School uncontrolled pesticide use practices

[SchoolmumSW]

Our LO attends a private pre prep school which has been infested by some insects which bite children.

The school has spent month spraying all the classrooms with permethrin (insecticide/pesticide) twice daily (morning and evening) without telling the parents. It did nothing to resolve the issue.

A few times they had pest control coming in and doing spraying with higher concentrations of same permethrin and now plan to do more of that, though it’s been 1.5 years since the issue started and none of that helped.

The school refuses to share any risk/health and safety/GOSSH assessment reports. I’m really concerned about the amount of harmful chemicals children have been exposed to and poor safeguarding practices.

would you be concerned if your child was attending a school which was daily sprayed with pesticides? or am I overthinking it?

Would a report to council, DfE or somewhere else help? What would you do?

Isn’t Permethrin used to treat Scabies? I don’t know what else it’s used for.
I don’t think they would be doing this for a minor insect infestation, that level of pest control involvement would be very expensive.
Do they have bedbugs or something serious going on?

You are right to be concerned! Have you spoken with any other parents about it? I’d be really scared / angry and probably pulling my kid out. And I’m very far from precious. But these are powerful and potentially dangerous chemicals.

These are not bed bugs as over past 1.5 years as it’s been ongoing no spread has been noticed, just school premises. School can’t figure out where bites are coming from as they didn’t see any bugs and couldn’t catch any.

Daily spraying was done by staff not pest control with store bought insecticide (with permethrin being an active ingredient). Parents were never notified of this practice