Be careful who you allow to get close to you...

‘People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used.  The reason why the world is in chaos, is because things are being loved, people are being used…’ - Anonymous.

In January 2017, I sued a former teacher and NUT member. The NUT gave a public and unequivocal apology to me and paid substantial legal costs on behalf of their NUT member. As I have included in this blog previously, just two months after this took place, the NUT referred me to the NCTL. This was fifteen months after I had resigned from my post as head teacher and over ten years since some teachers had left the school. 

At this point in time I am unable to give the exact details on this referral.  However, many questions will need to be raised and answers given. 

I have now become aware that a prominent member of the NUT had emailed that I ‘had been next on the list for a while…’ This was written in early November 2015. What ‘list’ was this? Who had come before me on ‘the list’?  Who came after me on ‘the list’? Does ‘the list’ still exist? 

MP, Chris Skidmore, when raising my case with Minister of State for Schools, Nick Gibb, asked in Parliament ‘how are teachers lives made a misery with repeated referrals by organisations who have a vested interest?’

On learning that another referral had been made against me, I was and still am asked on many occasions ‘Why is this still going?’ and ‘I thought this had already been dealt with?’

The Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) referral against me was dismissed. I made a successful defamation claim against a National Union of Teachers (NUT) member. I have now been referred for a second time to the NCTL, this time by the NUT. 

In the referral made by B&NES against me in 2016 to the NCTL, I was honest and clear about my wonderful time at Trinity over a period of ten years. Nobody can deny what a happy and thriving school it was for the children, many of whom came from other schools in their droves. How did it become an outstanding, first choice school with a waiting list? The success of the children and the facts cannot be denied.

Many people involved in the B&NES referral were part of secret Facebook groups.  Before I resigned from my post as head teacher, it felt like I was facing persecution and fighting shadows in the dark. There is something about social media that encourages those behind the keyboards to go along with the crowd, or as some may put it, ‘develop a pack mentality’. I have learned that in the vast majority of cases, even when you disagree with what is being written, group thinking takes over and individuals are scared to disagree. Some are dragged along with the tide or even unaware that they are being used.

It is somewhat ironic that the quote that begins my blog today has been sourced from ‘Anonymous’…

After the B&NES case had been dismissed, it appears that those with a ‘vested interest’ are still pursuing their cause. I will pursue my cause, too. My cause is, and always has been, to seek justice and the truth for the children.

‘All the flowers that you planted mama, in the backyard, all died and went away…’ - Sinead O’Connor

A few years ago, I decided to visit one of the houses that I grew up in as a young child. Note, I say, one of the houses. We moved regularly as a family and sometimes within footsteps of our last home, literally. My parents saved on removal van costs and I distinctly remember all of us carrying our belongings to our next humble abode, sofa on backs included!

One of the houses I have distinct and happy memories of as a child growing up in Whitehall in Bristol, is the one I revisited with one of my deputies when I was a head teacher. It was a surreal and memorable experience.

I had just been to visit my former primary school and decided it would be a good time to revisit childhood memories and knock on the door of where I once used to live. The house was exactly the same. A well-worn, wooden porch as an entrance and small bay windows, in desperate need of a lick of paint. Excitedly I ran into the house, let in by a kind lady who had no idea who I was, until I babbled somewhat incessantly about how I would love to bring my three sisters to see our old family house.  

Memories of Sunday night Top 40 chart recordings on the black cassette player, smells of earthy and spicy curries bubbling away on the stove, not to mention the TV rental man coming to repossess the television during an episode of ‘The Bionic Woman’ while my mum was ‘at the bingo’ came flooding back. My sister, a successful and strong lawyer, recalls this incident even today. 

Standing in the dining room of what was now another family’s home, I remembered the times mum made us recite and learn everything from our school exercise books and then tested us. She wanted all of us to be strong and independent women with a good education to fall back on. 

My younger sister was the only pupil in her secondary school who did not get to go on the school trip to Germany, yet she came first in the German exams year after year. Financially, my parents simply could not afford to let her go. She is now an aerospace engineer who travels all over the world as part of her work, and is occasionally reminded of her German classes when she hears Nena’s 99 Red Balloons…

‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’ - Nelson Mandela

As a teacher, I have often looked back and wondered why our childhood school did not do more to open doors of opportunity to those from less fortunate backgrounds. Something, I later vowed to do for all children in my care as a head teacher in Radstock. All children, regardless of where they come from should have the very best chance in life to succeed. As a teacher, I have always believed that schools play a fundamental role in giving every child the very best.

You can come far in life but you NEVER forget where you came from - Take That would be proud(!) and that song has deeper meaning than some might think. I sang it loudly and proudly when I was at Trinity, along with hundreds of happy, beaming and confident children.

When I revisited my childhood home on that day, I stood in what used to be our living room, and looking out through the back windows my eyes fell upon the flowers that mum had planted some thirty or so years ago. And just like those happy, beaming children, the bright, yellow daffodils shone back at me.

I smiled at the daffodils through tears, wishing that mum had not died so suddenly at the young age of forty-eight. One of my sisters was just four at the time. This week she celebrates turning thirty-one. Both my mum and dad would have been proud of her. They would have been proud of all of us.

As immigrants to this country our parents faced discrimination and prejudice, yet they worked hard, were good, honest and determined people. I am proud to say their positive, can-do attitude to life rubbed off on all of us, their children.

‘It is at times like this you realise it is not the house that you miss but the childhood you left behind’ - Pepe Hart