School challenging my decision to deregister DS after serious safeguarding concerns

[secondaryhell]

I deregistered DS today and I’ve already had an email and voicemail from the school trying to tell me that they need to check with the LA that I have the right to do so! Of course I do!

This is just another example of them trying to make out that I have less rights than I do.

They tried to stop me taking DS to medical appts in school time (said they wouldn’t allow him to leave the premises).
They referred for fines with the LA for days he had absent due to severe MH issues and SH. They gaslit us in meetings repeatedly, made plans to get him back to school then changed things which really unsettled him.

He was bullied and was told to ‘be more resilient’. He refused the hpv jab and had a teacher make disgusting comments that ‘you all know who to stay away from girls!’

I now have a child who needs a lot of time to recover and I need to look for a better school or perhaps home educate we aren’t sure yet. I just can’t believe in 2026 schools treat pupils and parents so appallingly.

They are saying that I’m de registering not for ds best interests but because I’ve already had 2 fines. That’s not the main reason the main reason is that ds is at crisis point and because we think they are an unkind and corrupt school.

I'll resign tomorrow based on this post.

Apologies to the successful 20+ years I've had in schools teaching. GCSE classes next year will now have no teacher because apparently I'm a knob and a random thinks I'm silly.

Labels like trauma informed really don't help. They give everyone "trauma" instead of focusing on the children with actual issues who need actual support.

The system may well be at fault but 99% of people working in the system want the best for young people. They want children to be successful and thrive. They wouldn't be there otherwise.

Do you remember a little girl called Sara Sharif?

I don’t think it is reasonable to be upset/defensive about the fact that school are checking up on a child with mental health problems who
is being taken out of school. That is clearly their job and this in itself for me would be a red flag.

Have you considered trying a different school?

I hope your child becomes less distressed.

Really starting to bug me when the response is "that was social services fault" No it was the fault of the perpetrators who deliberately removed her from school so they could hide the abuse and it saddens me that some parents would not want to work alongside the authorities to prevent this ever happening to another child ever again due to what seems to be pride.

You are unkind. You sound burnt out. You have lost sight of the needs of your children you are teaching. This is why I don’t want my DD2 to go to secondary school. I don’t want my child’s significant trauma to be minimised by someone like you who just thinks they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and pull themselves together. Your post has made me realise that there are too many jaded, horrible and unprofessional teachers in the secondary system.

And yet people are saying home ed is a cause of sara sarif death?
Why ?

My children are vaccinated because we opted to vaccinate. But you can not force people to vaccinate in the UK as currently this is a choice everyone can make. I'm not anti vac

My child experience of school however has been horrendous and the lack of support for SEN is barbaric. Schools work really well for some children but they are failing and causing harm to other children..

It's easy to blame parents, it's much harder to understand something you obviously have never experienced

I'm unkind......

You called me a knob.

I care deeply for my students. I do my best for them daily, evidenced by happy kids, thankful parents and good exam results.

Trauma informed is still nonsense. It trivialises everything and frames it as trauma. Kids with genuine trauma (like yours) need support. That support shouldn't need to be rationed.

There are also wonderful caring and supportive teachers out there too. So over seeing schools described as prisons run by sadists as if we parents willingly send our children to suffer some kind of daily Dickensian existence. Home Ed is a wonderful path and the right one for many but it's also becoming a way of too easily sticking the boot in to schools. It's a different path not a superior one.

Why would you not want to acknowledge children’s trauma, based on your own personal prejudice?

Many families forced to home ed because schools and LA have failed their child and caused so much damage have spent years trying to work with authorities to get their child a suitable and appropriate education they legally have a right to receive.
When the LA has lied, gaslighted parents and failed in their duty to safeguard and protect that child in school. When that LA has caused so much unnecessary stress to the family.....

Is it any wonder those families want to prevent involvement from the same LA that has failed their child over and over

Don't patronise me by telling me what I do and don't understand. They were able to murder that poor child by being able to easily take her out of school and hide her and eventually kill her. Om not blaming home ed but that is the means they used to hide it. It's not social services fault it's the people who used the home ed path to so and I'd like to think all parents support safeguarding of children removed from school. Home Ed parents are just as responsible for safeguarding as anyone else.

She wasn't hidden.
Social services knew where she was. They visited and didn't feel she was at risk.

Because some kids think trauma is forgetting a pen or being 5 minutes late. I'm not wasting my life being trauma informed about that, I'm moving on and teaching.

The best thing for kids is clear and consistent rules and boundaries. Take an interest in them and talk to them.

Sometimes behaviour is X communicating they want to be a dope for a while. Not everything is that deep.

The new law isn't active yet, they have to get the guidance in place, it won't be coming in until some time next year but's a massive Act so will be coming out in stages.

Oh and to the person who talked about Sara Sharif. Questions were asked because the school referred them on and deregistration is automatically forwarded to the LA regardless of the reason because there are already laws in place for that. Social services royally fucked up. She'd been known to them her whole life and when she sadly passed away it was the school holidays, even being in school wouldn't have saved her.

She was deregistered from school in France and brought to the UK in the first place.

Social Services can only do so much. You can blame them as much you like. It's the people who killed her that are at fault. I'm sorry you won't have it that there is an element of safeguarding responsibility to Home Ed parents because apparently you believe yourselves to be exempt from being treated the same as everyone else and make a song and dance about any kind of monitoring your child's safety and education, it is like suddenly no rules apply to you. And then the Children grow up with the same attitude believing rules don't apply to them and they don't have to do anything they don't want to do in life.

That seems incredibly unlikely.

I think they have to check with the local authority if there's any kind of send

Also, any child protection issue. Which it sounds like there might be

Children have died (in and out of school) because adults in positions of trust had grave and evidenced concerns about the danger they were in and for one reason or another (e.g. they used the wrong address) didn't use the state powers they already have to check on them.

You would imagine so - but sadly not.

Some schools care more about attendance than a child's health and wellbeing

It is absolutely horrendous to be hassled over attendance when you child is very unwell. What makes it worse is when the school refuses to put any adjustments in place for that child

I get that people find it hard to believe because TBH before we experienced this first hand I probably wouldn't have believed it either

Oh course the ultimate people to blame were the people who killed her.
Home ed families are monitored already what you seem to expect is greater monitoring of home ed families than would happen to school families

Do you honestly believe that Sara outcome would have been different if she had still be on roll?
Given that it was summer holidays, given that social services had been notified by concerns many many times and done many visits and checks and decided that she could remain in the home.

When a family deregisters from school - the school completes paperwork and on here concerns can be flagged. As they had already made several referrals to social services before this happened they would have been required to flag this.

Sara's family were to blame for the horrendous abuse and the death she suffered. But if the systems in place can not protect the most vulnerable - then something is very wrong with that system.

I welcome a robust system for every child. I do not believe that this is what the new proposals will achieve. I believe that thy will unfairly target certain families. Tie up resources getting certain families to jump through hoops in the name of safeguarding whilst the children actually at risk are challenging continued to be let down by the very system that was supposed to protect them.

Most abused starts long before CSA but there are no additional checks being proposed for under 5 year old children.
Abuse isn't a term time only phenomenon and yet the proposals are not being proposed for families through the summer.

When as a parent you have begged for the support your child is legally entitled to and your child's needs have been disregarded and your child's health and well being has suffered because of the LA failures - it is very clear that they do not care about the actual wellbeing of children

I am not sure that deregistering was the best idea. Once you do that the lea dont have to provide a school place for your son, so tranafering to a different school will onky be possible if there are spaces available. It is also really hard to get an ehcp if they arent in a school and it sounds like he desperately needs an ehcp.

This.

Which is why I said that on page 2.

It's about the worst thing you can do in this situation. You can argue that they are not providing a suitable place whilst still in the system. Once you are out of the system you have much less leverage.

@RedToothBrush whoops. Sorry. Missed your post. That will serve me right for speed reading the thread. I think i got distracted by all the fuss about the jab.
Its interesting how many people are chatting about all the other stuff the op has mentioned and havent spotted the biggest issue.
Op i would also be interested if your son is waiting for any assessment for neurodivergence?