SEND Nightmare Before Christmas in Bristol

Belgrave School? Don’t let our SEND nightmare before Christmas become yours. Lying school leaders are a safeguarding issue

Opinion piece based on a real incident

I believe I can confidently say that all parents and carers of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) want regarding education, is that those families who wish for their child to go to school can do so.

That when they are in school they are safe.

That when they are in school they are accessing learning.

That the school is governed in the best interests of the pupils and school community.

And, that the safeguarding process is one that is, well, safe and run by competent people with honesty and integrity.

These days, that basic right for all children – and all children means those with Send as well – seems difficult to achieve.

What Send families do not want to do is contact schools about issues. And in extension, Send families do not want to push that onto complaints. It’s tiring, it’s stressful and it makes no one happy.

As a parent whose child’s school appears to be in utter disarray, I have never sent so many emails to one setting in my life. And this is impressive having been forced in the past to take a secondary mainstream in Bristol and an all-through autism specialist in South Gloucestershire to Sendist for Disability Discrimination. With winning results.

Parents are often vilified for complaining to schools, but the fact is – we really don’t want to. We just want schools to get on with their job of educating children.

Parents can follow all the correct processes, but when a school is run unlawfully, unsafely or haphazardly – and this affects the well-being of pupils – then complaints will come.

I have already written of our current experiences of our independent specialist school that descended into chaos at the end of the summer term: https://chopsybaby.com/magazine/belgrave-school-education-company-owners-doubles-take-from-the-la/

Unfortunately, things have not really improved and it’s at the point I feel it has become a safeguarding concern.

I’m not entirely sure who the current safeguarding officer at the school is because the most recent one is also leaving.

Throughout September, I received message after message from my distressed child on their way home from school. They said EHCP interventions were failing to take place. Bullying was continuing to happen. Amongst those messages was clear evidence of increasing levels of anxiety which so many families know will eventually leave a child unable to attend full time.

It’s often called Emotionally Based School Avoidance. But there’s nothing emotional about it. Quite simply, it is barriers to education.

In the summer I had asked Bristol City Council for funding to be removed from Belgrave School and given to me in a personal budget so that I could pay for a competent Maths teacher to provide my child with 1-1 tuition. It just wasn’t working in school and being GCSE year, there is no more time for things to go wrong.

The council was fine with this. The school unsurprisingly was not.

When school incompetence started to really impact my child’s welfare, I asked the council if we could temporarily drop to a part time timetable. I indicated exactly what would be taking place in terms of learning on the days my child wasn’t in school.

The council was fine with this. The school was not.

Despite raising a part time timetable in a meeting that would take place in September 2025, the school ghosted the entire issue for months.

In the end weeks of the summer term, I discovered my child had been sat outside of Maths class with a functional skills book that they didn’t understand and was never marked. They were unable to access the GCSE curriculum. It was agreed that my child would do functional skills and would have someone to teach it to them.

But this was before the previous head walked out as well as the English lead.

Some days, my child would be in school and do nothing for hours.

An emergency Annual Review looking at the Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) had taken place on the last day of the summer term with the council in attendance. The result of this was a timetable with the EHCP interventions included.

As with many works of fiction, it did not have a satisfying ending.

A meeting between school and me took place on Monday 22 September 2025. It wasn’t great.

It was led by the Interim Head of Belgrave School and Melrose Education Ltd’s Schools’ Director, Company Deputy Strategic Safeguarding Lead and Prevent Lead.

The Interim Head and Melrose representative tried hard to persuade me to not allow my child to come into the meeting to give their point of view. My child later reported that they felt pressured by the Interim Head not to attend the meeting when they were finally collected.

My child had very much wanted to be in the meeting to express their view.

I heard after the meeting that the Local Authority had been invited but not allowed in when the meeting took place.

The meeting included my request for a part time timetable which had already been approved by Bristol City Council.

The Melrose rep made it very clear that Melrose Educaton Ltd did not like being talked about publicly. Despite taking millions of pounds of funding from the High Needs Budget of local authorities, they do not want any scrutiny.

The first thing I did after leaving the school meeting was to put an FOI into the local authority to find out just how much they were paying for such a shoddy quality of education. An unwillingness to be transparent usually shows there’s something to hide.

I already had safeguarding concerns about how the school was being run and had no qualms informing Bristol City Council of them.

But one specific incident, in my opinion, shows them to be dangerously dishonest and not good enough with safeguarding even now.

In the meeting of 22 September 2025, I thought it was to discuss my child’s difficulties in school. It was really about Melrose protecting its reputation. I suspect they were not keen about on me finding other families on Twitter who had also had extremely negative experiences of Melrose after they had bought their child’s school.

The Melrose rep said to me in the meeting that we “need to find a way to work together.”

I had done nothing but try to work with the school. At this point, it felt like working together is sacrificing my child’s GCSEs and mental health for the greed of the school.

I told Melrose “I’ve never sent so many emails to a school in such a short amount of time.”

During the meeting, the school said: “We ask that you come to us and communicate…”

When we finally made it onto the subject of Maths, an incident in school was raised by me and my child.

My child had come home on Friday 12 September 2025 quite distressed. They told me they believed that a subject teacher had called them “stupid” and had looked right at them when using this word.

I was not there. I cannot categorically say whether they did or did not say. But I believed something had been said which upset my child whether deliberately or accidentally. The school at this point was becoming excessively useless at communicating with autistic pupils.

When asked by the Interim Head how Maths was going, including with the interventions, my child said it was “non existent”.

When Melrose asked my child how they could improve things, my child said “teach me maths”.

They said: “I had a lesson with xxxx once and xxxx looked at me like I was just stupid. I didn’t like that.”

I knew straight away the incident that was being referred to. We had not raised it previously because it would be a case of he said she said. My child was clear with me that they did not think school believed anything they said. As no further interventions had taken place with this teacher, I let the issue for the time being drop.

During the September meeting, I asked for more details around the ongoing Maths teaching issues.

Me: “Just to clarify, which Maths teacher is she being taught the functional skills from, because back before the summer I was told she was going to have a specific teacher, a qualified teacher to teach that to her. So that’s no longer happening then?”

Interim Head: “So she has XXXX as her class teacher who is responsible for the progress of all the children in her class. She also has a 1-1 session with XXXX who is also a qualified maths teacher.

Me: “She only had one session with him and he called her stupid.”

Interim Head: No that’s not what she just said.

The Interim Head and Melrose representative both fully laughed out loud.

Me “But she doesn’t want to tell you that’s why. See this is what the problem is, you want me to tell stuff and then straight away I tell you something and you’re like no, no, no that didn’t happen.”

Interim Head: “She said the way he looked at her…”

Me: “He said the word stupid. But she doesn’t want to tell you because she’s scared.”

Interim Head:: “Okay. We can investigate that and we will go away and investigate that and will come back with an answer for you on that one. And we will.”

The school did not come back to me. Not only did they not come back to me, they deliberately avoided any requests for updates on all school related issues, including ones from that meeting.

In a phase transfer Annual Review held on on 21 November 2025, Bristol City Council wanted further details around how Maths was going.

It was here that Melrose lied directly to me, to my child and to Bristol City Council.

Interim Head: “She accessed one of her sessions with one of the qualified maths teachers and then she hasn’t been in since.”

Me: “Is that the one who called her stupid?”

Interim Head: “In the meeting that we had Jen, XXXX said that the way that she felt made her feel stupid is what she said in the meeting.”

Me: “Yes because she was too scared. XXXX can tell you right now what was said to her.”

My Child: “He called me stupid and that’s what made me feel stupid because he admitted that I was stupid.”

Interim Head: “Ok that this is the first time we’re hearing that.”

Me: “That is such a lie because this was brought up in the last meeting and you said you would go away and investigate it and you never did. This is lies.”

On 27 November 2025, Months after raising the issue with school, I received an email from the Interim Head.

It said: ‘I have now spoken with both XXXX and XXXX, along with the additional information you provided. XXXX perception of the session was that it was very positive. He does not recall the interaction being anything other than constructive and described XXXX as engaged and hardworking. XXXX also confirmed that XXXX created a plan following the session to support XXXX with the gaps in knowledge that were identified.

‘As we have discussed, a plan is now in place moving forward. XXXX will be supported by XXXX and will no longer attend 1:1 sessions with XXXX. This arrangement aims to ensure XXXX feels fully supported and comfortable while continuing to make progress.

‘With these findings and the agreed plan in place, we hope this situation is now resolved. Should you require any clarification, please feel free to contact me.’

This is just one small example of the GCSE year nightmare we are having. You don’t get to be in charge of vulnerable learners and lie both to families and Bristol City Council. This is even more so considering a pupil raised a concern about a teacher.

This is not even about teachers. Things can be misconstrued. Mistakes can happen. But the issue is when school leaders tell lies. It’s very much my opinion that the school is an unsafe environment not just for the pupils but staff as well.

How much more is being lied about? And how much and what is being covered up? Not just at our Bristol school, but other Melrose schools owned across the country.

People who lie about safeguarding issues should never be allowed to work with children or vulnerable adults again.

Because Belgrave School is an independent school, the word ‘school’ doing a lot of heavy lifting for ‘business’ these days, it is inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI).

The school was last inspected by them on 09 to 11 September 2025.

I know I am not the only person whose child was struggling badly under the Melrose model and who was looking for alternative placements. So there was more than a few parents utterly baffled by the ISI report. Particularly considering the level of bullying that was taking place and the fact my child wandered around doing not very much right under the noses of the inspectors.

But then, reports are out of date the second the ink dries and the pretence and performance by schools for the visit dies out the second inspectors are waved off on their merry way.

The whole system is a farce.

Some of the comments below were made by the inspectors. They appear not to put their names to the report like Ofsted inspectors. Not surprising considering the report is a work of fiction greater than the fairy tales they spin to Bristol City Council.

Next time, inspectors should have the courage of their convictions, so that children know who is undermining their lived experience. Experience that will be damaging to their long-term health and well-being.

‘A suitable complaints policy is available on the school’s website. Leaders implement this policy effectively. They respond appropriately to any concerns raised and in a timely manner and maintain clear records of any informal or formal complaints received.’

‘Careful consideration to the individual needs of pupils helps to remove any barriers to learning that
they might have.’

‘Relationships are positive and bullying incidents are rare.’

‘Staff focus on developing pupils’ academic and personal potential by removing any barriers so that pupils are ready, confident and able to learn. They take much care to nurture and support pupils so that they feel calm and comfortable at the school and develop their self-confidence and self-esteem.’

‘Safeguarding arrangements are effective. Leaders consider all pupils at the school to be vulnerable and take much care to help to ensure their safety and wellbeing. Directors provide meticulous oversight of the school’s safeguarding arrangements to ensure that the school implements a suitable and comprehensive safeguarding policy and procedures in line with current statutory guidance.’

The ISI report is under consideration for the Booker Prize.

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