The latest parental threats to target individuals, myself and the school via social media/graffiti, a promise not a threat, is wearing and indicative of the new way of communicating with schools. Do as we ask whatever our son/daughter has done or we will personally target you – ‘Truth does not matter, I do not care’, seems to be the new norm. Parents know they have perceived power. Worcester News, local newspaper will click their story as newsworthy and off the circus goes. Add in a threat to discredit with Ofsted, governor complaints and the stress levels increase and staff think why bother, keep your head down, teach the lessons, go home.
Oh for the good old days, where parental confrontations were loud, nose to nose and over in ten minutes. Mr R who carried a paving slab in his backpack, slamming it down on the table as a start of negotiations. His frequent dips into his socks were I soon realised, to keep him high on his secreted cocaine. Or Mr H whose bulging muscles were only matched by his gravelly Ray Winstone voice where every syllable sounded threatening. Or my favourite, Mr L who clearly had ADHD tendencies, refused to sit and often broke off into graphic, intimidating description of how he broke rabbit necks. This would follow with a traditional monologue of how he had been kicked out of school and that I ought to bring back the cane as it had clearly never done him any harm. All started angry and generally would calm down and leave respectfully, handshakes all round. They felt valued, heard by the Head and could then return to their kingdom, having been heard.
These newer helicopter parents are more difficult to placate, their children have them on speed dial and at times, they are at the school before the detention letter has been written. At a time when society needs schools to offer more, more extra curricular, more experiences, the significant minority of vocal damaged parents are doing their children a disservice by their unreasonable behaviour, backed by a sloppy media who simply do not fact check. Just look at the ridiculous national fake news story where the government is now investigating a school where claims were made that a pupil identified as a cat, pupils partially recording a teacher who argued with them. Imagine being the poor Head who has to put out a press statement “No children identify as a cat or any animal”. However, politician George Galloway in Big Brother seemed to identify quite convincingly as a cat, so perhaps it is a story of identity. The Head should be allowed to manage and discuss the staff response and nail the fact that this is clearly a vindictive recording. Politicians grandstanding and requesting snap Ofsteds are unhelpful and deflect from the issue that this was a mischievous, malicious attempt to entrap a member of staff who sounds like he/she needs support, advice and training, not the spotlight of a media circus.
Back to my problem. Once again, I will be putting out my values – I identify as a traditional Headteacher who tries to put the interest of all students and my staff first. We will not be blackmailed, the threats are unacceptable. I do think Headteachers now, as always, have to identify as lions/lionesses – not so easy for Mr L to snap those necks. We need the sensible majority to identify what is right and say so before threatening, fake, malicious comments become the accepted form of communication and innuendo and gossip becomes the new reality.
Neil Morris 