the way back - nervous breakdown and all that

Last summer, I made a Subject Access Request to my previous school. There were a number of issues that I wanted to be sure about.  The first set of data I received was suspiciously minimal. Many documents that I remember were not included. So, I made another request.  This time, it took an age to arrive - the documents I had hoped for were still not included. And some of the intel related to two other individuals called Alex. I jest not.  Frustrated, I ended up making a complaint to the ICO about the way the school had dealt with the issue. The ICO is the  ‘UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.’ Here are extracts of the results of their investigation. ________________ Dear Alex, Thank you for raising data protection concerns about [the] School. (…) Subject access They received your first subject access request on 28 May 202...

I was going to stand up to my gaslighting, bullying, narcissistic head, but: Why bother? I was far too busy - what with the kids, hobbies, etc. She’d been horrible to me before and there was no way I was putting myself through that again - sod that; I was too scared; I didn’t want to make a scene; John and Celia said, "The ones who were victimised were just troublemakers anyway." I was far too much of an ambitious prick -wanting to ingratiate myself with her- to rock the boat; She’s got the establishment behind her, and you can’t take on the establishment - right? Surely things will get better - won’t they? Frankie said, "Imagine what she'd do to you!" I was way too much of a coward;  The bullied ones were way too political and loud; It was too late… (Après Alabaster Deplume)

On 08/04/19, at 15:49, the first Monday of half-term holidays, I received an email from the head. She started off by apologising for emailing at the start of the holidays. However, she then informed me that she urgently needed to speak to me about the Year 6 end of year residential trip - which I was leading.  Allegedly, there was documentation missing from the documents that I had given her, and I had put her in a position where she could not sign the trip off and send to the local authority for final authorisation. She made it clear that she expected that all information be gathered to comply with LA requirements before being passed to her. Patronisingly, she wrote that I should appreciate the urgency of this as I had first been asked for this information by the business manager in January. She added that I may even have put the trip in jeopardy.   At 16:35, I responded by email: “Please let me know which documents are missing. As far as I can remember, it...

Before leaving the school, I had an exchange of e-mails with my then line manager - who also happened to be the Mental Health Lead. Not that she ever did much for staff. Apart from an ineffective survey that was never acted upon. The emails were about how staff wellbeing had not been taken into account at the school. Below are the last two emails we sent each other.   ____________ Dear [Mental Health Lead], Thank you for taking the time to respond to my reflections in your capacity as both my line-manager and as the school Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead. I also appreciate your kind words at the end of your response. I agree that there may have been a miscommunication in relation to the staff survey that you organised, possibly due to my absence. I am pleased to hear that action was taken following it. I would be interested to know what this action involved. I concur that staff wellbeing issues are personal and varied. However, we also have to recognise patterns whe...

After my nervous breakdown of 07/11/19, which I hold the head to be responsible for, I was on sick leave for a long time. Far longer that needed as it would turn out, again due to the head making it difficult for me to return. Not because I was too ill, but because it was apparently so challenging for her to find time in her busy schedule to organise the back to work meetings.                      Almost as if she did not want me back... This can be discussed at a later date. On 04/12/19, I was invited for an Occupational Health Consultation - here is the report: OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH CONSULTATION REPORT Background Thank you for your management referral. I met with Mr Alex Gwinnett in clinic (...) on Wednesday, 4 December 2019. He attended alone and gave consent to the consultation. I spoke to the Head Teacher pre-consultation (...). No post-consultation phone call for reasons I explained on the phone to the Head Teacher. Current Issu...

I discovered today to my great surprise that I had omitted -thus far- to include the letter below. This is the letter that I sent to the Chair of Governors to 'officially' set whistleblowing procedures under way on 22/07 once I knew that certain members of staff who had remained when I left would not be targeted by the head. Reading through it again, I am still outraged that nothing came of this at all. It is a clear indictment of how a good school  had its sense of community crushed and a toxic culture established. The lack of any gesture, apart from washing its hands of the problem by passing it onto the council, in turn makes it an indictment of the Governing Body - showing little regard for staff being and SLT accountability. _______________ Dear [Chair of Governors] ,       I am writing to you to formally raise a whistleblowing concern relating to [the head]: specifically her  treatment of staff at [the school] and the toxic culture she has created there ....

This letter was sent to the newspaper that published the article set out in a previous post. There were a number of inaccuracies (some already mentioned in the footnotes of the post) that my fellow whistleblowers and I deemed necessary to address.                                                                                      ***                We would like to express our gratitude to the [ newspaper ] for revealing the toxic culture at [ the school ] to the wider public. In the interest of transparency, we would like to point out several factual inaccuracies put across by the Chair of Governors:  ·      Children on roll : It was stated that [ the school ] ...