Student Protests at School - what will the school do?

[amiworryingfornothing]

On the first day back my 15-yr-old dd wants to join all her mates in protesting at school. The school is being closed and becoming an Academy. No-one agrees with it locally, least of all the staff.

Anyway some of her mates went to the paper on Friday and have called a protest for 11am (break) on the first day back at the front of school. They want as many students, parents and staff to attend and plan to stay all day.

Does anyone know what the school is likely to do? Most of the SMT of the school, including the Acting Head, don't have jobs at the new Academy, so I'm not sure they'll do much. But they may have guidelines that they have to take certain steps for H&S reasons.

Do the students need to register the protest in some way with the police or anything?

bump

Doesn't anyone know?
are there no teachers on mumsnet anymore?

I doubt the school would do anything if it was a "peaceful" protest and once breaktime was over they went back into lessons. It's good to see that they obviously care about their school so much.

Thanks magentadreamer. I think it highly unlikely that they will all return promptly to lessons 10 mins later ...

Anyone else who works in schools?

Are all the teachers on holiday?!

Any protest needs to be agreed with the police beforehand e.g crowd size, time it will go on for etc otherwise it is an illegal protest.
Students are entitled as is anyone to legal protest - very good citizenship!

I am here (teacher)...but no idea sorry...just keep my head down and get on with my job as do most. My DH lost his job a few years ago when his school was closed due to repeatedly failing OFSTED (he had outstanding on his personal reports tho so found a job easily enough) and consequently massively falling rolls...

sorry no help but most teachers i would think would be more likely to be scouring the pages of the TES than going on the protest..

Not a teacher but not really sure what you are worrying about exactly? Do you mean will they be suspended? It sounds unlikely given that you implied the teachers support the protest.

And I'm not sure why the police would need to be informed. Unless you are expecting them to barricade themselves in with firebombs.

As long as it is a legal and prearranged protest they will be allowed to protest. Any problems just quote the human rights charter.

Depends what they do isnt it?

I'm a teacher. I have no experience of protests in school and don't know what the students would need do in this situation. Sorry.

I can save them time and tell them it will make no diff though

HTH

The kids have a right to protest and the school should respect and facilitate it.

As long as the kids maintain the moral high ground by NOT using it as an excuse to skive classes unnecessarily etc - good for them, I wish more young people were politicised and motivated

Tell your dd that they have my good wishes.

Our local secondary (perfectly respectably performing language college) was turned into an Academy last year. It is now a complete mess, no discipline, teachers failing to turn up for classes, no support for GCSE students, no homework for anyone except the least capable students etc etc. They've had riots, over 20 staff (included the Headteacher) have left during the course of the year, there is bullying, it's a complete mess.

Cory, I've CATd you to ask if you'd mind giving me the name of this new Academy and of the school it replaced.

I am 100% supportive of the students and hope their protest might have an effect.

OK, I tried CATing you, but it didn't work.

amiworrying, is it being joined with a nearby infant and juior school? with a lot of local press coverage? If it is where i am i know there has been a lot of uproar so your dd and her classmates could well get a lot of support from parents on the children from the other schools as from what i can tell a fair proportion of them arent too happy with the idea

No, that's not it shelleylou.
There are a lot of Academy Schemes about though, they all seem unpopular locally and hotly contested, but it doesn't seem to make much difference, and they just go ahead anyway.

shelleylou I know the one you mean. The infant school is ment to be really good and they did not want to be part of it and concerns of 4 year olds in the same building as 16 year olds.

What will change as a result of it becoming an Academy? sorry to hijack but I am completely uninformed about this sort of school.

Depends on who is given the job of running it llareggub.

In our case, it was a religious group who apparently have a lot of experience of running schools in what used to be known as the third world and who had in the previous year taken over a couple of failing schools in the UK.

Problem was, we weren't a failing school. They seemed incapable of grasping the concept that parents might actually be keen for their children to work hard and get good exam results.

I spent the three weeks before the application deadline trying to find out what adjustments they would be making for a disabled child (they hadn't thought of that) and when nothing was forthcoming decided this wasn't the school for us.

amiworrying- just a few clues. We are on the South Coast. Riots have been covered by the local press (last autumn). Parents and pupils are blamed, but noone locally believes that. Reason for change was to join two schools together (council wanting to sell the land); also, one councillor alledgedly had very close ties to group in question; locals set up alternative group to tender for school, but had no chance.

cascade that sounds about right. Im just glad ive got a year or so before i have to decide what infants i want to apply for as ds. That infant school is well within my catchment area (same street) i think we fall into another 1 aswell but i dont think it is very good.