Vindictive Deputy Principal

[sharonsa]

I am the parent of a special needs child and last year was bullied and victimised by social services due to false accusations made by the Deputy Principal of his previous school.

My son was placed on a child protection register based on the lies told by this person who was scape goating me for her failures.

The decision to take my son off the CP register was overturned after 7 weeks when I threatened my local authority with a judicial review. I have also had apologies from my local authority who admitted my son did not meet the threshold for child protection.

I made SARS requests to all agencies involved with and was shocked to read the host of lies told by this person.

I went through the complaints process but the school, failed to look at the components of my complaint and backed up this liar.

They completely ignored all the evidence showing where she had lied.

I was even criticised for paying for private consultants to assess my son's needs as the school had failed to carry out assessments and my son was not getting the help he should have been getting.

He got into the better school however the bullying and trauma I suffered as a direct result of the previous school's lies still haunts me.

Sorry to read this. I have experience of a school behaving profoundly unethically in respect of a child with long term health conditions, and ranks closing behind the Headteacher, when this was called out, including the academy chain and governing body. They unlawfully attempted to off-roll my child, and were also caught telling lies to CAMHS in an attempt to justify their action.

Awful business. So I know this happens, and how traumatic it is when you discover how senior public servants have attempted to lie their way out of a tight spot. In our case I wrote to Ofsted who carried out an investigation (School were stupid enough to leave a decent audit trail). Ofsted then required the LA to undertake a safeguarding investigation of School (multiple issues in term of their treatment of a vulnerable child). Unfortunately, the LA had been complicit with the School's original course of action (shared interest in attendance targets), so the LA handed the safeguarding investigation in its entirety over to the School SENCO, who was a direct report in the line management chain of the HT being investigated, with predictable results.

I asked the LA and Ofsted about the suitability of this arrangement for safeguarding investigation but they didn't respond.

Both my child and I have been treated for trauma as a consequence of this and now understand this as organisational abuse (it's quite a pernicious form of abuse with lasting consequences). My child has been unable to complete formal education because of the distress of these events and loss of feelings of safety in an educational environment (some extremely unpleasant things happened) on top of their existing long term conditions.

I may at some point complain to the Children's Commissioner, MP etc, but it's quite painful to engage with the detail.

I think if you have evidence of school management and governances failures, it may be worth documenting these and reporting to Ofsted, if you have the emotional capacity to engage. As indiviudal citizens, though, we are quite vulnerable, if powerful organisations behave unethically to protect their interests. Perhaps this is one of the downsides of academisation - as HTs appear to now be relatively unaccountable. At least documenting with Ofsted opens up some light; I tend to think the HT in our case will behave differently as a consequence of the inspection.

Hello and thanks for your response.

I am very sorry to hear of your experience and how it has affected both you and your child.

I would advise you to report the HT to the Teacher's Misconduct agency, here is their email address: [email protected] <[email protected]>.

I went through the complaints process with the school but none of the components of my complaint was looked into and I agree they seem accountable to no one.

I believe parents like us can bring about change by constantly challenging the system until change comes about, and if enough parents stand up to these bullies, things will change for the better.

I am so sorry to hear you went through child protection procedures on the base of falsified reporting. That is such a dreadful abuse of power. I am not surprised you are traumatised. Thank goodness you were able to threaten judicial review. I am glad you received an apology from the LA.

I do hope you can heal.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know about this function.