Letter to parents re: erroneous Sentinel headline

Dear Parent/Guardian,

You may have noticed a very unfortunate headline in this week’s Roe Valley Sentinel. I cannot overstate the anger and dismay the school feels at this particular story, the heading in particular. Students and staff are equally outraged by the impression given. I would make the following points;

• The paper did not do us the courtesy of asking for a comment concerning the PSNI statistics. Bald statistics mean nothing unless they are given a context. In this respect the headline is misleading at best and scurrilous at worst, the kind of thing we show our Year 11 Media class as an example of bad journalism.
• The PSNI website is very clear in explaining the figures it released regarding this matter; I quote;

  “the tables provided by the PSNI’s Central Statistic Unit below which detail recorded offences where location information indicates the offence to have taken place at, or near, a school. Please note incidents may not necessarily have occurred on school premises. Please also note the incidents may have occurred outside school hours including weekends and holidays and may not necessarily have involved pupils or staff.”
  It will be obvious to all that this paints a very different picture to the one portrayed by the Sentinel’s heading. The ten offences mentioned in their report as having occurred on the High School’s grounds may have actually no connection with the High School, may have involved persons who have nothing to do with the school, may have occurred in the areas surrounding the school such as the Backburn Path or Line areas and may have occurred during school holidays or at weekends! We have actually very few incidences of violent behaviour, as is seen by our low rates of suspension.

• As many of you are aware, the school has a particularly positive and close relationship with the PSNI; a community officer sits on our Multi-Agency Support Team meetings on a monthly basis as we work together to improve the lives of our vulnerable young people. PSNI officers are in the school quite often, indeed this very morning a constable addressed assembly on the matter of firework safety. It is because of this close working relationship that we report instances of anti-social behaviour to the PSNI. A headline and article like the one published in the Sentinel gives a totally negative spin upon something we are proud of as part of the culture of cooperation between the school and the police.

The Sentinel article is plainly misleading. We would want you to know that the School has demanded that the paper redress the horrible impression that this headline creates and publishes a corrective piece as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

D Dunlop, Head-teacher

D Rathfield, Chair of Governors