Urgent Help Please - Vote of No Confidence

[rachy27]

Hi all - we have a major issue at my daughter's primary school. Basically her class teacher with 32 years experience has been pretty much forced into early retirement by the new dogmatic Headteacher. The class teacher is amazing, The children respect her, all children have progressed massively under her. there was an extremely heated meeting at the school last night where the Head and 2 of the Govenors simply would not listen to our concerns, refused to answer questions and feelings were running high.
since this new Head arrived, the school has had an appalling OFSTED report and was days away from being put under Special Measures.
There are at least 50 parents (approx 300 children on roll) who are against what has happened.
My knowledge of the running of schools and how Heads are appointed etc is very limited. Somebody mentioned something about a "Vote of No Confidence" which means the Head will have to be removed or stand down - does anybody have any further information regarding this???

Please could anybosy help or point me in the right direction as the children are devastated about losing what they deem as their best teacher ever and parents are so frustrated that their voices are simply not being heard.

Many thanks in advance

no warning signs in the school I mentioned; Ofsted very positive until change of management; took rather less than two months for the whole place to disintegrate

though admittedly this was a secondary school

and the change of management was because the council wanted to sell the land of one school, because the new Tory council did not want to have to run the school and (allegedly) because one councillors had close affiliations to the religious group in question

The meeting last night was to discuss arrangements after the teacher's "retirement" - the class are getting a new teacher and she is coiming from another class - the new teacher's class is being amalgamated with the other year 4 class. Basically 4 classes has been disrupted due to this.

Although the meeting was around the new arrangements, inevitably the subject arrived at why the teacher was being forced into retirement and that she is finishing next week rather than at the end of the school year.

The teacher concocered has said she wanted to stay until the end of the school year but the headteacher has refused to accept or acknowledge this. When we questioned her as to why she simply replied I don't have to justify anything to you lot!!!!

sounds like communication is not her top skill - sadly.

It sounds like there are budgetry issues behind this. They sound like amalgamating two classes means they can save a salary. However, I would have thought it would already have been budgeted for the rest of the year so the teacher leaving before the end of the term sounds odd.

Whether she has to justify it to you or not is one thing, but it does have to be accepted by the board of governors - and their documents (minutes of meetings) are public - so you should be able to ask to see those and use that to find out more about what is going on.

I don't quite see how a HT could force a teacher to retire at short notice like that - but if the union has been involved presumably it is being done by the book. Doesn't sound like a good way of building a team spirit with the rest of the staff. And lack of honest communication with the parents is not going to help either.

It is possible to decline that quickly under poor management. The headteacher can be key.

What are the other teachers saying about the retirement? Do they seem t be supporting the teacher or the head? Were any of them at the meeting?

There was one teacher there supporting the head but 2 others approached me in the playground this afternoon and asked if we could proceed with the vote of no confidence as they were all so demoralised but were powerless to do anything about it

not powerless - who are the staff members on the governing body? they need to be raising it at a full gb meeting.

it sounds a very sad and complicated situation. don't have any experience of no confidence votes. i imagine all the info is on your LA website, but (in your shoes) would want to know that all the governing body options have been considered before the parents attempt to do anything. sometimes you just don't know what is really going on.

maybe you could ring the chair of govs and talk the situation through? they are unlikely to be able to give you all the information, but it would be interesting to know what the c of g view is. were they at the meeting? does the c of g support the new head? even if they do, i'm sure they would be extremely concerned to know that parents views were so strong they were considering approaching the LA directly...

well, it sounds as if the amalgamation of the two classes is a budgetary issue. Is it possible that the school is already in a deficit for this year and therefore need to make the changes to the budget now rather than later?

Bear in mind that if the head is got rid of (and this is not an easy process), then it's likely he will need to leave on a compromise agreement, and any payment he receives will need to come out of the school's budget.

i would also be very wary of mixing up the two situations btw - treat the head and the retirement as two separate issues? the teachers are clearly talking about the head, whereas your concern seems to be (primarily) with the 'enforced' retirement...

tbh i think there is little you can do about the loss of the teacher - if she doesn't want to go she will be using the union and associated legal advice. your concern should only be that arrangements for teaching due to her departure are adequate - i think you will get very little support from anywhere to try and change that decision. you can approach the head or the gb if you believe the arrangements are not adequate, but the head is quite right - they do not have to justify a staffing decision to the school community, merely prove that teaching arrangements are satisfactory.

i would def speak to the c of g about your concerns before approaching the LA...

and agree with mw, there will be staff members on the governing body - what are their views?

I also agree that there is probably a lot more going on than you know about, or even than the rest of the staff know about.

Mmm, an expensive experienced mumber of staff encouraged to go? Merging 2 classes? Chances are you'll be having a newly qualified techer before you can shout 'cheap' !

Staff members on the governing body will have to keep quiet unless they want their lives to be hell. In schools the head is the law and your life can be very quickly made extrremely unplesant if you don't agree with the head's direction. There is no appeal if you're further down the food chain. If a head wants you out it's actually surprisingly easy, especially if you're not willing to fight and stay and be made miserable (in a school in danger of going to the dogs).

Sorry to sound negative, but I've seen it too often and mainly with female headteachers .

Good for you and the other parents for causing a fuss.

I think a vote of no confidence is to remove elected officers.The head teacher is an employee , so employment legislation must be followed by his employers (the LEA ??). I think it would be extremely difficult to get rid of him .