Hello all,
My son is changing schools and the school he was going to asked for a reference. This was supplied by his current teacher and was quite fair and balanced. However the new school subsequently rang the school and by chance to the teacher concerned. She gave a very different, malicious verbal reference that painted a very different picture of both my son and us as parents that resulted in the school he was to go to withdrawing their offer. I have now managed to get this sorted with the new school by bringing in the current Head and the previous Head to provide a reference and by meeting with the new school and they are going to offer him a place and have noted the 'duplicitous' reference received (their words).
However, the damage has been done. We feel we cannot send him to the new school as he is now 'tainted' as a troublemaker and with the best will in the world I cannot guarantee my seven year old will be perfectly behaved but I feel nonetheless they will be watching him like hawks. We had intended a change of area, had put an offer in on a house and it had been accepted, arranged a mortgage and my wife had resigned from her job.
The result is that to support him we now feel we have to stay in the area for at least a year and everything has fallen through.
We were lucky in that the receiving school took a transcript of the verbal reference and have provided it to us. In it she makes uncorroborated accusations, plainly lies and misdirects and paints such a negative picture of us all I am not surprised the receiving school had reservations.
To put this all into context, I work in the receiving school and my wife still works in the original school, though not for long. She has caused personal grief to the whole family , caused us to lose a great deal of money through lost house-purchase costs, caused professional grief because she raised (wholly unfounded) safeguarding concerns against both parents and commented on things which she has no knowledge of or expertise in and which is was wholly inappropriate to do so anyway. This all stems I think from disciplinary action taken against the teacher by the previous head and my wife being called in to be involved.
How to proceed? I think a formal complaint is the route I would normally take but the school is actually a fantastic school and a formal complaint would have to be revealed to ISI/Ofsted and I don't want the school to suffer because of one individual.
Thoughts, good ideas, name of a good solicitor?
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Education
Bad reference from a teacher
20 replies
Meerk · 27/06/2014 10:09
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