If any of us were that headteacher I think most of us would respond the same: *’Yeah, alright. That seems fair enough’*
They shouldn’t even have the option of resigning, the teachers and police directly involved should be looking at potential prison time, and the headteacher should be sacked at the very least (unless they were supposed to be informed/involved in the process and weren’t).
“Child Q” why does this make me cringe. The name, not the event.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. The headteacher isn’t entirely wrong and this feels more like a distraction to avoid the real culprits getting the full focus. Unless the headteacher specifically requested this treatment be done then their actions aren’t the problem.
This event is a failure by the police involved and the police in general. It is furthermore a failure by our government and MPs to have rules and laws that lead to this to happen. The headteacher was following the rules set out by the police and government.
Could the headteacher have questioned the police doing what they did? Sure. Could he have tried to meddle? Sure. Would anyone here genuinely risk their job to speak out against the police in the heat of the moment with no one to back you up? Not likely as many of us as we’d hope.
If the headteacher being obedient to the police is enough to lose their job then police reform needs an emergency treatment with action immediately.
If this doesn’t cost you your job what will?
So much hand wringing in the comments – what is the role of a head teacher if not to safeguard the wellbeing of the students?
My limited understanding is that school staff act in *loco parents* during school day. Definitely their role to protect any child from way OTT police procedure*?*
Even the far more common *stop & search* doesn’t allow for *strip* searching without fully protecting the individual’s rights!
If the teacher has to be asked to resign, then they didn’t do anything wrong to get sacked, gross misconduct hasn’t been reached.
​
Blame still lies with the police, or do we hold everyone accountable for failure? In that case, we can blame the local council, and the mayor as well, considering the employers would be the local council.
Many are acting like this is the only incident of a strip search ever being conducted on a child.
In fact – in only Hackney and in only the period of 2020-21 there were 25 children under 18 strip searched. That means UK wide this happens hundreds of times a year, if not thousands so that suggests to me that this was standard practice and it’s the law that needs to be changed to avoid it in future, not an arbitrary display of heavy handedness in one specific case which has happened to draw attention due to media promotion. You can’t just respond to everything with “JAIL FOR EVERYONE”
“Over the same period, 25 children under the age of 18 were subject of ‘further searches’. 19 were male and 18 were handcuffed during the process. The reasons for search primarily related to suspicions about drugs (20), followed by weapons (4) and stolen property (1). 22 (88%) of the searches were negative with an outcome of no further action recorded in 20 (80%) of the cases”
Everyone involved in this should freaking resign this was insanely discussing it should not have happened and should never happen again
Full tin foil hat time. I don’t think this story is all it’s made up to be.
10 comments
If any of us were that headteacher I think most of us would respond the same: *’Yeah, alright. That seems fair enough’*
They shouldn’t even have the option of resigning, the teachers and police directly involved should be looking at potential prison time, and the headteacher should be sacked at the very least (unless they were supposed to be informed/involved in the process and weren’t).
“Child Q” why does this make me cringe. The name, not the event.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. The headteacher isn’t entirely wrong and this feels more like a distraction to avoid the real culprits getting the full focus. Unless the headteacher specifically requested this treatment be done then their actions aren’t the problem.
This event is a failure by the police involved and the police in general. It is furthermore a failure by our government and MPs to have rules and laws that lead to this to happen. The headteacher was following the rules set out by the police and government.
Could the headteacher have questioned the police doing what they did? Sure. Could he have tried to meddle? Sure. Would anyone here genuinely risk their job to speak out against the police in the heat of the moment with no one to back you up? Not likely as many of us as we’d hope.
If the headteacher being obedient to the police is enough to lose their job then police reform needs an emergency treatment with action immediately.
If this doesn’t cost you your job what will?
So much hand wringing in the comments – what is the role of a head teacher if not to safeguard the wellbeing of the students?
My limited understanding is that school staff act in *loco parents* during school day. Definitely their role to protect any child from way OTT police procedure*?*
Even the far more common *stop & search* doesn’t allow for *strip* searching without fully protecting the individual’s rights!
If the teacher has to be asked to resign, then they didn’t do anything wrong to get sacked, gross misconduct hasn’t been reached.
​
Blame still lies with the police, or do we hold everyone accountable for failure? In that case, we can blame the local council, and the mayor as well, considering the employers would be the local council.
Many are acting like this is the only incident of a strip search ever being conducted on a child.
In fact – in only Hackney and in only the period of 2020-21 there were 25 children under 18 strip searched. That means UK wide this happens hundreds of times a year, if not thousands so that suggests to me that this was standard practice and it’s the law that needs to be changed to avoid it in future, not an arbitrary display of heavy handedness in one specific case which has happened to draw attention due to media promotion. You can’t just respond to everything with “JAIL FOR EVERYONE”
“Over the same period, 25 children under the age of 18 were subject of ‘further searches’. 19 were male and 18 were handcuffed during the process. The reasons for search primarily related to suspicions about drugs (20), followed by weapons (4) and stolen property (1). 22 (88%) of the searches were negative with an outcome of no further action recorded in 20 (80%) of the cases”
Everyone involved in this should freaking resign this was insanely discussing it should not have happened and should never happen again
Full tin foil hat time. I don’t think this story is all it’s made up to be.