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Justice 4 Jack: Illegal Exclusions

Please help me to fight ILLEGAL Exclusions & get Justice 4 Jack! 

Illegal or unofficial  exclusions was a term I had never heard of until my autistic son began missing out on vast amounts of education at the hands of the head teacher of his mainstream secondry school. 

I have given my all into trying to hold the the school responsible for breaking the law. As described in detail below. Yet I have now hit a brick wall and need financial support to keep my fight going to get Justice 4 Jack and all other children and families who have been subject to this unlawful treatment.

Due to what has happened I have been unable to work for the past year and I have also had some health issues during this time too. My husband works but our savings were used up fighting through the First Tier-Tribunal (SEND).

We have been assessed for legal aid and told we do not meet the criteria.

The most recent exclusion lasted nearly 4 months. This was during my son's first GCSE year (Year 10). 

I began sharing my concerns with the school that my son had been subject to disability discrimination by the very people who were supposed to be supporting him. My son was becoming very distressed and it became obvious that the head teacher and many of the teaching and support staff were completly unaware of my sons needs as described in his ECHP/personal profile. 

One member of staff in particular had humiliated and targeted my child so badly that other students contacted me to make me aware of what had happened.

During this time (before I knew the real reason why my son had been sent home) the school contacted me and LIED to me about the reason why they wanted me to bring Jack home and to keep him home for the remainder of  that week (Resulting in the first illegal exclsuion). This was despite the fact the head teacher had been made aware of what had happened between my child and the teacher by another member of staff (I have the emails to prove it). It appeared the truth was deliberately kept from me.

My son was left so distressed he could not speak for 48 hours after the incident  occured and he only began opening up after his peers had contacted me to make me aware of the true events of that day.

I wanted to work with the school to improve things and for better training to be put in place such as Autism Awareness Training and Equality Act Training.

Sadly the head teacher did not want to work with me and kept saying he did not want Jack in school because he could not trust our family; and denied that some of the staff had or were continuing to treat my child inappropriately.

I was left with no choice but to raise our concerns with the Board of Governors as our concerns were not being taken seriously. This was a nightmare to say the least as the head teacher refused to allow me to call witnesses and instructed the Board  to disregard certain aspects of my complaint at the Board of Governors meeting.

I then raised my concerns with the Chair of Governors who completely refuted the idea that Jack had ever been subject to unlawful exclusuions.

This man either was party to the cover up or literally had no idea that such behaviour is illegal.

Throughout the head teacher put great pressure on me to remove my child from the school and to find another school, his behaviour was very manipulative.

As any parent with a child with Autism will understand to move my son to another school would have been extremly difficult for him and would have further impacted further on his learning. Especially during the vital GCSE years.

Jack always wanted to stay at this school with his friends and the building etc that he knew well. He just wanted his teacher's and support workers to understand his autism and how best to support him.

As my battle continued I discovered that this school has a reputation of removing children with SEND in year 9/10.  This is known as "cleansing". The school constantly inform parents of how they are aiming for "outstanding" in the Ofsted tables and often children who are not acidemically achieving do not meet the desired grades to support the league tables. It’s a system designed to make many children fail. This cannot continue!

To me and to many other parents an outstanding school is one that helps each and every child to achieve the best that they can and to celebrate diversity and create an environment for acceptance, understanding and the promotion of equality and inclusion.

I was and still am shocked at how long this abuse of a childs right to education can go on for.

Nobody wanted to listen to me at the Local Authority. I was told they had no power to do anything if a head teacher of a maintained school was acting in such a way. How is this the case? It’s heart-breaking and destroys children’s confidence and their mental health.

The LA told me they could not provide my son with alternative provision (although he has a ECHP) as it was the schools duty to provide him with an education. Yet, the head teacher was saying he did not know how Jack could return and kept demanding more money from the LA.

It was a ridiculous game of tennis with my son being bashed about and damaged  between the main players left with no form of access to the curriculum.

Too many children have been failed and become collateral damage of a system designed to make them fail and fall between the gaps......This cannot continue to happen and this is why I have over the past year continued to fight to get our story heard and for the school's head teacher to be held accountable for what he has done to my child.

The long-term ramifications this has had on my child has been immense and far-reaching. He became very depressed and blamed himself for how the school was treating him. The sense of hopelessness and helplessness was difficult for our entire family.

Jacks expected grades for his upcoming GCSEs has reduced significantly and he will be put under huge stress trying to complete exams with content he has never be given the chance to learn.

As his mother I too became very isolated and depressed whilst trying to navigate what I soon found to be a very complex SEND education network of  trying to ensure my son has access to his right to education.

I was told by IPSEA, So SEN and legal advisiors that what was happening was illegal and should not be happening.

So if this treatment is illegal why is nobody punishing head teachers who treat children in such ways?

I sit wondering how many people this man has done this too, how many more children and families may suffer in the future, are suffering right now?

It will only stop if parents dont give up this fight and push for recognition of what is happening. Fighting for REAL accountablity. This behaviour is illegal and should be treated as such.


The steps I have taken so far include:

-Exhausting the schools internal complaints procedure.

- Various emergency reviews of my sons ECHP.

-Approaching the LA head of SEND, Head of Education and I am now currently exhausting the LA's own complaints procedure for failing to provide my son with alternative provision during the many months of education he missed.

(This is yet another process which can take several months to get through and based on my experiance of this Local Authority so far I may yet need to approach the Local Government Ombudsman to address this- again another process which takes months). 

-I made an official complaint to the LA regarding the head teachers actions and I received a response from the saying they had no power to do anything about my concerns but were aware the head of SEND was working to improve the situation. 

-I have raised two qualifying complaints with Ofsted in the hope this would trigger an emergency inspection. Sadly it did not but they have informed me they will keep the information on file for the next evidence based inspection. (Another process which took several months to get a response- both complaints took over 60 working days for them to get back to me- the time-frame for this should be 30 working days).

-In March 2017 our case went to First-Tier Tribunal. Again this experiance was not a good one.

Before we even spoke a word we were threatened with an order of costs should we push ahead with the case, the judge did not take his time to introduce himself, he was allowing the school to be represented by their barrister and solicitor; despite it being ordered twice by the tribunal service that this should not happen. It had also been ordered that the solicitor was not to take notes, yet the judge stated that “if the solicitor was to take out a pen and start writing notes everyone in the room would pretend they had not seen her doing so”. 

Our barrister was out of her depth and her expertise was not in education. However, this was the best representation we could afford. I had been waiting to be represented by a pro-Bono barrister yet although I was accepted onto the scheme nobody could be found in time.

In comparison, the school had access to a top education specialist lawyer from 11KB in London and their solicitor funded by the tax payer.; and we soon realised if we pushed on it would not have been a fair hearing.

There was no tribunal clerk to explain the process etc (we were later told the clerk had been stuck in traffic for several hours). On top of this the venue for the hearing had been changed less than 24 hours before the hearing.

This hearing had also been due to take place 2 weeks before and less than 24 hours before that was cancelled due to the fact the tribunal service could not find a panel member to sit alongside the judge.

This caused us a great deal of stress as we then were faced with having to pay our barristers fees twice if we still wanted representation (because the hearing was cancelled less than 24 hours before it was due to happen the barrister still required her fee's).

We had hoped not to need to be represented but as the school kept pushing for both their top barrister and lawyer to be present we felt we needed to have legal represetation. 

On the day our barrister was left concerned over the Judges comments and attitute towards us and stated it would be an uphill battle against him. We were treated as the criminals, it was not a fair hearing at all.

We were terrified we may lose and if we did our barrister said this could cost us several thousands of pounds and we would need to pay for both the barrister and solicitor's time and for the court costs. The risk was too much for us to bare and therefore we felt forced into an out of court agreement which resulted in nobody being held accountable for the illegal behaviour of the school.

Justice was not done and we heard the head teacher laughing as we left the courts...it was very tough to take.

This was all despite the fact our legal advisor at Coram Children's legal centre and our barrister felt we had a very strong case and good evidence. 

Additionally, running upto the hearing gathering evidence from other professionals proved impossible to support my case.

I approached the head of SEND, the SEND case worker for my child and the Advisory Teacher (who in particular has worked alongside our family for a number of years). 

I asked all three professionals to attend the hearing as witnesses and all three stated after speaking with their managers that they could not attend as "they could not be seen to professionally challenge the head teacher of a maintained school".

It was frightening and ironic how similar their responses to me were.

-After weeks of feeling very low due to the injustice of this experiance I wrote a letter of complaint to the  President of the Education, Health and Social Care Chamber. Again after weeks of waiting I was sent a letter saying how the tribunal service were grateful for my letter and  that no action would be taken against the Judge.  

However,  I was informed my complaint did raise questions over the best practice of judges and that future discussions would take place to establish if future training needed to be imporved upon.

-Finally, I made a referral to the National College of Teaching and Leadership (an exective agency of the DFE) in May 2017. This was not easy as the documentation and detail required is extensive.

This triggered an investigation over the head teachers misconduct. I was hopeful we would be supported by the NCTL to bring this man to justice and remove him from the teaching profession to prevent him doing this again.

Yet, after many more months of waiting I was informed in Late September 2017 that the decision panel had decided not to take this case forward to a Professional Conduct Hearing.

The NCTL's rational for not taking this case forwards cause me great concern (for example; the NCTL appear to take the head teacher's word for his actions and a lack of regard for evidence).

I then asked how I could appeal this decison. After waiting 2 weeks for a response I was informed there is no right of appeal for referrers. I was devistated. Yet I refused to give up there.

I have since contacted The Education Law Advice Line. They were shocked to realise that there is no right of appeal. However they informed me of my right to seek legal advice and that this may be a case that could go to Judicial Review.

I have been able to find a solicitor at Simpson Miller who is willing to look over all of the evidence. However his fees are £200 + VAT per hour. He advised me it would take him around 5 hours to read through the documents and prepare a pre-action letter.

I have also been told that we need to move quickly if this case is to go to Judical Review (all needs to be completed within 3 months since the decision being made by the NCTL).

He advised he would need me to pay the money into a holding  account before he can begin looking into our case.  

The aim of going to Judicial Review is to encourage the National College of Teaching and Leadership to reconsider the evidence to take the head master to a professional conduct panel for acting illegally by falsifying registration records and excluding my child unlawfully.

It is my hope that if I can do this successfully it will set a precedent to all other schools, that the individuals who use unlawful/illegal exclusions will be held accountable.

I hope this  campaign will start the ball rolling to promote a real culture change for vulnerable students.

This leaves us very little time to try and raise the funds ourselves and this is why I have created this Go-Fund-Me advert as this really is the only option left available to us to try and get Justice 4 Jack and all other children this has happened to or may happen to.

It is my hope that if we can get our case to high court and win/or not that this would create a lot of publicity over this hidden, widescale issue.

Too many parents are being forced to give up their fight for justice, either through exhaustion, lack of resources, lack of knowledge that this behaviour is illegal or a combination of all these things.

I have managed to come so far and want to  continue this for all of those who have suffered and been left voiceless and broken by this complex system.

Please help me by giving whatever you can so that we can continue this fight for justice and to stop illegal exclusions from happening.

*Please note that any funds left available will be sent to IPSEA, So-Sen and Ambitious About Autism to help them carry on with there fantastic campaign work and to help them support families.

I will keep everyone posted as to how we are doing along the way....let’s get Justice4Jack!

Thank you for reading, Zoe :)

Organizer

Zoe Louise
Organizer
England

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