Thanks freedigitalphotos.net

My assistant head says this ALL the time. And most of the time she’s overreacting. I know that things have changed from the days when kids ran around and bumped their heads and got up and carried on, but the world is changing and it’s more dangerous than it used to be. I don’t see anything wrong with looking after our children; and so generally I agree with the increasingly restrictive rules they place on us each day.

Until a couple of weeks ago. I was talking to my class of 20 children, when one of the parents whose child has been unwell came to speak to me, with said sickly child in tow. I invited them into the classroom, sat the sicky child down with a book, set the rest of the class about painting, and chatted briefly with the parent. Five minutes had gone by, when the bursar came charging in to tell me that I was ‘violating’ code of practice. I was now in the sole prescence of 21 children, which went against the strict 20:1 children:teacher ratio. It didn’t matter that her mother was there, or that the child was within reaching distance of two adults. No, no. Common sense was not to prevail here. This tiny, ill child was putting us all at risk.

“What shall  I do?” I asked the bursar.

“Well, she’ll have to go in the corrdior,” she replied. So the the tiny, ill child was sent to sit on her own, in the dark corridor on her own; (apparently that’s ok, it’s only when she’s being monitored along with 20 other children that she’s in danger, she’s much safer alone with no supervision), while I finished speaking to her mother.

This time, something has definitely gone mad. It was me.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 9:36 am and is filed under Health and Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.