Dundee City Council (that's my council by the way so don't I feel special) have shown themselves to be a bunch clueless half wits. It was bad enough when they were only doing so in the local press, but now word has spread to the
BBC.
The story is basically pretty straight forward. Pupils (and believe it or not parents too) at a Dundee primary school are violent and abusive towards staff. Staff complain, on an almost daily basis, to the council. The Council ignore the problem. Husband of Depute Head gets fed up with the lack of support from the Council and goes to the local paper. The Council suspends the Depute Head for going to the press. Amazing!!
The Council make some cracking comments in the BBC article towit:
It [the Council] has launched an investigation into the allegations, and said initial inquiries indicated some were untrue.
Meaning that some are true, including the fact (confimed by the police) that the police had to be called to a fight in the school amongst (wait for it...) some parents!
A council spokesman said: "The council is undertaking a thorough and professional investigation into all the allegations that have been made.
But only after the local press were involved, before that they ignored the problem for months.
The spokesman added that staff could report directly to the council any concerns they may have and it said complaints were always investigated.
Not true! Staff made numerous complaints to the Council (which were ignored) before they felt that they had no choice but to inform the press.
"The education department would like to reiterate that Sidlaw View is undertaking excellent work in an area of the city that suffers from a number of complex problems.
"The commitment and dedication of staff is reflected in increased levels of attainment in reading, writing and maths."
Well thanks for chipping in with that, but no one said there was a problem in that area. What they said was that pupils and parents were abusive and violent towards staff and you did nothing about it.
The question is now, with the everyone's attention focused on you, what are you going to do to fix a problem that should have been tacked months ago, not ignored. The Director of Education is on a huge salary, time she started earning it I say.