In the village of the Great Dinner Lady Scandal, the vicar was offering scant comfort to confused souls last week. The Reverend John Richardson, a governor at the school that had sacked a staff member for telling parents the truth about how their child was bullied, was in his drive on Friday afternoon.
Approached by a reporter, did the vicar have an explanation for the sacking that has outraged parents everywhere? Some words of wisdom or even a sermon to dispense? Nope. He turned tail, scuttled inside his house and shut the door.
He and the village of Great Tey, near Colchester in Essex, have reason to feel under pressure. Local and national anger has grown since news emerged that the primary school dismissed Carol Hill, its dinner lady, apparently for revealing to a pupil’s parents that their daughter had been tied up and whipped by four boys.
Never mind the bullying, the sacking seemed to say, Hill’s “breach of confidentiality” was the real transgression. On the face of it the incident plays to fears about a subversion of values whereby victims and whistleblowers are treated more harshly than wrongdoers.
Many villagers remain aghast at the treatment of Hill. “There is widespread support for Mrs Hill in the village,” said Sue Dyer, who has five children at the school. “All the children at the school love her.”
A local news website of the Colchester Gazette has been inundated with comments, virtually all favouring Hill and lambasting the school. The ripples have spread much wider.
Kidscape, a charity created to prevent bullying and abuse, was blunt in its assessment. “It’s outrageous,” said a spokesman. “We think Mrs Hill should be reinstated and awarded a Pride in our People award. She should be congratulated, not sacked. It’s the school that should be looking very carefully at the message it is giving out to the local community.”
Last week Essex county council tried to ignore the matter, saying the decision to sack Hill was made by the school alone. Nothing to do with us, it claimed.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families was similarly evasive, saying that “we cannot comment on individual cases” and “ministers rightly do not micromanage schools”.
Though many might feel an important principle is at stake, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, had no comment to make.
Is there more to Hill’s sacking than meets the eye? Or does it reveal that years of centralised control and political correctness have bullied teachers out of their common sense?
Great Tey Church of England voluntary controlled primary is small, even for a village school, with about 70 pupils. Most of them, according to its Ofsted report last year, come from white British backgrounds and few are poor enough to qualify for free meals.
“Good quality personal development and wellbeing is [sic] at the heart of the school’s work,” enthused the Ofsted report. It went on to say: “Behaviour in the school is good. The staff effectively teach pupils right from wrong ... Pupils are keen to come to school because they say that everybody gets on extremely well together.” At least until recently.
Hill, a 60-year-old grandmother, had worked at the school for eight years and also helped out at the Beavers and youth club. Her boss, until last week, was Deborah Crabb, a 34-year-old who stepped up at short notice to be acting head less than three years ago. She completed her head teacher training last December.
In June, Hill was on duty at lunchtime when a girl rushed up saying her friend was being attacked by some boys, one of Hill’s close friends explained last week. Hill discovered seven-year-old Chloe David had been tied up and was allegedly being whipped with a skipping rope.
“Carol untied the rope and took the sobbing little girl into the school and told the staff what had happened,” said the friend. “She was asked if she knew who the boys were and she said she did — one owned up at once.”
Chloe was looked after by school staff and the bullies had their lunch break cut short. Their parents were later summoned to the school. But Chloe’s parents were told only that she had been “hurt in a skipping rope incident”. According to Chloe’s grandfather, the letter from the school was annotated by Crabb with the comment: “I’m sure she’ll tell you about it.”
Not long afterwards Hill by chance met Chloe’s mother and sympathised about the incident, and in doing so she revealed the details of what had happened. Chloe’s parents, Scott and Claire, were dismayed and angry that they had not been told the full truth by the school.
Their attempts to get answers from the head teacher and the governors proved “fruitless”, according to Chloe’s grandfather. (The chairwoman of the Parent Teacher Association had also found Crabb and her staff so unhelpful that she resigned earlier this year.) Instead, the school reacted by suspending Hill for breach of confidentiality — even though the incident was hardly likely to remain a secret in a small village. As Ivan Dyer, a resident, said: “Most of the parents in the village know the names of the children involved.”
Nine days ago Hill was called to a disciplinary meeting in Colchester where she found herself confronted by a panel of several school governors — even though one of the bullies was the child of a governor — and a council representative.
“The first thing they asked her when she arrived was if she had a solicitor,” said Hill’s friend. “Carol had no idea things were that serious and inside the room they just tore her apart. For more than two hours she had to sit there while they went through the whole incident and what had happened afterwards.”
Two days later she was handed a letter of dismissal, which, according to Hill’s friend, said she was being sacked for her actions over the bullying incident. Last week other sources hinted there may have been additional reasons for Hill’s dismissal.
However, neither the schools department, Essex county council, Robert Deal, the chairman of the school governors, Crabb, or the National Association of Head Teachers, which is advising her, could offer any further explanation for Hill’s treatment.
Mick Brookes, general secretary of the association, was one of the few voices to defend the school. “I find it quite offensive that there are so many people commenting on [the case] who have no idea what went on,” he said. Schools and their staff had to follow proper procedures, he said.
Whether or not there are other aspects of Hill’s case yet to emerge, its handling, and the culture it implies, has been appalling, says Peter Bradley, deputy director of Kidscape.
“The children tied up a seven-year-old girl and whipped her,” he said. “It is absolutely right that Mrs Hill informed the parents. It is not right that the school did not give accurate information to the parents.
“This sends out a huge message to other dinner ladies in other schools. If they witness bullying, our fear is they are not going to report it. People have to feel that if they see a child being bullied or harmed in any way, they are going to be supported — not get the sack.”
Liz Carnell, director of BullyingUK, another charity, agreed: “Mrs Hill was right to discuss it with the parents, if only because it was natural to assume the school would have told them everything.”
In fact, schools have good reason to keep quiet about bullying for fear of damaging their reputation and alienating prospective pupils and their parents. Even if it were an isolated case, who is going to want to send their child to a school where seven-year-old girls are tied to railings and whipped?
“If [bullying] is something that goes on in school you are not going to want to issue a press release on it,” admitted Brookes.
Though it is dangerous to generalise from individual incidents, other cases suggest common sense in schools is in desperate need of one-to-one remedial help.
Last week it was reported how Steven Cheek, a nine-year-old from Harlow, also in Essex, had become carried away in a lesson where war was being discussed. He made an imaginary gun with his fingers, pointed at a classmate and said “we’ve got to kill the Germans”. He was accused of racism because the boy he had pointed at was Polish, and his mother was summoned to the school by the headmaster.
In July, Anisa Borsberry, of Washington, Tyne and Wear, confronted children she believed were bullying her daughter. Two children made allegations of assault to the school. Though the claims were then withdrawn, Borsberry was arrested, fingerprinted and held in a cell for five hours. She was released without charge.
Other parents complain of schools not putting plasters on children’s cuts (for fear of being sued if they get it wrong) or of being prevented from holding children’s hands on school trips (in case they are accused of assault), and of being asked to chaperone trips involving classes other than their child’s (so that in an emergency children might not be put at risk by a parent concentrating on saving just their own offspring).
The sense of right and wrong, and what is and is not acceptable behaviour, has become blurred partly by bureaucracy created under the Labour years. Critics say this has generated a climate of suspicion.
People who work with children or vulnerable people already have to be vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau; and the government is now setting up the Independent Safeguarding Authority to “assess every person who wants to work or volunteer with vulnerable people”.
This weekend it emerged that even adults who look after their friends’ children may have to register with Ofsted if they do so for any “reward”.
The resulting transformation of a culture of trust into one of suspicion will, said one social commentator last week, “outlast many other Labour reforms”.
Others criticise policies deliberately adopted by educational bodies. Kidscape, for example, is scathing about the “no blame” approach some schools take to bullying.
“What they try to do is work with the bully and the victim together on an equal basis,” said Bradley. “It just doesn’t work. The whole concept of bullying is that there is an imbalance of power to start off with.
“To have the child sit next to the bully for them to try and become friends — it doesn’t make sense.”
To many residents of Great Tey, the affair of the dinner lady makes little sense either. Though it would be hard to overcome past tensions in such a small school, Hill is determined to appeal against her dismissal. A businessman has offered to pay her legal costs. Unison, the trade union, met Hill last week to discuss her case, even though she is not a member.
“All Carol did was tell the truth,” said her friend. “It is a terrible miscarriage of justice. In spite of everything all she wants is her old job back — she was there for eight years and loved the school and the children.”
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