Some thoughts on having talked with people outside the Advent Fair on Sunday.  

Parents of the school sometimes have informed us that we ‘lost’ their support by our activism and our campaign of information.  We want to make it clear that, although we recognise that we have been put at odds with the majority of the parent community (excluding those who have left as a direct or indirect result of the school’s bullying obviously), we know that this is a symptom of the lack of democracy at the school bolstered up by archaic and useless legislation, rather than a true state of play.  Parents do not appear to know the facts of the matter, let alone the legal loopholes the school is operating between and around.

Our grievance and abusive treatment at the hands of the school has not been addressed in the slightest as of today, and we are not surprised that most parents are entirely unaware of the way the school has implicated them in what was done to our kids.  We must and will continue to try and change that by creating more information.

Parents who have any appetite for truth or justice however will not refuse to read our web-site because they ‘do not need only to know our point of view’ when they have only had the school’s for the last six months!  We are not convinced that anyone who says they will not read what both us and the school wrote about it during the period leading up to the expulsion, ever had any true support going on for us, support which then apparently disappeared through our own actions.

Neither can we be convinced by the argument that what we did after we were excluded can possibly be a justification for the exclusion, especially given the enormous amount of evidence available of how we behaved prior to that event and of the school’s failure to address the real issues.

Another point of view that was put during Sunday morning, was that it is basically selfish of us to pursue the matter or to ‘try and close down the school’, which will ‘hurt children’.

For the sake of clarity, yes we do question how such an institution can be allowed to call itself a school and operate with impunity and we do believe that the inconvenience and disappointment of some children and their parents is definitely not worth the actual abuse of even one.  Neither do we feel that we owe anyone at the school the false ‘support’ of shutting up about it because their kids are happy.  It’s not the happy kids that we are worried about, but those that the school deems to be expendable - kids that are just tossed away, education, friends, self-esteem, the lot.

We are shocked to find how very easy parents find it to assume that what happened to us is simply because we are us, and that the essential rightness of the school means that there is no other possibility.  This anomaly does, however, point to the slick spin that is dripping about divisively there and the necessity to counter that with even more transparency and straight-talk.

Our research has shown us clearly how such a confusion and situation has come about, and especially given the points of view we heard the other morning at the school, we feel ever more committed to explaining it. 

Even simply telling people about it was dismissed on Sunday as being ‘sensationalist’, but surely the rot has not set in to the extent that anyone actually doubts that the children were in fact dumped?  That is too far fetched even for TRSS, or perhaps not.  Perhaps its not only that we’re mad and bad, but actually that it never really happened at all, that would be comforting for those who want to call us selfish whilst ignoring what happened to our kids because the school says it was our fault.

The sad fact is that if it is sensationalist then that is simply because the actions of the school were so outrageous.  All we are doing is making them public, which we believe to be in the public interest. 

Although at the moment we still feel that the parent community (with some notable exceptions) has not been sufficiently interested to actually find out the truth, we realise that once we have done absolutely everything to make it clear how the school has implicated all of the families at this school in the abuse of our children, if parents still wish to hold the point of view that we should ‘get over it’ and ‘go away’ and ‘stop attacking the school’, then obviously that is because they are happy to wear that responsibility.

Of course we are aware that if parents hold to this view, they will feel attacked and therefore behave in an aggressive manner towards us.  We have been experiencing it for months... 

The difference is that once all the information is out there, if the parent community wants to take us on on behalf of the school, we will of course respect that choice and build that into the study of the situation that we are currently engaged in.  What or who that will help or hinder is interesting, but certainly not in our control.

Finally, we were criticised for not being open-minded and changing our own behaviour, and being closed to other points of view.  To which we say again, when another point of view is put forward in an open and honest way that respects facts and chronology, we will be there to discuss it.  Please come forward and talk to us.  This is an open invitation which we will not withdraw.  

And thanks to Susie, who did take the time to listen and hear what we were saying, and who did appear to feel that things had gone badly wrong, that we, and our concerns had not been properly met and that our position was entirely understandable.  It was great to meet someone connected with the school who could step out of her personal space into a place of neutrality and make the strenuous effort necessary to listen to the uncomfortable truth.

Eurika!