'Correspondance'

This piece came about after our run-ins with the council education department.  It is grim reading but it ends on a tragi-comic note. 

My elder son came home from a new school with a note saying he had kicked another child. I was horrified.  In six years he had never been in trouble of this sort and he wasn't violent. It turned out the child was a known troublemaker, had bullied him all day, assaulted him more than once and eventually, after hours of insufficient support and intervention from staff, my son kicked him back, probably to try to end it.

I complained to the head about the way things had been handled.  The school said they had given my son "strategies to protect himself" as though that wasn't their job.  They blamed my eleven-year-old, new in the school, for not getting help sooner, which, in fact, he had. I wrote again saying none of that was good enough and why hadn't they acknowledged the incident.  I received the oddest, defensive letter back saying item by item that my complaints were opinion so none of it counted. 

I wrote to the council who implemented a tortuous complaints policy including time constraints on me, forgetting that they are supposed to provide a service to the people.  Meanwhile, they strategically changed tack.  Everything I had said was still mere opinion which still didn't count as complaint but on top of that, now they simply said: nothing had happened,  there was no "assault" their letter said contemptuously.  He wasn't hit in the face.  At most he might have been slightly jostled. In lines dripping with sarcasm, they did hope he was better now.   But if something had happened they said my son had kicked, remember and I should be careful because I sounded as if I was condoning that.  It was a sly, crafty, insinuating, intimidating letter with the full weight of the council behind it and it threatened legal action if we decided to pursue negligence.   To my knowledge no school in Scotland has ever been found legally negligent, for things far worse, not even Kingspark in Dundee. 

The school banned phones in school, threatening police action for anyone who contravened and recorded or photographed - convenient for suppressing evidence of anything. The council said to me that they were considering implementing an "individual communication protocol" in my case, which didn't sound fun. They threatened restricting my contact with the school. Communication from the school generally was poor. We heard about the Christmas concert a couple of days before it happened. Later a fete that had been advertised didn't happen.  I wasn't invited to the school coffee morning. I wasn't sure if the order had been implemented or not.   The uncertainty, probably deliberate, was stressful. Some months after Christmas the council wrote again to say that was it, they had decided to implement their protocol, essentially blacklisted, banned from contacting the school. One day not long after my younger son didn't come home from school. The river Tay is between that school and our house and we had seen a guy almost certainly on drugs acting weirdly on the island. I feared the worst and raced about looking for him - school, town, river, home, repeat. Eventually, I stood outside the school in dread, unwelcome, worried to go in, worried not to, clutching my phone, desperate to call, to know when he had last been seen. Then my husband phoned.  He had remembered there was chess club. You aren't banned, said the council, scornfully, when later I mentioned this, just....restricted.

We had struggled to get my younger son's simple support needs recognised and addressed for a medical condition.  He just needed a few seconds daily assistance from a member of staff but the head dragged and dragged her feet and wanted his busy hospital consultant to attend a meeting.

The same child started to experience violence in that school not only directed at him, but generally. The school did nothing about the incidents, said nothing. I only knew a couple of parents to speak to.  One of them told me their son, my son's classmate had his head bashed repeatedly against a wall by another child in the same class. "What did the school do?"  I asked.  "Nothing really.  They 'downplayed' it", said the quiet, young parents.  Months before the chair of the parent council had said behaviour and the "disciplinary process" were issues. I didn't take it seriously at the time.  Middle-class anxieties I thought, in that professional catchment.

The aggression in school continued.  My son lost his appetite, begged not to go any more, suffered anxiety. We called in sick for two days.  The school docked two days attendance as "unauthorised absences". I asked why.  We didn't hear back. I moved him out of there to another school.  The council said it was my choice if I chose not to raise the latest issues but what was the point?  They hadn't done anything before.  The whole culture was about covering things up, not sorting them out and certainly not about engaging in a meaningful and non-authoritarian way with parents.  But how likely is that when we still call our councils "local authorities"?

I wrote hopefully, to the new school with a profile about my son - saying what he could and couldn't do academically, telling them about the medical condition, about his recent anxieties and the violence that had engendered them and, for transparency, about my "individual communications protocol" - the head would probably have been warned anyway.  However, the new head, covering her back again I suppose, forwarded the letter to the council.   They wrote to me saying any mention of the old school was inappropriate.

On the day I moved my younger boy out, back in the old school the same child who had attacked my elder son months before did so again, drawing blood. My son did nothing before or after he was attacked and the whole class was on his side.  But what the council had called "nothing" had happened, all over again and with the same child.  At least this time I got a phone call from the school, not from the head though whom I had long ago refused to ever meet or speak to again.  I said I was appalled.  The voice of the admin or support staff on the other end said, "I'm so sorry".  It was the most we ever got from them.  I felt that with that human touch she must be transgressing the rules.  She probably did too.  It wasn't much but when you get nothing it felt like everything.   

Over the year I had asked around of other parents, was it just us? But stories came in from parents of kids in schools all over the county.   The school, or the council, or both "downplayed" whatever their troubles were was a word that came up again and again.  I didn't know if it was worse to know it was affecting so many and that they all felt isolated and without help or recourse or better to know that at least we weren't alone.

*

'Correspondance'

Came the missives from the council:

You have complained,
claimed things.
Since phones are banned in school
where's your evidence of violence?

We've told you before:  

"You believed a child?" 

Why must you talk about support needs?  You're
meddlesome,
bothersome,
agitating.
So we'll apply an:

'Individual Communications Protocol':
from contacting your boys' school
you're restricted, blacklisted, 

banned,

.

One such arrived from the
'Schools Improvement Officer',
responsible for inspections
(and making parents ruly),
titled: 'Correspondance':
C O R R E S P O N D A N C E