things. What would you do? I am so angry about the situation & the head getting away with it.

Move schools.

Would love to love schools but He is in year 6 so leaves next July.

@Autumn777 You'll get more traction in the schools forums, this is higher education which is post-school

My sons school is the same. The headteacher tried to bully my son who is type one diabetic, i got his nurse to come to a meeting and she was aruging with his nurse acting like she knew better. she was trying to force my then 7 year old to do his own injections as she wanted her staff to do other things.
Jokes on her as theres another student who has t1d now too.

she also tried to bully me to get him a autism diagnosis as he was struggling with motivation to do his work (was all down to his blood sugars) telling me he needed a psychiatrist etc etc. this year hes done amazing and really matured, hes not autistic at all. She just wanted extra funding for the school.

You either move schools or keep your head down, what other options are there?

Is there a parent governor on the board of governors whom you could approach?

Is the school part of an academy set up or not?

(Btw, I moved my DS to a new primary school for similar reasons, ie deeply unpleasant and ineffective Head, mid-year.)

I agree. If you report your opening post, @Autumn777, you can ask for it to be moved to a schools / education topic board.

There has to be a chair of governors to write to. She’s actually right that it’s not appropriate to address this in a public meeting. However, if those people at the meeting were to write to the CoG they would need to take action. I’m not keen on collective letters, but you can do it individually or collectively.
Focus it on your child’s experience, not the teacher’s. You know what she said, but you don’t know the background to the situation.

Thank you all for the advice. There are governors but there is a vacancy for the chair of governors.

Someone will be acting as the interim head of governors. Write to them en masse.

Not surprised there’s a vacancy for the chair!
My DC’s primary head was also toxic, she did so much damage. Good administrator but appalling with any people - teachers either hated her quietly & tried to avoid or were creeps to further their careers.

eta - deleted duplication

The teacher who is leaving has put in a grievance with HR & has told the parents she can’t work with her. She has cried telling us this. No teacher stays longer than 3 months max. What can be done? Is it just a lost battle. We just want some stability for the kids.

You can inform the governors, the local authority and Ofsted.

Ofsted & the LA both definitely need to know, asap - as a parent, you can phone them.
The governors are unlikely to get anywhere; in the case of our head, she had either carefully cultivated them into mini-mes or they were too ineffective to make an actual difference. Needless to say, minutes of meetings were always airbrushed by the head.

If this continues more parents will continue to withdraw their children, and applications to Reception will drop off. Eventually something will happen.

In the meantime I agree you have 2 options, move or keep your head down.
If you move you can write to CoG and explain why.

No one seems to care about bullying head teachers. You can whistle blow to the LA or the academy trust but I’ve known that to be ignored. Keeping the children out of school en masse in protest or sinking their SATs results by keeping off all children expected to get to the expected standard during SATs in May would be pretty effective if you can organise it (or threaten to)!

The exact same thing happened to me, I finally moved school. I really debated over it for so long as you worry that moving will negatively affect them but it was 100% the right decision. The school we moved to turned out to be brilliant and as it turned out, unsurprisingly with the huge turnover of staff the kids left behind could genuinely not read and write properly by the time they left primary school. Not the teachers faults, most were lovely, most just out of teacher training, enthusiastic and caring, and then being pressured and bullied out of the job by the head teacher then the next one had to start from scratch. I really debated it for so long, but I think about it on an almost daily basis that I'm so glad I made the decision to move.