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Secondary education

take my advice when choosing a school

33 replies

sunshine121 · 07/11/2013 20:42

Please dont listen to what other people are doing once they have left you will never see these people again i.did this and chose s school that doesnt suit us and our life wish id gone with the unpopular one in the playground but best for us

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Pancakeflipper · 11/11/2013 10:02

It a rumour. These rumours need to go to those who can look into it like the Chair of Govs.
If you are worried contact them. Good Chair of Govs will look into it.
But some rumours that go around are just nasty malicious things.

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mummytime · 11/11/2013 10:25

If there was any kind of allegation of that kind, that teacher (whatever teacher it is) would be temporarily suspended whilst it was being investigated. It is a very harsh climate for teachers at present.

Of course it is also pretty much impossible to totally clear someone's name, as mud and rumour sticks. Rumours also tend to get worse the more they travel.

A head teacher though has the least contact with pupils in most Secondary schools. It is very rare to find one who has time to do any teaching, they are normally extremely busy with management and admin type responsibilities. Other than in Assemblies my eldest DC (10 years of secondary school between them), have spoken to the Head at most 6 times since they started, and have never been alone with him (well DD has been in his office alone, with the door to his secretary and a friend open - to receive a special congratulatory certificate - it took 2 weeks to arrange a 5 minute slot).

I think you could do without "friends" like this to be honest.

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sunshine121 · 11/11/2013 10:48

She text me the other night to say got a hwad teacher award i nearly freaked legged it into the school luckily he was not there and got it from someone else is this all blown completely out of proportion

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Pancakeflipper · 11/11/2013 10:51

If you believe this rumour so much why are you not doing something about it?

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sunshine121 · 11/11/2013 10:57

Because everyones telling me its rubbish and my hubby wont let me move her cause shes happy

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Pancakeflipper · 11/11/2013 11:00

But YOU can still contact the Chair of Gov with your concerns if you believe them. Your husband cannot stop you doing that.

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witchywebsters · 11/11/2013 11:31

IF (big if) there's actually anything to this rumour and IF (big if) someone just getting a head teacher's award was in danger then by now it would be more than just a rumour - think about it, other pupils have been dealing with this head for years. Female pupils will have received the head teacher's award for roughly half of the weeks so far this term, and all of last year and for years before that, and if they weren't fine then by now that teacher would not be in post any more.

I know how horrible it is to be worried about something with everyone dismissing your worries. The less other people seem to worry, the more worried you feel because all the weight of responsibility for being careful seems to fall on to your shoulders. Other people dismissing a worry is sometimes the opposite of reassuring, it makes you feel even more that you're on your own with the job of making sure everything is safe.

However, even if you were to move your daughter, you should remember that statistically there's probably a dodgy teacher in a few of the schools local to you, including the one you wish she had gone to, and you're highly unlikely to ever know who it is, and also it's very unlikely statistically that your child would be affected even if it's in her school. Many predators go unidentified for years so you're not automatically safe in a school there are no rumours about, equally when a predator is identified their interactions haven't usually been with more than a tiny tiny minority of their charges.

The best thing you can do to help protect your daughter from dodgy or predatory people is to teach her how to handle situations in which she feels uncomfortable - things like knowing that there are situations in which being polite is not the most important thing, so for instance if she feels uncomfortable it's fine to just walk away without saying another word.

You can't do it for her by keeping her away from places there have ever been rumours about, because apart from anything else a school not having had rumours about it is no guarantee that every single person there is fine, and it would be dangerous to assume that it was.

It isn't just down to you to worry about this - you can relax and leave some of this up to other people, really you can. The school is full of other adults and children are rarely on their own with any of them. A big secondary school with children who are verbal (and so able to report back to their parents anything that happens) is not the same thing as a much younger or preverbal child being on their own for several hours with a single babysitter. (If you'd heard a rumour like that about someone you were using as a babysitter, it would make more sense to worry about it, but that's not the situation you're in.)

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Tuhlulah · 11/11/2013 11:52

The Head Teacher is either (a) guilty and should be investigated etc, or (b) entirely innocent, in which case he is subject to the most disgusting and damaging rumours, of which he is ignorant and therefore unable to address.

Sunshine, if nothing else, do contact the school to make them aware of this rumour. You don't have to say you believe it, just that you have heard it, that you understand it is fairly prevalent, and that it has made you extremely concerned.

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