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 was fairly easy for me to get them online last year.”
I also left a message on her mobile and got in touch with the business manager who was unable to tell me what documents were missing and seemed embarrassed by the head’s stance.
There was no response during the holidays.
At all.
As someone who suffers from anxiety, this had meant that my holiday had been clouded by worrying about PGL being in jeopardy and what mistakes I could possibly have made despite leading it successfully before. My family was worried at how withdrawn I was.
On the first day back after the holidays, I was ‘invited’ to a meeting with the head. It quickly became apparent that I had not omitted any documents and that the trip had never been in jeopardy.
No apology was issued.
I told her about responding to her ‘urgent’ message immediately and having had to response from her. She told me that she did not have to get in touch during holidays, even though she herself had sent me her email on the first day of holidays. Great consistency there…
When I mentioned my anxiety issues, she said this was “not her fault”: nice…
Subsequently, my organisation of the trip was questioned a couple more times. On one such occasion, she was forced to admit she was wrong.
Who acts like that? Was it genuine incompetence which led her to question my organisation? Mean-spiritedness? Gas-lighting?
For the record, the
trip was a great success.
Thus begun the previously mentioned pattern of sending passive-aggressive, often threatening missives just before weekends and holidays to let issues fester. An accusation that ironically she later used herself against my union. You couldn’t make it up…
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