Crying Wolf

Chloë Musson looks at whether new legislation will cure bad behaviour in the classroom… or is it all ‘lip service’?

“Imagine being falsely accused of the worst crime imaginable. That’s what child abuse is to a teacher. My confidence is gone and I feel permanently dirty and violated.”

These are the words of 53-year-old Jane Watts, who was falsely accused of smacking a five-year-old girl on the hand at a local primary school in Chorley, Lancashire. Since that fateful day in September 2007, which brought an end to her unblemished 30-year teaching career, Jane has been haunted by the memories which lost her her job and her sanity. “I was off sick and on anti-depressants,” she says. “The day I was suspended I was hysterical. I had a pack of lies told against me. I was the first teacher in Britain to take a lie-detector test to prove my innocence. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Pointing the finger

Astonishingly, previous surveys by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers suggest over a quarter of all teachers have been wrongly accused of misconduct – the majority of which are quickly cleared by police due to lack of evidence. Even after Jane was released, the school launched its own investigation and sacked her. Years of hard work are undermined, personal relationships are fractured, and many teachers spend years recovering from the stress and anxiety. “False allegations have blighted many teachers’ lives,” says Christine Blower, general secretary for the NUT.

It’s hard to imagine a state of mind where all hope, trust and self-belief is crushed on the word of a child. Many pupils – and indeed other teachers – probably don’t realise the severity of what they’re doing until it’s too late. But the most worrying part is they can get away with it – and they know it. “Children know their rights,” says Steve Williamson, Head of English at Kings’ School in Winchester. “They’ll say ‘I’ll do you for that’ or ‘I’ll get you in court’. They know you can’t touch them.”

It’s no wonder so many are throwing in the towel – or steering clear of teaching in the first place. Two thirds of teachers believe bad behaviour is driving staff to pack up their books, according to the Department for Education. Some may say it’s human rights gone mad. Others might blame the parents for not laying down the law. But most end up accusing the teacher. “Too many teachers report that the school’s first response to poor behaviour is to blame the teacher,” says Chris Keates, general secretary for the NASUWT teaching union.

New rules

Now, however, the pendulum might be about to swing the other way – back into the hands of teachers. As part of a surge of new discipline guidance, headteachers are being granted the power to prosecute pupils – and others – who make false claims against teachers in England. They will also be able to temporarily or permanently exclude lying students. Teachers will be allowed to use ‘reasonable force’ to physically restrain unruly pupils who cause trouble, search mobile phones for improper material, and confiscate drugs and alcohol without fear of violating ‘children’s rights’. “Improving discipline is a big priority,” says Education Secretary Michael Gove. “These changes will give teachers confidence that they can remove disruptive pupils and search children where necessary.”

This all sounds great, and in an ideal world stamping out such ‘no touching’ policies would once again allow teachers to do the job they’re paid to do – whether maintaining discipline by breaking up a fight, or putting an arm around a child to comfort them on their first day at school. The long-overdue changes will not only reduce the current guidelines from 600 pages of bureaucratic spiel to just 50, but also restore teacher authority and protection. Indeed, teachers will no longer be suspended as soon as the child opens their mouth, and malicious allegations won’t be included in employment records.

“Lip service”

But Michael Gove seems to have missed the boat on quite a few levels. As Jane Watts puts it, “What head is going to take a child to court?” It certainly wouldn’t do their reputation in the league tables any good. And what use is excluding a pupil when, according to the NASUWT, schools will remain accountable for the pupil’s “educational outcomes”. “Exclusion doesn’t solve problems but creates them,” says Steve Williamson. “What do they do? They go and watch daytime TV, and hang about outside school. It won’t change their behaviour.”

Jane Watts also worries that ‘policing’ roles such as confiscating mobile phones will only aggravate relations between teachers, parents and students. “It leaves teachers wide open to victimisation,” she says. “What if you take a mobile and then it stops working? Accusations start like, ‘you broke my child’s phone’. The guidelines make sense, but nothing will change. Gove is giving it lip service.”

Loose ends

Ultimately, teachers are afraid. If pupils can’t sue for assault they’ll sue for invasion of privacy instead. It’s just another loop for teachers to jump through. And what is ‘reasonable force’? Where is the line? And what about children who are under the age of legal responsibility? Will it actually deter pupils from making false allegations? There are still too many loose ends which need tying.

Steve Williamson is sceptical of whether what’s said on paper will work in practice. “There needs to be a test case really,” he says. “If it’s seen to work, if pupils are fined, it would be a breakthrough. But teachers must have a cast-iron case. It’s a legal minefield.”

Hands are tied…

Jane Watts says that giving headteachers more power is what concerns her most. “I was set up,” she says. “The LEA and the head all closed ranks against me. This is what happens when a headteacher has a vendetta against you. If he sacks the teacher, it makes him look good. It’s incestuous and corrupt.” The headteacher of Jane’s old school was unfortunately unavailable for comment.

Chris Keates from the NASUWT acknowledges, “teachers want more backing by school leaders” – and if they don’t get it, who do they turn to? “Even the Union didn’t help,” says Jane. “They told me to treat it like a paid holiday. I thought – this is my life we’re talking about. Then I was arrested – I could have been handcuffed or put in a cell. It was really traumatic. The jungle drums beat, and before long everyone knows who you are.”

Anonymity doesn’t do much good then either. Instead, human rights laws and bureaucratic red tape is wrapped around teachers’ necks. With their hands tied and no leg to stand on, it’s only a matter of time before they topple. “There’s no way I’d go back into the classroom without being able to prove my innocence,” says Jane. “I think body-worn cameras are needed.”

Passing the buck…

Is this really what it’s boiled down to? Teachers are so wary of their position that they want 9 to 5 surveillance? Steve Williamson believes it’s this lack of trust and leadership from the top which breeds confrontation. “There’s a psychological barrier between students, parents and teachers,” he says. “There needs to be a stronger ethos in schools and clearer structures and guidelines, so teachers, parents and pupils can work together. When there are perceived gulfs and gaps, that’s when the problems start.”
This is exactly the ethos that underpins Parents Helping Parents - we all must work together - and there are no perceived gulfs and gaps - more like bottomless chasms !

If this is the solution – and a starry-eyed one at that – parents need to stop passing the buck and accept responsibility for Little Jimmy’s bad behaviour. “Discipline and respect needs to come from the home,” says Jane. “The parents don’t respect the teaching profession any more than the pupils.”

And in her case? “I was the accused tried by the accuser. We need a third party to take over and form their own opinions without the head interfering. Yes, we must protect our young people, but we must also protect teachers. We need an independent external body… and we need it fast.”

Jane Watts’s blog ‘False Allegations Against Teachers’:
http://teacherallegation.blogspot.com/

Mrs Watts on Vimeo

The Slippery Slope

Three years ago, Duke Street Primary School received praise in the Ofsted Report (July 2007). At that time, the Chorley Guardian reported in an article :

Headteacher Andrew Kidd explained: "We just had to unpack everything and put it back on the walls. We could have just explained what was happening but we are proud of what we do here and we wanted to show them." "We are pleased we did because the inspection went extremely well and we were told a real strength of the school was its vibrant learning environment."

Today, a different story is presented in the release of the latest Ofsted Report :

"However, continuing inconsistencies in the quality and effectiveness of teaching are having an impact on pupils' progress. The good practice in some year groups is not consistently embedded across the school and, consequently, pupils' progress is satisfactory overall rather than good. While the school gathers large amounts of data, these are not always presented in a way that that readily shows the progress made by groups of pupils or year groups, or informs clear targets for improvement."

The latest report indicates that the school performance has dropped a full grade from 2 to 3, highlighting strengths but also clearly identifying failures.

The report refers to inconsistencies in the quality and effectiveness of teaching, including the use of assessment to support learning and the use of additional adults in classes.

The report does not speculate on the reasons that underpin this decline. A contributory factor must be that, over recent years, Duke Street has lost the core of its long-standing staff :

Mrs. Callandar, Mrs. Dring, Ms. Ishard, Mrs. Larne, Mrs. Markland, Mrs. Marquis, Mrs. McGloughlin, Mrs. Poppleton, Mrs. Procter, Mrs. Quinton, Mr. Roberts, Mrs. Watts

The dramatic loss of these teachers was highlighted in Cuckoo In The Nest. Duke Street needed the strength and experience of these dedicated and committed professionals to form a united, cohesive and well-organized team. They formed the very backbone of the school.

It is clear that Duke Street is on 'the slippery slope' ! Maybe, you as parents should be asking who is accountable and what measures will be taken to improve the situation ?

The Times

The teachers who can do no right

A report claims that a third of teachers have been falsely accused of wrongdoing. Our writer argues that it's time parents recognised their responsibilities

27 October 2009 The Times

Who would be a teacher in Britain today? The public may be surprised by a new poll that reveals 28 per cent of school staff have been falsely accused of wrongdoing by pupils, but most professionals who work in schools will not be. Living with parents’ criticism, complaints and false allegations from pupils has become part of a teachers’ lives. They work in a world where pupils feel they can make accusations because their parents will automatically back them, often with far-reaching results.

The poll by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that school staff who have been the subject of an unfounded allegation of misconduct by pupils, often have their careers blighted and their private lives damaged.

So how have we got to this situation where the adults involved in education, from parents to teachers, are in a not- so-civil civil war. And how does this affect the children they are trying to serve?

In my view, the first problem is that we now live in a culture where many of us no longer think twice before making a disparaging comment about any grown-ups in front of children. And as parents’ frustration with their children’s schools performance grows, it is the often hard-working teachers on whom they take it out.

Geraldine, for example, is an angry par- ent. This 39-year-old office administrator intends to sue her daughter’s Portsmouth primary school for failing to get Trish through the 11-plus. When I ask her: “Was it really the teachers’ fault?” she dismisses my question with a look of incomprehen- sion. She is, she says, “totally geared up” to “take on” her daughter’s “useless teachers”. But what example does this set Trish?

Tiff, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mum in Kent, is also a confident and seasoned advocate of her three children’s interest. Her latest triumph was to face down her 14-year-old daughter’s headmaster and force him to revoke the detention that she was given for texting in the middle of her science lessons. Tiff is so contemptuous towards her daughter’s headmaster that she calls him a “waste of space”. Her daughter, meanwhile, feels vindicated for her behaviour.

These mothers are just two of many examples of parental misbehaviour. Researching my new book Wasted: Why Education isn’t Educating, during which I spoke to scores of parents, it struck me how quickly they turned into vociferous critics of their children’s school. Often, they responded to a teacher’s criticism of their offspring as if it were a slight on themselves.

And the way grown-ups behave in everyday life does not go unnoticed by children. I have met kids as young as 8 or 9 who feel that they have permission to make fun of and attack their teachers. One group of 14-year-old boys whom I met in Canterbury routinely described their teachers to me as “losers”, “random” and “morons”.

On the other side, many teachers say that they now dread meeting their pupils’ parents. Parents’ evenings have become a battleground where the father or mother is the enemy. Greg, an experienced science teacher who works in a Manchester comprehensive, told me of his well-rehearsed routine for managing the “pushy parent”. “If you take their whining seriously they can turn your world upside-down,” he says. His solution is to “smile, switch off, look agreeable and move on as fast as possible”.

But not all teachers possess Greg’s confidence. Sue has been teaching drama in a Surrey school for two years. During that time she has had several rows with parents. She recalls that the low point of her career so far occurred when she had a shouting match with an angry parent in front of her class. A furious mother stormed into the school hall in the middle of a play rehearsal demanding to know why her son was not offered a more important part.

Another public face-off with an aggressive parent may prompt Sue to sign up for one of the many assertiveness-training courses for teachers that are now a growing strand of in-service instruction. They offer conflict management, mediation and communication skills for teachers requiring support to deal with difficult parents. It is a sign of the times that teachers’ organisations even now have leaflets on topics such as “fear of parents’ evenings”. One leaflet titled, Meet the Parents, published by the Teachers Support Network, cautions that it “can be a daunting experience”. It warns that sometimes parents will “support their child against the school — no matter what”, that they can turn “hostile, defensive and confrontational” and in rare cases even become “aggressive or violent”.

Predictably, sections of the teaching profession have responded to displays of parental disrespect by returning the favour. Educators blame parents for the low achievement and poor behaviour of their children. Without thinking of the damaging consequences for parental authority, many educators too have no inhibitions about ticking off irresponsible parents in front of their kids.

It is difficult to unravel the origins of the divisive feuds among grown-ups that afflict institutions of education. But it is evident to me that these squabbles have been exacerbated by recent government policies. A few months ago, a report published by the MP Alan Milburn argued for harnessing the energy of “pushy parents” to improve standards of education. He echoed the suggestion of the former Education Minister, Lord Adonis, that more pushy parents were needed to force schools to improve. In March, the Government announced a scheme that would allow parents and pupils to use “satisfaction ratings” to grade their school. Such measures risk reinforcing the tendency for parents to vent their frustration on their children’s schools, while failing to provide any constructive measures to improve the quality of education.

Mobilising parents’ instinctive love for their children to shore up the institution of education does not solve deep-seated problems. It simply encourages parents to become their children’s advocates, leading to the widespread adoption of the “my child, right or wrong” attitude. Once such attitudes gain momentum, parents can easily lose sight of what is in the best interest of their child and his or her classmates. One father told me that having challenged the mark that his daughter got for her geography project and questioned the teacher’s judgment, he knew that he had gone too far. “It got to be bigger than a dispute about the grade and it felt wrong,” he says.

It’s not hard to see how parents have got here. With increasing pressure on state schools and growing anxiety about standards, schooling has become a focus of intense competition for parents. Many devote considerable resources to get their children into a “good” school, some paying as much as £2,000 to get legal help with their appeal if children don’t win a place. Rob, 43, a businessman from Birmingham, was appalled when told that his 11-year-old son was refused a place in his school of choice. He appealed and showed up to a panel hearing with a solicitor, who specialised in education law. He says: “I made sure they knew that I meant business.”

Paying for legal advice, moving house to live in the catchment area of a desirable school, or even joining the congregation of a church with an attached school, is now not unusual. Studies indicate that a fifth of secondary pupils in England and Wales receive private tuition. In some middle-class secondary schools more than half of students had used a private tutor. Once the children are in the “right” school, their parents play an active role in helping them with their homework and projects. According to a report by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, two thirds of parents help their children with GCSE coursework — and many do far more than “help”: it is often parents, not the students, who are busy looking for information on the internet or at the library.

Despite all these efforts, petty and divisive bickering between parents and teachers will undermine all the good that parents try to do. If adults behave authoritatively towards youngsters at home and in their communities, teachers will feel comfortable in exercising authority in the classroom. However, if grown-ups point the finger at one another for a school’s alleged failing they undermine not only the authority of the teacher, but of all adults.

Education works best when it is underpinned by a genuine intergenerational conversation. Ideally, through such a conversation, the experience and wisdom of the adult world is transmitted to children. But when grown-ups find it difficult to speak with one voice and education becomes a battlefield on which pointless conflicts between grown-ups are fought, those intergenerational transactions are lost. Teachers and parents need to be on the same side — for the sake of education. Our children and our futures depend on it.

Frank Furedi is a professor of sociology at the University of Kent. His book Wasted: Why Education isn’t Educating is published by Continuum International this week at £16.99. To order it for £15.29, inc p&p, call 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst.

Mark Ellwood, 46

‘There is a climate of fear in the classroom’

Ellwood was forced to leave his family home and prohibited from contact with his daughters while false allegations against him were investigated.

The former kick-boxing champion helped to look after children removed from class for bad behaviour at David Lister School in Hull. When he asked a 15-year-old boy to put away his mobile phone and take off his coat the pupil threatened to stab him and said: “I will have you killed.”

He marched the teenager out of the classroom but the boy kicked him in the shin. Ellwood “gently” swept the boy to the floor, but did not injure him. The boy’s mother accused Ellwood of assault against her son and within weeks he had been arrested, fingerprinted, held for 22 hours and charged with common assault.

Social services forced him to move out of his home, leaving his wife Julie and two teenage daughters. He slept on the floor of a gym and was banned from contact with them before he was allowed to return two weeks later.

He has just been cleared after nine months by a judge, who said the “nightmare” was now over and Ellwood could rebuild his life.

Ellwood said after the case that there was a such a “climate of fear” in the classroom that teachers are scared to act when threats of stabbing and murder are daily events in schools all over the country.

Jane Watts, 52

‘I felt like a criminal. I couldn’t cope with what happened to me’

Watts had been a primary school teacher for 30 years when the mother of a five-year-old pupil accused her of hitting her daughter on the hand during a lesson.

The next day Watts was suspended from Duke Street Primary School in Chorley, Lancashire, pending an investigation. There had been no witnesses and a teaching assistant in the class at the time did not report anything until the girl’s mother complained, Watts said. “I felt dirty and like a criminal. I’ve always loved teaching and I couldn’t cope with the thought that this had happened to me.”

A month later Watts was arrested for assault. She was interviewed and was released on bail. The police found no case to answer. But the school wanted its own investigation. She took a lie-detector test, which she passed, but the school did not appear to take the results into account.

Watts was sacked in March 2008 for gross misconduct after an internal inquiry, but reinstated on appeal when the punishment was downgraded to a final warning.

The distress caused by the accusation and the investigation meant that Watts was unable to return to school because of ill health and a fear that she would be constantly under suspicion. She was sacked again in June this year for non-attendance.

“The effect it had was that I went from someone who would happily take 220 children for hymn practice and meetings for parents and Inset training, to someone who was afraid to walk around Chorley and didn’t want to go to the local supermarket.”

Judi Sunderland, 60

‘It’s hard to believe it took seconds for this boy to wreck my life’

Sunderland was found innocent by a court after allegations that she had assaulted a pupil. The investigation by the police and then the school took three years after a 13-year-old pupil at Immanuel College school, in Bradford, said that she had attacked him at the end of 2003.

Sunderland had worked at the school for only three months when she heard raised voices in the corridor outside her office and saw a teaching assistant trying to deal with a pupil. She went over and told the boy he should do as he was told.

The pupil slid down the wall and started kicking out so Sunderland, who was in teaching for 33 years, repeated her request for him to behave. He started swearing at her and swiping his legs towards her. Sunderland stood back and the boy got up and she put her arms around him from the back to restrain him. The boy complained and she was accused of using excessive force. The court was told that the case had put her through a “living hell”.

The prosecution gave no evidence against her and she walked free from Bradford Magistrates’ Court. But an internal disciplinary before the school governors decided that she had committed an “unlawful act — but invited her back to teach at the school. As a result, she appealed to the governors about the ruling, but lost the case and then decided to resign. Because of this ruling she was prevented from chaperoning her own grandchildren to drama lessons.

“The whole incident lasted seconds. It’s hard to believe it took less than a minute for this boy to wreck my life.”

Shakil Akhter, 42

‘The past two years for me have been a nightmare’

Science teacher Akhter was sacked from the International School & Community College, Birmingham, after a 12-year-old boy with a history of trouble making told the headmistress that the teacher had hit him.

The father of four, denied the allegations — made in December 2005 — and the police and social services did not pursue the claims after a two-year investigation.

But the school suspended Akhter, who has a PhD in forestry, and after an internal inquiry later sacked him six months after he joined the staff.

The GTC, the profession’s watchdog, ruled that there was not enough evidence that the teacher had thrown a punch and said that a teaching assistant in the classroom had not seen him do so.

Akhter could not take the local education authority — Birmingham City Council — to an employment tribunal because he had not been at the school long enough to bring proceedings against it.

Akhter said after he was cleared:

“It’s hard to think that they chose to believe this boy over me. I’m very relieved. The past two years for me have been a nightmare because I took on a lot of debt to train as a teacher, but now I can try and rebuild my life.”

The Daily Telegraph

Cleared teacher calls for greater protection against allegations

The first teacher in Britain to take a lie detector test to try to clear her name after she was wrongly accused of assault last night called for greater protection against false allegations.

Published: 7:00AM GMT 26 Oct 2009 Daily Telegraph

Jane Watts, 52, claims her life was left in tatters after she was accused of hitting a five-year-old girl in her reception class. Police dismissed the allegation against her but she was still sacked from her job at a primary school in Chorley, near Preston, Lancs.

Mrs Watts, who has been forced to rent out her home and is now living in “exile” in Spain, still recalls her fear at being arrested and taken to a police station.

“It was absolutely horrendous,” she said. “I was warned that I might be handcuffed and put in a cell. I was fingerprinted, had my DNA taken and photographed.”

“I had been on the senior management team and had an unblemished record. I was terrified.”

Mrs Watts spoke out after the Daily Telegraph revealed how Michael Becker, a special needs teacher, was convicted of assault by beating for daring to eject a disruptive pupil from his classroom.

Mr Becker, 62, from Stutton, Suffolk, took action because the boy refused to stop telling racist jokes. He was fined and ordered to pay costs. An imminent disciplinary hearing is expected to confirm his dismissal after 32 years in the classroom.

The case comes as a poll by the the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) found a quarter of school staff have been falsely accused by a pupil of wrongdoing while one in six has faced malicious allegations from a pupil’s family.

Half of those questioned said there had been at least one false allegation in their current school.

Mary Bousted, the union’s general secretary, said false allegations were blighting teachers’ lives.

“You get allegations of inappropriate sexual contact, you get allegations that you have hit a child, you get allegations that you have been unreasonable in your behaviour to the child.” she said.

“It is a totally isolating experience.” said Bousted, who added that many teachers never went back because they felt a cloud was hanging over them.

Mrs Watts, speaking from her new home in Cantabria, said teachers should learn that ‘nobody is their friend.’

“The Government should look at suspensions and at their procedures very, very carefully, and it needs to be somebody independent to look at them.”

“Children need to be protected, but so do the adults.”

Her 30-year career effectively came to a halt in September, 2007, when a youngster accused her of hitting her on the hand during a lesson at Duke Street Primary School.

She spent £25,000 trying to clear her name, even going to the trouble of submitting herself to a polygraph examination. The test came back clear but the school said it was unreliable.

Mrs Watts, who maintained throughout that she had struck a desk rather than the child, was reinstated after an appeal. After declining an “invitation” to return to the school she applied for early retirement, but this was turned down. The stress continued to wear her down and she was eventually sacked for non-attendance in 2009.

“I don’t know how I’ve survived,” she said. “Without the support of my family I would have lost it. There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed and it took months for me to go into town.”

“At one point I almost lost my house. I spent all my life savings just to stay afloat and almost had to sell my house.”

She added: “It finally seems like people are talking about the issue, and I won’t rest until I get changes made.”

Ken Cridland, Lancashire secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the human cost to teachers subjected to false allegations “cannot be underestimated”.

He added: “This is a brutal system that wrecks the careers and home lives of innocent teachers.”

“There are some older children who are wise or unwise enough to attempt to get staff into trouble.”

Protecting School or Children ?

Over this weekend, there have been numerous articles about the dinner lady, Carol Hill, who was sacked on the grounds of gross misconduct.

She was in breach of school confidentiality rules when she informed a girl’s parents that their daughter was being bullied. The girl had been tied up with a skipping rope and was then whipped by other children (one being the son of a school governor !).

Why dinnerlady Carol Hill deserves a medal, not the sack

Daily Mirror, 26 Sep 2009

We have now heard that Mr. Kidd has instructed staff that any similar breaches in school / pupil confidentiality would not be tolerated at Duke Street. He went further to emphasise that staff who supported Carol Hill could find themselves in serious trouble and reminded them that the school name and image is important.

It was barely a year ago when the school tried to conceal that there had been a rat infestation in the kitchen :

The ‘Pied Piper’ of Duke Street

Whilst we concede that all schools have similar confidentiality restrictions; this is yet another example where the priority of the school is to protect its reputation in deference to the safety and well‑being of our children !

On The Box

It seems as though whenever you open a paper, there’s Mrs. Watts !

The Times, Daily Mail, Lancashire Evening Post and Chorley Guardian. But the really good news is that she’ll be on the box in October, coinciding with the end of the Parliamentary Summer Recess. We knew that the BBC tentatively had scheduled a programme late last year that had been cancelled. But today, we learnt that, through her determined efforts to prove her innocence, her case will be investigated by the Panorama team. The programme will highlight aspects of the recent Parliamentary report “Allegations Against Teachers”, to which, Mrs. Watts has contributed and is mentioned.

Again, well done !!!