Today marks the one year anniversary of this school’s disgusting and damaging response to very real concerns about real bullying that our child suffered - to throw out not only her but also her little sisters.  They did this simply to avoid ‘meeting’ us.

The school will admit that they didn’t ‘meet’ us, but still they have so far managed to get away with punishing our children for that lack, clearly an institutional failure, as they were legally acting ‘in loco parentis’, rather than taking responsibility for it themselves.

They have even got the front to say that the process has “helped” them to come to “a greater clarity”, ignoring the fact that real children have been damaged by their inefficiency and cruelty, and doubtless, still are being damaged.  Our children have received no acknowledgement or apology for taking the fall for the school’s glaring faults.

The extent of collusion is staggering.  Even the Privacy Office has allowed these adults, many of them professional teachers, trusted to remember and impart vast amounts of knowledge, to claim that they can’t remember events that were apparently ‘heart-breaking’ from just last year.  

The upshot is that the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School have not as yet had to provide one single piece of evidence against us to justify traumatising young children.

BE WARNED.  If you find, as we did, that the school does not look after your children as well as they promise to, and you are persuaded, as we were, to work with them while they faff about doing nothing about it,  during that time before you realise that they really have no intention of stopping any kind of bullying, your child/ren will have suffered immense harm.

Our children are still suffering from the effects of this cavalier and illegal approach to being a school.  This is ongoing and deeply distressing.  Over the last year we have also collected a large volume of information about the many ways that the Law itself and some educational Authorities appear to collude and support this atrocious behaviour too.

Because the school is flying ‘under the radar’, (the law on Private Schools is scant, to say the least), it has not had to properly account for its actions, and that is why the true implications of its justifications for ‘asking a family to leave’, which are all based on its ‘special character’, have not yet come to light.  

Only through legal process will the school be forced to be explicit about matters that would show that it is using the fact that it is a Steiner School as a reason for not dealing with bullying.  

Although the school will use the lack of Ministerial enforcement as evidence that we are ‘crazy’ and our site is ‘defamatory’, you need only ask why it is still here.  The excuse that ‘it’s too expensive to take it down’ is very weak, coming from people who assured us personally that they could take it down “like that”, if they wanted to.  So is the reason that ‘it was decided it would not be good for the school to go down that road.’ What rubbish.  It’s not good for the school to have it there.  Would you leave up a site full of slanderous lies about you?  Of course not!

The fact that this site stays up is simply proof that what is on here is true. The school absolutely do not want to be brought into a situation where they actually have to contest that, or account for any of their behaviour in the light of our evidence, because they haven’t got a leg to stand on, so they leave it here, hoping that we’ll just eventually weaken our own case by being seen to go on about it.  

This is basically the same as punishing us both for the law being the way it is and for being too poor to sue the pants off the school!

For these reasons, we feel it is essential that the school is required to account for its actions in a proper way, and not just for the sake of our kids and other kids we know personally or know of at the school.  We personally have moved on and are not working with the problems at this level anymore.

It is also because the issues raised by this sequence of events illustrate so well some potential pitfalls in the future of Education in this country, as the Government plans to review the law on Private Schools.  Schools should not be able to exist in gaps in the law and run themselves so badly, to the detriment of children, and in the name of education!  The ‘Independent School’ movement is big on notions of ‘choice’, but without proper information, what kind of choice is there?

Also because of the growth of the Steiner Movement globally.  With the UK about to enter into the world of Government funded schools of ‘special character’, in a climate of heated debate, we feel it is vitally important that, if what happened to our children is because it is a Steiner School, rather than that just being used as an excuse, this should be brought out, in front of the many many people who’s current understanding is that Waldorf Education is humane. 

LIkewise if it is not because the school is a Steiner School, why should Rudolf Steiner be dragged into the gutter with these irresponsible, negligent people? All the other Steiner schools should know that this school is prepared to bring them into disrepute. If Rudolf Steiner was to see what transpired last year, and the effect it has had on our children, as we tried to exercise our moral duty to protect them, we believe he would be totally disgusted.  Would he want people behaving like this is his name?

This is why we are now going to move down the road of legal proceedings.  We have satisfied ourselves that it really is the only way to draw out the real agenda that the school wishes to hide so badly, to the extent that they had to hurt our three children rather than ‘meet us’, even though the meeting was already organised!!!!

Although the fact that this is a Private School means that the Ministry was apparently able to gleefully wash their hands of having to properly investigate, the school have in fact broken plenty of laws in what they are doing. 

Here is a small sample of Laws governing Private Schools:

Under the Education Act of 1989, (section 60A, Guideline 5), schools are morally obliged to reduce bullying, and incorporated into every school charter is the obligation to provide a safe physical and emotional environment.

Schools are bound by a statutory duty to provide a safe, bullying free learning environment.

The Governing Body of a Private School has duties as employers to take all practicable steps to ensure that no harm befalls people at a place of work (school) who are not employees. This includes students.

Harm includes illness and/or injury, and  includes physical or mental harm.

Governing bodies are also obligated to take all practicable steps to prevent hazards harming people in the vicinity of the school. Hazard includes where a person's behaviour may cause harm.

Practicable steps take into account: nature and severity of the harm, current knowledge of harm, likelihood of harm current knowledge of harm prevention and efficacy; and availability of means of preventing harm and costs.

The people who are liable in a Private School are the Board of Trustees. 

At Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School the Trustees are these people:-

Sean Gribben - sean@mcorp.co.nz

Paddy Delaney - paddymandy@gmail.com

Desmond Burdon - desmond@dburdon.com

Irene Ryan - irene.ryan@beca.com

Elka Baublies - baublies@gmail.com

These are the people who have the legal responsibility not to hurt children in the way that they allowed ours to be hurt, and we have substantial evidence that more than one of them did not agree with the actions that were taken against us, yet they have not properly spoken out.  Why on earth should they get away with that?

Regardless of the people who think we are selfish to protest the abuse of our children because theirs are ok, there is a quite extraordinary number of families who have ‘had to leave’ the school for similar reasons over a very long period of time.  Why should people continue to eventually have to leave when their children are used as fodder to a few virulent bullies, and then to cap that, to really feel that they have no choice but to walk away, due to the lack of accountability,  knowing others will fill their children’s places as small punch-bags?

Unfortunately we have discovered these and many more very unpleasant facts during the last year, that we are working to bring to public attention.  If you are persuaded by the school that our complaint really had ‘no merit’, as shown by the lack of action by the Ministry and Health and Safety, please try and answer this one question.....

If all these people were really doing their jobs properly, would there really be a need for a shocking unofficial embargo in the media on using the words ‘child’ and ‘suicide’ next to each other - for fear of giving the children of New Zealand ideas?

What does this fact really say about the reality of bullying and the desire to deny it?

We all agree that our web-site is outrageous and the material on it is outrageous too.  The real outrage is that we had to create it at all.  It is scandalous that a school can behave like this and high time this dangerous situation was properly dealt with.

Much of the legislation in this area is untried and we are hopeful that, given the large amount of documented evidence we have, that this may be seen as a potentially viable test case.

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This posting is all we have time to do at the moment, but as we regularly continue to receive communication from worried people at the school, or people thinking of sending their children there, we realise the importance of proper information.  Over the next few weeks therefore we will be compiling more relevant information and links, and putting it up on the site. :)