How do you respond to a troublesome mother behaving aggressively towards someone else’s child? Here, we find out it’s far from clear cut.
Mrs Granger and her son James had come to the school with a health warning. This was the fourth school that James had attended in his 10 years of life and it wasn’t because they were travelling round the country. Mrs Granger had a habit of falling out with each school she sent her son to. It would start off well, although of course she would have hundreds of stories to tell about the terrible treatment she had received at schools X, Y and Z. But after three or four months some incident would spark a whole torrent of complaints which eventually would lead to her withdrawing James from the school and moving on.
As soon as his current school realised that he was moving on again, the headteacher contacted his new, prospective school. Mrs Granger had shouted across the playground only the day before that she would be moving James immediately to Sunbridge. Carol Houghton, the headteacher at Sunbridge, was forewarned when Mrs Granger and James appeared at reception. But with places in Year 6 and falling rolls she was in no position to refuse his admission.
As predicted, the first few months went well, helped along by the fact that Carol used all her newly devised policies and procedures for admitting a child mid-year. The staff knew the situation and the pre-admission interview and buddying system had helped James to adjust quickly. He proved to be a likeable boy who had suffered significantly from the frequent school changes and whose academic attainment was below age-related expectations.
On being informed of this Mrs Granger, with some hesitation, agreed that James should receive booster lessons and even volunteered to come in and help with readers in Key Stage 1. But this happy situation was not to last. One morning, before school started, Mrs Kemp, an outspoken mother of a child in Year 4, came rushing into school proclaiming that her child Lucy had been told off by another parent on the playground and that she was having none of it. In the middle of the morning rush she demanded that the school take action or she would go to the governing body.