How opposite can you get

I must say I'm very proud how girlie A, despite what she had to endure at St Michaels school, did so amazingly well to settle in to her new school environment last year, if fact she settled in so well, so quickly that she was helping her classmates. I just got her report card out that she received last year in November, just 2 months after she started there, scoring consistently 1's and 2's for settling in and effort. That's really good going for a girl who had no confidence and seemed very nervous, apparently. It wasn't any old change either, a big school, class timetables, taught in a different language, teenagers up to the age of 18, lots of teachers, lots of other new children from lots of different countries, the travelling on the school bus, etc. She loves it.

I will be filing it, along with the independent psychological report commissioned by her present school from the same time last year, to take to De Groeling on the 13th Nov that flies completely in the face of what St Michaels school was saying, a totally opposite report to what sounded like a completely different girl.

I must say all that negativity I see coming from the Dutch schools, must have a horrendous detrimental effect on the children they claim to be educating. I'll blog this later

It pales into insignificance.

One the straws St Michaels school used to get the AMK in was that girlie A was so pale. I almost forgot about that one. You don't just get discriminated against because you are dark or black but you can for being too white as well :0

[sarcasticToneOfTyping]

So carrying too much Irish Celtic blood is a problem here, they must think the entire population of Ireland must be sick or something. But seriously, be careful when using too much sunblock on your Northern European skin, you might be in danger of not burning it to a crisp, which will lead outsiders to concern for your health.

[/sarcasticToneOfTyping]

We are a "Multiple Problem Family"

..........so now we know :D The question is, what are those problems? Is it that we don't smoke or maybe we like art and classical music or could it be our interest in environmental issues and what we can do to combat them? Maybe travelling the world and sending the girls to the most expensive school in the country - oooooh really bad! Well that's the conclusion of the GGD or DDR or whatever it is they like to call themselves only they admit they haven't the foggiest idea what those problems are just that there are problems that need "intensive family help". I hope that the man who came to see us today can look at things more objectively than those women from the hen house, otherwise I'm moving back to The UK in the interim.

OH BTW it looks like we have 110 points to get into NZ now and you only need 100............

:byebye:

Getting organised

I'm sat here and to be honest I'm getting completely well and truly fed up of living in The Netherlands. I have much to organise. First how to get the story out about the serious injustices we suffered at the hands of people here, St Michaels Basisschool in Hazerswoude-Dorp, the source of most of the things our family has had to endure over the last couple of years. It's a 6 year story and I don't have the time to write a book on it, so it will come in parts. No, I'm not afraid to name names after all these people have put an enormous strain on our family and I'm not prepared to sit back and let them get away with it, they think they have. Somehow Ad van Disseldorp and Annalies van Katwijk think they are over and above everything. They can do what they like with people lives and they are entrusted with running a school. Absolutely disgusting.

I recently found out I wasn't the only parent of the above school to have very serious problems with them, there are other people as well who have gone to the organisation, Stichting De Groeiling that controls the Catholic schools around the Gouda area to complain about them. I sent them a letter briefly outlining the difficulties I had with them and ultimately their imposing the AMK on us. Stichting De Groeiling hasn't exactly dealt promptly with the complaint, apparently they received it something like 2 or 3 weeks after I posted it, yet it's only 10 kms away and Dutch post is usually next day delivery (hummmmm). Plus they didn't even bother to reply until 2 weeks after they apparently received it. Oh the complaint was being processed (?). Well 3 months have passed so I think they should have processed it by now. Unbelievable. I ring them tomorrow.

The other is dealing with the endless dribble from GGD. The AMK got bored of dealing with us (way too busy with other bogus claims, 9 out of 10 apparently are) and handed us to the GDD. They are convinced there is something wrong, well the saying goes, "If you throw enough mud....." But no matter what other professional people say, ie from the 2 other schools my kids now attend, these blind baffoons are sold on the original rubbish. They must be compiling it all in Windoze or something and it keeps crashing, printing out the same s**t over and over again and they send it to us in the post every once in a while. But we need help, apparently. I beg to differ. Someone has to come into our house and help us. Oh they say it is voluntary but that is a complete out and out lie. "Really!? We are build with phenomenally more intelligence than that!" Maybe help comes in the form of someone coming to do my washing. In that case I'll need it for the next 10 years, I'll just show them where the utility room is:D Government supplied housekeeper, oh I can live with that! Somehow I don't think so. It would probably come in the form of an officious woman, saying "dat mag niet" a lot. Oh by the way, the dutch language is banned in my house and I'm going to video whoever it is for the pleasure of Youtube lovers, or they're not coming in (wuhahahaaaaaaa).

Oh really bad!

Just a rough draft, will finish it soon 29 July 2009

If you are foreign, live in The Netherlands and send your children to school in the Dutch school system, you probably have at some point in time had problems ragarding the school that they go to. I often hear it from my fellow "immigrant" friends, They said "that my child is stupid" or the teacher told me "my son must have a Nederlands passport not a British one". Lots of unbelievable stuff that would have any British school teacher sacked should they even come close to voicing such opinions, not that they would. All I can say is all is not well with the school system here. They seem to hate it if children can speak two or more languages, this for us or more so, them, it has been a major source of contention. They can't handle different cultures.

I sent my two British born daughters to St Michaels RK Basisschool in Hazerswoude-Dorp. At first all was great. Girls happy with lots of friends, a wonderful headmaster with a great character. When he showed me around the school it was a mess as they had a big party but the atmospheer was great, I believed they would be OK here. Unfortunately he retired to be replaced by the new headmaster, Ad van Disseldorp and from the beginning all was not well. He treated us differently, always greeting the other parents and children and never us, always shifting around uncomfortably should we get too close upon arrival. Even at their young age, my girls noticed, "He never says good morning to us, Mummy."

They moved though the school and from Group 4 the eldest started falling behind in maths. At Christmas I learned that she was a little slow so I asked if I should worry and the teacher said "No." Around four months later I get a call from an Annelies van Katwijk, the start of an acrimonious hate/hate relationship. Brash and agitated, she informs me that my daughter has fallen a year behind in maths. A year! Hold on a minute but it was only four months ago she was a little bit behind. How can that be?

The end result was that Annelies van Katwijk reported us to the AMK (to the outside world that is social services, child abuse department, etc). She must have really been smiling. My difficulty with the language, struggling to be in several places at once on her beckoning call and making complaints about her to the somewhat unprofessional headmaster, handed me, my partner and my children to her on a plate. The system allows it as it was only recently on the news that the social services were grossly overstretched because of the mass of bogus complaints.

We're now stuck in this situation, an eternal loop of the authorities determined to find something that is not there. In all the 18 months that we've had to deal with this there's not one thing that has changed from our end, we still eat together, we still read stories at bedtime, we still go on walks and holidays and we still do a lot of sporting activities. As far as the AMK / GDD is concerned, they've done nothing either apart from nosey around our lives, send us one report after another, regurgitating the same rubbish time and time again and generally cause a unsurmountable amount of stress all in the good of what.......? Well I don't know. Statistics, yes that's it. They love statistics oh and absolute control!

But now enough is enough. Like the brave Iranians desperate to get their voices heard in the outside world, I'm going to fight back. I'm going to lay down the story as it has played out over the years since I first had run ins with St Michaels Basisschool in Hazerswoude-Dorp.