An EO member on the problems that led her to withdraw her 5yr old from school. - Page 4
So I spent a day at school with my son to try to see what the problem was. I was horrified by what I saw. Large amounts of unengaged time being snarled at, lots of standing in line, forcible evictions for fidgeting, a sour faced teacher shouting at children for "mistakes," shouting at a child she’d just said did not understand English, unclear instructions. I could understand entirely why my son hated it. At a meeting I said, "I think he’s bored". His teacher said, "He’s going to spend the next 12 years in school, he’ll have to get used to being bored." At this point I removed him.
We stayed in touch with the school, with a view to reintroducing him part-time to the other reception class with a marvellous, positive teacher who we know. The head was actually quite accommodating, listened to our concerns and moved his teacher to the nursery where she would not be alone with the children.
So after a short spell part-time in the other reception class where the teacher said, "I’m not going to make him do any work. I’m just going to let him play and re-establish friendships." He turned five.
We tried year 1 for one and a half terms. Initially things went well, though I was involved in a campaign to remove the mobile phone mast that had appeared on the school during the summer, which led to tensions with the head. His new teacher was the school's special needs coordinator and at a meeting she removed him from special needs saying that none of his behaviour was different from other children who weren’t on special needs. Two weeks later the head said she wanted a meeting to discuss exclusion. In discussions the head said she was unwilling to put him back onto special needs as he wasn’t high enough priority to get an assessment. At one point, when my son was alone with her in the office she said to him that he didn’t have to go to school and if he didn’t show up the next day no-one would be surprised. When he told his teacher she said it was the law that you had to go to school. He came home very confused.