My first view of Marton County Primary School (as it was called then) was in 1998, when I looked round it as a parent of a child nearing school age. Not having entered a primary school for some years, I was immediately impressed by the ambience of the place. As soon as I passed through the front doors I was struck by the warmth of my environment. This was not a physical warmth – just a feeling that I had entered a place that felt comfortable and friendly. One could sense that this was a busy place, and that there was almost a feeling of excitement about both the children and the staff. I realised in the course of my visit that this was almost certainly a direct result of the attitude of the Head Teacher, whose enthusiasm for her work was infectious. That same enthusiasm was evident in both the staff and the pupils, and I knew at once that I wanted my daughter to be a part of it.
Over the next few years, I found my faith to be justified, with my daughter Mollie clearly benefiting from her experiences. My son Matthew started there two years later, by which time I had already become a parent governor. Throughout their time at the school, it was consistently clear how well the school was run, and that the Head Teacher’s influence was significantly effective in producing the results that mattered.
The acronym “T-E-A-M” (Together Everyone Achieves More) was never better illustrated. It was with great personal sadness that I heard of the Head's retirement in 2004, and I did not envy anyone stepping into her shoes. She would be a tough act to follow! When the news broke about the problems being encountered by staff just twelve months later, I was prepared to make allowances for the new Head Teacher. After all, she would perhaps have found herself in a difficult position, and would it not be only natural for her to wish to make a few changes? Joining such a well-established team of teachers and support staff may have seemed a little intimidating, and I felt the need to check out for myself just how much of the apparent disturbances were down to a resistance to change. The following is a statement from one member of staff, written within the first few months of Mrs Coupe’s arrival:
“The staff are not adverse to changes – L was always up at the forefront when it came to new initiatives and changes were necessary. Marton has always been a school which has moved forwards – however they were always done in a democratic way open to negotiation and discussion by all. Inevitably some people were disappointed as they didn’t get what they wanted but the process was always followed through openly and with acceptance. Now we are working in a dictatorship – no open discussion/negotiation takes place. She appears to think and treat us as though we are in a failing school which is NOT the case, she is using and manipulating statistics/PANDA reports to suit her cause. A school that gets 70% - 80% pass rate for SATS is NOT failing. She has no concern/appreciation for the people ie. the children behind those results, she just sees them as figures or a statistic to champion her cause. She is in my opinion completely power-mad. The staff are in such despair it is unbelievable, many think she is deranged!!!”
So what about the governors? Were they not aware of these sentiments? Surely there would have been questions raised at governors meetings?
“Ruth will have made everything sound very straightforward as she wanted to try to manipulate (NAMED GOVERNOR) into her way of thinking. We know from witnesses and evidence that she has spoken to at least 5 governors privately as she did with (NAMED GOVERNOR) in order to secure her way of thinking at that governors meeting. This has been reported to the LEA as she should NOT have done this. She is VERY manipulative with words and says what you want to hear all the time if she wants something from you however she then does exactly what she wants regardless. She will also have made the issues seem small because she wants them implemented however they clearly are not and will have a massive impact on both children and staff. The way that she is rail-roading implementation by dictatorship is a BIG worry to the staff also.”
Note that the writer refers to the LEA being informed. This would almost certainly have been through the School’s Link Adviser, Steven Collinge. It would appear (following information supplied regarding procedures conducted at subsequent governors meetings) that nothing was ever done to correct Mrs Coupe’s handling of matters at such meetings. That is, until the then Chair of Governors (David Taylor) resigned for personal reasons in July 2005. His replacement (Mike Turner) is well known to have been a staunch supporter of Mrs Coupe, and was no doubt delighted to let his name go forward for election… One of his first actions was to propose a radical change to the school’s complaints procedure – ensuring that any complaint made against the Head Teacher would be subject to her own personal attention. The following is an extract from that proposal:
“If the Headteacher is the individual complained about, the Chair of Governors will make an initial response, but again only by letter to a verifiable parent at a verifiable address, pointing out the impossibility of dealing with the issue unless the Headteacher is involved.
From time to time the Chair will also have to deal with issues raised by members of the public. If they fall into any of the categories mentioned above they will be dealt with as stated above. Otherwise the Chair will deal with them as he/she sees fit, which will usually involve consultation with the LEA and such Governors as can be reached in whatever timescale is available. Again the response will only be by letter to a verifiable person at a verifiable address.
This policy was adopted at the full Governors meeting held on 24th November 2005.
Mike Turner, Chair of Governors.”
So – if a parent wished to make a genuine complaint against either the Head or the Chair of Governors, there would be no chance at all of it being dealt with by an independent person or body – a procedure commonly adopted elsewhere. And as we shall see – lodging a complaint with the LEA is likely to be just as fruitless! In short, the power of these particular “managers” is totally autonomous. Not a problem if they do their job properly, but in the wrong hands…?
A member of staff, writing to me in August 2005:
“We have been told that if we are not happy with the situation we have to get out. Although a lot of staff are not happy, it is not that simple to walk out of a job when you have family and mortgage responsibilities”
Thanks to the professionalism of such members of staff, the children were generally unaffected by the change of Head. Indeed, they saw very little of her, as Mrs Coupe preferred to spend most of her time either in her office, or visiting Progress House. Her interest in her pupils appeared to be purely incidental. However, there was ONE incident in January 2005 that brought her directly into the lives of one class of children – and with an unpleasant result: (some names abbreviated as they refer to serving members of staff)
The Satsuma Incident
"The layout of the classrooms is such that there is a small room in between the two classrooms. All doors were open between the rooms, so, although the teacher who witnessed the incident could not see or hear clearly what was going on, she was aware that Mrs Coupe was in the other classroom and that there was an interrogation going on, about a sucked satsuma which had been left on the floor, and no child had admitted leaving it there. The witness does not want to be identified, and has been advised by her union not to make a direct statement. What follows is therefore compiled from notes made by a third party.
The interrogation went on for about an hour. This was in the afternoon, and the children missed playtime as nobody would admit to it, and went on till home time. The two adults involved in the interrogation were Mrs Coupe and Miss M (support assistant). After the incident, they both entered the central room, laughing. Miss M called the witness in and both related to her (very proudly, as though it was really funny) what had happened:
They said that it had started when Mrs W had discovered the sucked satsuma on the floor when the children had gone to sit down at their tables. She had asked who had done it, and when nobody admitted to it, she backed herself into a corner by threatening the children they would have no playtime if nobody admitted to it. When some time had gone by, with nobody admitting to it, Mrs W went to get Mrs Coupe to deal with it, leaving Miss M in charge of the class. (Mrs W had to leave school early as she had some sort of appointment or something to do with her own children). Mrs Coupe arrived in the classroom, and began interrogating the children about who had done it. After a while, three or four children were crying as they had then been told there would be no playtimes at all THAT HALF TERM if nobody admitted to it. At this point, obviously realising they were getting nowhere, Mrs Coupe said that the police were in school (which they were - for something in upper juniors), and would not be very pleased to hear that children were not telling the truth. She said that the police would be able to look at the satsuma and work out who had sucked it. This continued for sometime, with some of the children getting more and more agitated. When Mrs Coupe said, "if nobody puts their hand up, then I am calling in the police..." one little girl (who was always as good as gold) put her hand up in a panic. Mrs Coupe took her outside and told her how naughty she had been, not to admit to what she had done etc. She told Miss M that she needed to see her mother when she came to collect her from school. As it happened, the little girl's mum was not picking her up that night, but another parent. When this parent arrived, Mrs Coupe went to talk to her and explain why the child was so upset.
When Mrs Coupe and Miss M were discussing this in the middle room after the event, the witness told me she felt so shocked about what had been done, and at Mrs Coupe's reaction to it (thinking it was funny) that she didn't know how to respond. She felt terrible for the children, and couldn't believe what she had heard. As Miss M is only young, it may have been understandable if she had maybe made an error of judgment and dealt with it by herself in this way. The witness presumed that Miss M had gone along with what was happening as Mrs Coupe was the head teacher. What really shocked her was that a head teacher had acted like this. When Mrs Coupe had gone, she told Miss M that she thought it was quite wrong to threaten young children with the police, and if she was a parent of one of those children she wouldn't be at all happy, as teachers always try to get the children to see the police as friends. Miss M seemed quite embarrassed, as she probably realised at this point that it had not been an appropriate way to deal with the situation. The two of them also discussed the fact that they did not think the little girl who had owned up to it had actually done it. They both had their suspicions about who had done it. Miss M admitted that the little girl had probably put her hand up when Mrs Coupe had said, “if nobody puts their hand up, then I’m calling in the police,” without even thinking what she was putting her hand up for – just thinking she would be stopping the police coming in.
When she got home, the witness was still shocked and told her husband what had happened. She asked him if he thought she had over-reacted. He said he didn't think so. He was as shocked as she was.
The following morning, Mrs W spoke to the witness to tell her what had happened the previous afternoon. The witness told her she already knew as she had heard directly from Mrs Coupe. She also told her she thought it was dreadful, for the reasons already mentioned. Mrs W laughed it off, and did not seem to think it was anything bad. In view of this the witness began to question her own reaction. Again, she wondered if she was over reacting. About ten minutes later, the father of the accused child came into school to see Mrs Coupe. Mrs N went down to see Mrs W, as Mrs Coupe was in assembly. Mrs W said to ask the parent to wait for Mrs Coupe to come out of assembly. After a while, Mrs N came back down and said that Mrs Coupe was going to be a long time, and she didn’t like to ask the parent to wait that long, or to come back the following Monday (this was Friday). At this point Mrs W said she would speak to him. She went up to the office, and spoke to the parent. When she returned she said he had come in to see what had gone on, as his child had come home very upset, and told him that she was not guilty. Mrs W said that he had been very pleasant about it and she had managed to diffuse the situation, without involving Mrs Coupe. The witness said she did not know whether Mrs Coupe ever knew the parent had been in."
This was not to be the last time Mrs Coupe used a threat of police action. Being married to a serving police officer may have something to do with it, but I can confirm to having been the victim of such threats myself. Mr Coupe has made his own contribution on several occasions, and was the source of an unfounded complaint made against former Councillor Jon Bamborough to the Standards Board for England. He also tried to have me disciplined by my employer for my activities on the discussion forum.
Strange then, that at a time when the police COULD have been brought in to resolve a problem, Mrs Coupe failed to do so!
Not very long after the incident with the Satsuma, a male supply teacher was discovered behaving in an inappropriate manner while supervising a class full of children. The following statement was prepared by Janet Connor (support assistant) at the time, fully expecting to have to provide it for the police. However, Mrs Coupe did not choose to do so, and specifically asked that the parents should not be informed. Draw your own conclusions: (some names abbreviated as they refer to serving members of staff)
The Pornography Incident
"Approximately one week after Mr P started as a supply teacher Miss M mentioned to me that she had noticed that whenever she entered the classroom Mr P turned off the computer monitor. I hadn’t noticed this, and on that note I went into the classroom. As soon as I entered the room Mr P switched the monitor off and began marking children’s books. I returned and agreed with Miss M. We both asked Mrs K to do the same and on entering the room the same thing happened. Again, I suggested we should mention this to the class teacher Mrs T. On telling Mrs T she said the same thing had happened on the few occasions she had entered the room. We all thought this a little strange and agreed to keep an eye on things.
I noticed that Mr P never left the classroom during the day. I asked him on several occasions if he was going to the staffroom at lunchtime and playtime, and he always declined and remained in the classroom. I noticed that Mr P often had his laptop plugged in on the carpet whilst he was using the classroom computer. I also noticed that Mr P had one of the little key things that the teachers use in school, which he used on the class computer. I asked Mrs T if the school would have provided him with one to use. She told me she didn’t think so, but that it may be his own, and she wasn’t sure if he should be using it if it was his own.
That evening I telephoned Mrs Reidy (Year 1 class teacher) and asked her advice on whether she thought Mr P’s behaviour was a little strange in class. She told me it sounded quite odd, and to keep an eye on him. The next day Miss M went into the classroom to use the computer to make up certificates for the children. She came to me and said that Mr P had jumped off his chair and asked her what she was doing, which again is strange as all the staff use the class computer regularly. Miss M said she had noticed two web sites minimized at the bottom of the screen. She said they sounded a little strange for the classroom. Mr P went outside to collect the children after afternoon play and I went into the classroom and jotted down the two sites. They were “Celeb Forum” and “Female O”, and I went straight to Mrs T in the other classroom and told her that I was now very concerned. She said she would speak to Mr Richardson (IT Co-ordinator) after school.
At home that evening I couldn’t settle, so I decided to do a search on my own computer to see if the sites were acceptable for school. I was shocked by the content of the site. It was not suitable to be viewed in school. I telephoned Mrs Reidy again and asked her to view the sites. She also advised me to check that Mrs T had been able to get hold of Mr Richardson. The next day Mr P was in the classroom when I got to school. I went straight into Mrs T’s classroom. I told her of the content of the site and she was very concerned. She told me Mr Richardson had been unable to get the history of the sites on the computer the night before, but that she would go right away and tell him what I had found. She asked me to stay with the children and she left.
Mrs T returned with Mrs Coupe and Mr Richardson. Mrs Coupe asked me to her office where I told her and Mr Richardson what sort of things were on the site. Mrs Coupe said we should move the children from the classroom and that Mr P should go with them. We told Mr P that he should bring the children to a classroom where the children were to have a talk about keeping the toilets and cloakroom tidy. I was asked to stand by the door to make sure everyone stayed there. After a while I was asked to identify Mr P’s belongings and they were moved to the other side of the classroom door. I stayed with the children. I was told Mr P was being escorted from the premises. This is my statement and is true to the best of my knowledge."
Sadly, this was not to be the last incident of its type in school.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Over the next few years, I found my faith to be justified, with my daughter Mollie clearly benefiting from her experiences. My son Matthew started there two years later, by which time I had already become a parent governor. Throughout their time at the school, it was consistently clear how well the school was run, and that the Head Teacher’s influence was significantly effective in producing the results that mattered.
The acronym “T-E-A-M” (Together Everyone Achieves More) was never better illustrated. It was with great personal sadness that I heard of the Head's retirement in 2004, and I did not envy anyone stepping into her shoes. She would be a tough act to follow! When the news broke about the problems being encountered by staff just twelve months later, I was prepared to make allowances for the new Head Teacher. After all, she would perhaps have found herself in a difficult position, and would it not be only natural for her to wish to make a few changes? Joining such a well-established team of teachers and support staff may have seemed a little intimidating, and I felt the need to check out for myself just how much of the apparent disturbances were down to a resistance to change. The following is a statement from one member of staff, written within the first few months of Mrs Coupe’s arrival:
“The staff are not adverse to changes – L was always up at the forefront when it came to new initiatives and changes were necessary. Marton has always been a school which has moved forwards – however they were always done in a democratic way open to negotiation and discussion by all. Inevitably some people were disappointed as they didn’t get what they wanted but the process was always followed through openly and with acceptance. Now we are working in a dictatorship – no open discussion/negotiation takes place. She appears to think and treat us as though we are in a failing school which is NOT the case, she is using and manipulating statistics/PANDA reports to suit her cause. A school that gets 70% - 80% pass rate for SATS is NOT failing. She has no concern/appreciation for the people ie. the children behind those results, she just sees them as figures or a statistic to champion her cause. She is in my opinion completely power-mad. The staff are in such despair it is unbelievable, many think she is deranged!!!”
So what about the governors? Were they not aware of these sentiments? Surely there would have been questions raised at governors meetings?
“Ruth will have made everything sound very straightforward as she wanted to try to manipulate (NAMED GOVERNOR) into her way of thinking. We know from witnesses and evidence that she has spoken to at least 5 governors privately as she did with (NAMED GOVERNOR) in order to secure her way of thinking at that governors meeting. This has been reported to the LEA as she should NOT have done this. She is VERY manipulative with words and says what you want to hear all the time if she wants something from you however she then does exactly what she wants regardless. She will also have made the issues seem small because she wants them implemented however they clearly are not and will have a massive impact on both children and staff. The way that she is rail-roading implementation by dictatorship is a BIG worry to the staff also.”
Note that the writer refers to the LEA being informed. This would almost certainly have been through the School’s Link Adviser, Steven Collinge. It would appear (following information supplied regarding procedures conducted at subsequent governors meetings) that nothing was ever done to correct Mrs Coupe’s handling of matters at such meetings. That is, until the then Chair of Governors (David Taylor) resigned for personal reasons in July 2005. His replacement (Mike Turner) is well known to have been a staunch supporter of Mrs Coupe, and was no doubt delighted to let his name go forward for election… One of his first actions was to propose a radical change to the school’s complaints procedure – ensuring that any complaint made against the Head Teacher would be subject to her own personal attention. The following is an extract from that proposal:
“If the Headteacher is the individual complained about, the Chair of Governors will make an initial response, but again only by letter to a verifiable parent at a verifiable address, pointing out the impossibility of dealing with the issue unless the Headteacher is involved.
From time to time the Chair will also have to deal with issues raised by members of the public. If they fall into any of the categories mentioned above they will be dealt with as stated above. Otherwise the Chair will deal with them as he/she sees fit, which will usually involve consultation with the LEA and such Governors as can be reached in whatever timescale is available. Again the response will only be by letter to a verifiable person at a verifiable address.
This policy was adopted at the full Governors meeting held on 24th November 2005.
Mike Turner, Chair of Governors.”
So – if a parent wished to make a genuine complaint against either the Head or the Chair of Governors, there would be no chance at all of it being dealt with by an independent person or body – a procedure commonly adopted elsewhere. And as we shall see – lodging a complaint with the LEA is likely to be just as fruitless! In short, the power of these particular “managers” is totally autonomous. Not a problem if they do their job properly, but in the wrong hands…?
A member of staff, writing to me in August 2005:
“We have been told that if we are not happy with the situation we have to get out. Although a lot of staff are not happy, it is not that simple to walk out of a job when you have family and mortgage responsibilities”
Thanks to the professionalism of such members of staff, the children were generally unaffected by the change of Head. Indeed, they saw very little of her, as Mrs Coupe preferred to spend most of her time either in her office, or visiting Progress House. Her interest in her pupils appeared to be purely incidental. However, there was ONE incident in January 2005 that brought her directly into the lives of one class of children – and with an unpleasant result: (some names abbreviated as they refer to serving members of staff)
The Satsuma Incident
"The layout of the classrooms is such that there is a small room in between the two classrooms. All doors were open between the rooms, so, although the teacher who witnessed the incident could not see or hear clearly what was going on, she was aware that Mrs Coupe was in the other classroom and that there was an interrogation going on, about a sucked satsuma which had been left on the floor, and no child had admitted leaving it there. The witness does not want to be identified, and has been advised by her union not to make a direct statement. What follows is therefore compiled from notes made by a third party.
The interrogation went on for about an hour. This was in the afternoon, and the children missed playtime as nobody would admit to it, and went on till home time. The two adults involved in the interrogation were Mrs Coupe and Miss M (support assistant). After the incident, they both entered the central room, laughing. Miss M called the witness in and both related to her (very proudly, as though it was really funny) what had happened:
They said that it had started when Mrs W had discovered the sucked satsuma on the floor when the children had gone to sit down at their tables. She had asked who had done it, and when nobody admitted to it, she backed herself into a corner by threatening the children they would have no playtime if nobody admitted to it. When some time had gone by, with nobody admitting to it, Mrs W went to get Mrs Coupe to deal with it, leaving Miss M in charge of the class. (Mrs W had to leave school early as she had some sort of appointment or something to do with her own children). Mrs Coupe arrived in the classroom, and began interrogating the children about who had done it. After a while, three or four children were crying as they had then been told there would be no playtimes at all THAT HALF TERM if nobody admitted to it. At this point, obviously realising they were getting nowhere, Mrs Coupe said that the police were in school (which they were - for something in upper juniors), and would not be very pleased to hear that children were not telling the truth. She said that the police would be able to look at the satsuma and work out who had sucked it. This continued for sometime, with some of the children getting more and more agitated. When Mrs Coupe said, "if nobody puts their hand up, then I am calling in the police..." one little girl (who was always as good as gold) put her hand up in a panic. Mrs Coupe took her outside and told her how naughty she had been, not to admit to what she had done etc. She told Miss M that she needed to see her mother when she came to collect her from school. As it happened, the little girl's mum was not picking her up that night, but another parent. When this parent arrived, Mrs Coupe went to talk to her and explain why the child was so upset.
When Mrs Coupe and Miss M were discussing this in the middle room after the event, the witness told me she felt so shocked about what had been done, and at Mrs Coupe's reaction to it (thinking it was funny) that she didn't know how to respond. She felt terrible for the children, and couldn't believe what she had heard. As Miss M is only young, it may have been understandable if she had maybe made an error of judgment and dealt with it by herself in this way. The witness presumed that Miss M had gone along with what was happening as Mrs Coupe was the head teacher. What really shocked her was that a head teacher had acted like this. When Mrs Coupe had gone, she told Miss M that she thought it was quite wrong to threaten young children with the police, and if she was a parent of one of those children she wouldn't be at all happy, as teachers always try to get the children to see the police as friends. Miss M seemed quite embarrassed, as she probably realised at this point that it had not been an appropriate way to deal with the situation. The two of them also discussed the fact that they did not think the little girl who had owned up to it had actually done it. They both had their suspicions about who had done it. Miss M admitted that the little girl had probably put her hand up when Mrs Coupe had said, “if nobody puts their hand up, then I’m calling in the police,” without even thinking what she was putting her hand up for – just thinking she would be stopping the police coming in.
When she got home, the witness was still shocked and told her husband what had happened. She asked him if he thought she had over-reacted. He said he didn't think so. He was as shocked as she was.
The following morning, Mrs W spoke to the witness to tell her what had happened the previous afternoon. The witness told her she already knew as she had heard directly from Mrs Coupe. She also told her she thought it was dreadful, for the reasons already mentioned. Mrs W laughed it off, and did not seem to think it was anything bad. In view of this the witness began to question her own reaction. Again, she wondered if she was over reacting. About ten minutes later, the father of the accused child came into school to see Mrs Coupe. Mrs N went down to see Mrs W, as Mrs Coupe was in assembly. Mrs W said to ask the parent to wait for Mrs Coupe to come out of assembly. After a while, Mrs N came back down and said that Mrs Coupe was going to be a long time, and she didn’t like to ask the parent to wait that long, or to come back the following Monday (this was Friday). At this point Mrs W said she would speak to him. She went up to the office, and spoke to the parent. When she returned she said he had come in to see what had gone on, as his child had come home very upset, and told him that she was not guilty. Mrs W said that he had been very pleasant about it and she had managed to diffuse the situation, without involving Mrs Coupe. The witness said she did not know whether Mrs Coupe ever knew the parent had been in."
This was not to be the last time Mrs Coupe used a threat of police action. Being married to a serving police officer may have something to do with it, but I can confirm to having been the victim of such threats myself. Mr Coupe has made his own contribution on several occasions, and was the source of an unfounded complaint made against former Councillor Jon Bamborough to the Standards Board for England. He also tried to have me disciplined by my employer for my activities on the discussion forum.
Strange then, that at a time when the police COULD have been brought in to resolve a problem, Mrs Coupe failed to do so!
Not very long after the incident with the Satsuma, a male supply teacher was discovered behaving in an inappropriate manner while supervising a class full of children. The following statement was prepared by Janet Connor (support assistant) at the time, fully expecting to have to provide it for the police. However, Mrs Coupe did not choose to do so, and specifically asked that the parents should not be informed. Draw your own conclusions: (some names abbreviated as they refer to serving members of staff)
The Pornography Incident
"Approximately one week after Mr P started as a supply teacher Miss M mentioned to me that she had noticed that whenever she entered the classroom Mr P turned off the computer monitor. I hadn’t noticed this, and on that note I went into the classroom. As soon as I entered the room Mr P switched the monitor off and began marking children’s books. I returned and agreed with Miss M. We both asked Mrs K to do the same and on entering the room the same thing happened. Again, I suggested we should mention this to the class teacher Mrs T. On telling Mrs T she said the same thing had happened on the few occasions she had entered the room. We all thought this a little strange and agreed to keep an eye on things.
I noticed that Mr P never left the classroom during the day. I asked him on several occasions if he was going to the staffroom at lunchtime and playtime, and he always declined and remained in the classroom. I noticed that Mr P often had his laptop plugged in on the carpet whilst he was using the classroom computer. I also noticed that Mr P had one of the little key things that the teachers use in school, which he used on the class computer. I asked Mrs T if the school would have provided him with one to use. She told me she didn’t think so, but that it may be his own, and she wasn’t sure if he should be using it if it was his own.
That evening I telephoned Mrs Reidy (Year 1 class teacher) and asked her advice on whether she thought Mr P’s behaviour was a little strange in class. She told me it sounded quite odd, and to keep an eye on him. The next day Miss M went into the classroom to use the computer to make up certificates for the children. She came to me and said that Mr P had jumped off his chair and asked her what she was doing, which again is strange as all the staff use the class computer regularly. Miss M said she had noticed two web sites minimized at the bottom of the screen. She said they sounded a little strange for the classroom. Mr P went outside to collect the children after afternoon play and I went into the classroom and jotted down the two sites. They were “Celeb Forum” and “Female O”, and I went straight to Mrs T in the other classroom and told her that I was now very concerned. She said she would speak to Mr Richardson (IT Co-ordinator) after school.
At home that evening I couldn’t settle, so I decided to do a search on my own computer to see if the sites were acceptable for school. I was shocked by the content of the site. It was not suitable to be viewed in school. I telephoned Mrs Reidy again and asked her to view the sites. She also advised me to check that Mrs T had been able to get hold of Mr Richardson. The next day Mr P was in the classroom when I got to school. I went straight into Mrs T’s classroom. I told her of the content of the site and she was very concerned. She told me Mr Richardson had been unable to get the history of the sites on the computer the night before, but that she would go right away and tell him what I had found. She asked me to stay with the children and she left.
Mrs T returned with Mrs Coupe and Mr Richardson. Mrs Coupe asked me to her office where I told her and Mr Richardson what sort of things were on the site. Mrs Coupe said we should move the children from the classroom and that Mr P should go with them. We told Mr P that he should bring the children to a classroom where the children were to have a talk about keeping the toilets and cloakroom tidy. I was asked to stand by the door to make sure everyone stayed there. After a while I was asked to identify Mr P’s belongings and they were moved to the other side of the classroom door. I stayed with the children. I was told Mr P was being escorted from the premises. This is my statement and is true to the best of my knowledge."
Sadly, this was not to be the last incident of its type in school.
TO BE CONTINUED…
