Bitterne Park School Exposed

Introduction

This page doesn’t go into our beliefs over what drove Amber to take her own life. As Amber’s father I feel compelled to write, instead, about our perspective of the treatment our family has received from Bitterne Park School following Amber’s death. I think it needs to be said, not just because I need to express my feelings on the subject - but because I know others have been treated the same way. Perhaps someone else in the future will find this page, and take some comfort from knowing that they are not alone.

The role

The head of Bitterne Park School, Mrs Susan Trigger, was the official representative of the school and investigator into what happened with Amber.

During this process, she communicated her findings with the NHS Rapid Response Team (which feeds back to the Child Death Overview Panel and the Coroner) and OFSTED. We did not learn about these communication until months afterwards - in fact we are pretty sure that Mrs Trigger has made statements fully expecting us to never know they were made, because they were behind closed doors between organisations. However, we submitted Subject Access Requests with these organisations under the Freedom of Information Act, and were shocked to see how Mrs Trigger, supposedly a responsible official investigator on behalf of the school, has apparently distorted the truth and misrepresented the situation, in my opinion to further her agenda of protecting Bitterne Park School’s image and reputation by smearing us as Amber’s parents. We have written to the parties concerned to correct some of the misinformation presented to them, as detailed below.

(It is also rather sad that the internal communication from the head at the school doesn't refer to Amber by name, but "A" or "AJ" or "the AJ inquest" which is rather horribly depersonalising considering that this was a child being discussed rather than an asset, but I digress).

As part of Mrs Trigger’s role she sat on the NHS panels, and - without our knowledge or permission - received details of our family’s entire medical history.

The notes

14th September - NHS rapid response panel minutes

“ST [Susan Trigger] mentioned Amber’s mother has been returning to school every day angry and trying to find answers”

Suzanne went into the school once a few days after Amber died, Friday 4th September. This was the day that Amber was due to return to the school. Suzanne was - I think understandably - very upset and didn’t know why she went. She ended up in reception in tears, and said that she didn’t know why she was there, only that Amber should be. I received a call from the school, picked her up and brought her home. She was upset, but not angry. Every other time that either of us has attended the school has been by appointment with the senior management team - during which the school’s true intentions were slowly becoming apparent; not an interest in finding out what happened, but defending the school’s image. The school’s minutes from these meetings record “Mr & Mrs J were frustrated & a little emotional but not venting/provoking”. I note here that we were refused access to these minutes by the school until we submitted a Subject Access Request explicitly requesting them.

Why Mrs Trigger chose to portray our interaction with the school in an entirely different way at the rapid response meeting still baffles us - but it does appear to be a manipulation of the truth for the purpose of discrediting Amber’s mum.

7th October 2015 - from summary of discussion between Mrs Trigger and OFSTED inspector

“The school has since found out that the girl’s mother was known to mental health services and had been under their care since 2008.”

Suzanne was suspected of having postnatal depression in 2008 following the birth of our son, saw her GP and was prescribed antidepressants. This is nothing like being under the care of mental health services since 2008, and yet was reported by Mrs Trigger to Ofsted as such. Yet another misrepresentation.

29th April 2016 - extracts from phone conversation between Mrs Trigger and OFSTED

“The headteacher explained that there had been concerns about Amber and (Amber’s sister) in the past. The children accessed inappropriate images on-line outside of school when (Amber's sister) was in Yr 6 and AJ [Amber Jackson] in Yr 8”

This is another misrepresentation.

Our younger daughter was contacted and potentially 'groomed' by someone on the social media platform, Facebook. These messages contained one inappropriate image from the individual concerned. They were discovered by Suzanne some hours after the first message was sent; our daughter’s Facebook account was registered with Suzanne’s email address and she received notifications of message activity. Our response to this was to contact her school (Bitterne Park Primary) as there were students at this school who had also 'friended' this individual. Suzanne spoke to the Executive Head of that school and asked at this meeting for the senior school (Bitterne Park School) to be informed, as she had recognised other student names in this individual's friends list. We contacted the police and gave them all relevant information.

Amber was not in any way involved with this - she was away from home on a trip at the time, not contacted by the individual, and had no knowledge of what had happened. However, Mrs Trigger has reported this to Ofsted as both children accessing inappropriate images outside of school (very quick to point that part out, I note), which is completely wrong.

29th April 2016 - extracts from phone conversation between Mrs Trigger and OFSTED

“She reported that counselling had raised questions about the quality of family life and the parents spending time with Amber”

We have Amber’s counsellor’s notes and there is nothing about quality of family life beyond the normal concerns of a teenage girl. The counsellor was called as a witness at Amber’s inquest and questioned, and quality of family life was not raised. The coroner recorded that “Amber was a much-loved member of a secure family” which I wholeheartedly agree with. If love alone could have kept our Amber alive, she would have lived forever. We know how close we were as a family and how much we spent time together, but Mrs Trigger has recorded the opposite with OFSTED.

Why?

All of this paints a picture. Charitably, you could argue that this is the work of an inept school investigation that fails to accurately investigate and report facts (in my opinion - if this is the case - Mrs Trigger really should not be fulfilling that role, as it feeds into the Child Death Overview Panel, the Coroner’s reports and OFSTED). But we rather suspect the motive lies elsewhere.

The sad thing is that we are not the only family to experience this. We have been contacted by other families that have received similar treatment, and the theme appears to be the same - the head’s apparent manipulation of the truth, and senior management’s defensiveness to protect the image of the school, which in my opinion was prioritised above an impartial assessment of the situation.

Amber's sister's return to school

Perhaps we should have seen this sooner. Indeed, shortly after Amber died, we were advised to return Amber’s sister to school to re-establish her routine. It did not go well, and she was so unhappy with her experiences that she, herself, wanted to change school (not an easy thing for any teen to do - pretty terrifying, in fact).

Veiled threat

We tendered a transfer request form, citing concerns about bullying and personal safety. In a letter 4th November 2015 - considering that we had lost our daughter just two months prior - Mrs Trigger wrote, “Can I record that making a false derogatory statement naming Bitterne Park School on an official form /record could be seen as slander and libelous”.

This form of response to grieving parents is pretty low. We were shocked. The only advantage we have is that by speaking the truth, as above, we can be sure that no legal action can come our way - and in fact we would very much welcome pursuing the details of our treatment as a family by the school in a court of law, where we can lay out evidence from Amber’s Facebook messages, and communications we have exchanged with the school regarding incidents affecting our daughters.

As an aside, Mrs Trigger's letter to us was CC'd to a number of official bodies (a scare tactic?), and my requests to have their contact details in order to respond in kind went unanswered by the school - until I found contacts for their superiors, and suggested that I could send our response via them.

Transfer

The school then went on to withhold the transfer request form from the LEA for three weeks, despite a place being open at another school for her. Our regular communication with Southampton Local Education Authority also revealed their frustration - they stated that the school had a duty to stamp the form and submit it, or submit it unstamped with a covering letter explaining why. We communicated this to the school. Bitterne Park School continued to withhold the form. The head of admissions eventually agreed to break their normal transfer process and allow us to tender a form with them directly at their offices - which we did - and the transfer went ahead.

Re-settling

One of our major regrets is that we sent our children to Bitterne Park School. I am pleased to report that Amber’s sister is much happier at her new school, and is being superbly supported by their outstanding pastoral care.

I would note however, Mrs Trigger’s assertions that Amber's sister “... had potential to achieve highly, which may have been compromised by attending a school that has less good GCSE results”. Despite this being a grossly unfair assertion about our daughter's new school, her emotional wellbeing is our priority. Academic performance can (and should) take a back seat in this situation, and not be the focus.

Complaint

When we tendered a complaint about our treatment, the school initially refused to accept it because we hadn’t filled in a covering complaints process form (surely in this situation some petty bureaucracy could have been put aside?). The response contained what I would consider another veiled threat from Mrs Trigger, regarding putting information out into the public domain. “I hope you note that the school has not shared the records ...”, she wrote in her reply 16th March 2016. In my opinion these are hardly the actions of the professional investigating officer that she claims to be.

Summary

There is more - so much more; how Amber’s death was announced in assembly, “she would want you to keep your attendance up”, a video created by a pupil with Amber’s face edited over a character being hit by a train, her name excluded from the list of pupils on the leavers hoody, pupils in the street openly and loudly describing Amber’s death as “natural selection” and “deserved”, "train tracks" being whispered into her sister's ear until she cried, us having to chase Amber's Duke of Edinburgh certificate and workbooks (sadly destroyed) - but I think that the above is sufficient to explain the nature of our declining relationship with the school.

I can only hope that we can correct with the affected organisations the misrepresentations communicated to them by Mrs Trigger.

It has been surprising, upsetting and disappointing. We are not looking for someone to blame, but for explainations. It must be possible to learn from this tragedy. All we wanted was to openly share and communicate in order to better understand Amber’s time at school - but perhaps we were naive to expect this.

Tony Jackson

Update

We brought up the Ofsted data at a meeting with the chair of governors, who stated that, “She [Trigger] did not recognise them as something that she had said. They are not necessarily factual.” The chair wrote to us in September 2016 and assured us that he would communicate with Ofsted over this matter; however five months have elapsed since then, and no such communication has been received by Ofsted.

We are forced to wade through horrible bureaucracy to correct this, whilst mourning the loss of our daughter. It is beyond cruel.