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A couple who were “unlawfully arrested” for criticising their daughter’s primary school on a parent WhatsApp group have received a £20,000 payout from Hertfordshire Police.
Times Radio producer Maxie Allen, 50, and his partner Rosalind Levine, 46, were stunned when they were led away by six uniformed police officers in January on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications and detained by police for 11 hours, after the school reported them.
Cowley Hill Primary School in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, had already raised concerns to police over receiving high volumes of emails and calls, and negative social media posts, before police arrested them after the WhatsApp group criticism. Allen said that when they looked back on the parents’ group chat, the “spiciest thing” they could find was when Levine called a senior figure in the school a “control freak”. After a five-week investigation, Hertfordshire Constabulary concluded there was no case to answer.
The school WhatsApp is always pure drama – and often as gripping as The Traitors. You’re always on edge, wondering who is in, who is out and what is going to blow up next.
The worst scandal to hit me was when it looked like I’d defaced a photograph of another person’s child with coloured squiggles on the reception class WhatsApp when all the parents had posted festive shots of their children on Christmas Day.
“Why would somebody do this?” the mum messaged on the group chat. “Have you considered that maybe it’s a mistake before you jump to conclusions?” said another. “Well, why hasn’t she replied then?” another mum asked.
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Maxie Allen (back right) and his family, who found themselves embroiled in a row on the school parents’ group chat (Maxie Allen & Rosalind Levine)
By the time a friend alerted me to the explosive situation by texting me “Have you seen the class WhatsApp?”, it had been going on for hours. I couldn’t understand how it had happened – until I remembered I’d handed my daughter Liberty, then five, my phone to show her the lovely photos of her classmates, and she must have accidentally pressed the wrong buttons.
I said: “Sorry, it is a mistake – Liberty must have unknowingly pressed the phone edit tool.”
Working parents like me end up drowning in the ping after ping of “friendly reminders” about bringing in wellness vouchers for hampers and signing up to accompany the class on swimming trips.
Then if you share a strong opinion about something – or you threaten to upstage another parent on the front line – you can get shamed and end up feeling like you’re hauled up on Prime Minister’s Questions, for daring to suggest doing things a different way.
There’s the communal eye roll at the Last-Minute Panicker: “Does anyone know what they need for the trip today??” This message always comes the day after the school sent a detailed email and is guaranteed to spark a whole other WhatsApp side-group chat behind that parent’s back for “treating everyone else like her personal PA”.
There’s the Link-Bomber – that parent dispatching urgent advice about privacy settings on your Facebook settings that everyone else knows was a hoax from three years ago, or conspiracy theories about everything from vaccines to nutrition advice. There’s the Out-of-Hours Chatterer who messages the group after 11pm – often checking in from the back of a cab “catching up on the chat”, giving off some serious no boundaries energy. There is the Boaster, the Oversharer and the Event Hijacker: “hi just jumping on here to see if you can all still come to Pia’s birthday party”.
It’s often fairly tepid: lost PE kits, voting for a class Christmas tree: two small pre-lit trees or one bigger pre-lit tree? But then it can get wild for three hours in a phenomenon called swarming, which often happens when the Gossip Merchant wades in and sparks a heated debate like what’s being taught in sex education, or a complaint about a teacher, or even worse, another pupil.
Mistakes happen. One mum sent an entire Google doc with her work presentation for a top-secret Christmas advert to Class 3 parents when she posted in the wrong chat. Another parent booked a table thinking it was a restaurant and one mum posted a music video of herself singing in a cornfield.
There are blazing rows – beefs that are taken offline when someone is ignored or says something The Unofficial Organiser (because there is always one) takes offence to. I remember one friend being reduced to tears when everyone piled in on her when she had gently asked if the Christmas fair could be held on a weekend so working parents like her could get involved. She thought she was being helpful, the others thought she was being difficult “when she hardly does anything ever”.
Maxie Allen said that when they looked back on the parents’ group chat, the ‘spiciest thing’ they could find was when his partner, Rosalind Levine, called a senior figure in the school a ‘control freak’
It’s pretty ruthless. I tend to avoid post-explosive WhatsApp disputes by wearing a huge hooded puffer coat at the school gate so I can go incognito, or else pretend to be on my phone incessantly so I look busy. School parent groups are just not worth the hassle. It’s a full-time job to keep on top of it. I have two children at the same school – Lola, nine, and Liberty, seven – and I’d estimate it’s easily 100 messages a week per class.
Not taking part in class WhatsApps might make me look disinterested – and I’m lucky in that I have some mum friends who follow the “Goldilocks” rule of just being involved enough to tell me about party invitations and important changes to the school timetable.
To be honest, if I got back on the class WhatsApp full throttle, it’d take up half my working day – and I’d have to force myself not to react to points that irritated me. I admit, though, to secretly stalking it and having the odd glance. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t? It’s far too exciting to miss. But only when the volume is turned right down. Preferably on mute.
