Post by cenydd on Sept 10, 2013 9:20:44 GMT
A HEADTEACHER reported a teenage blogger to the police and phoned a university he had applied to with a warning about his behaviour after criticisms of the school appeared online.
Kinnan Zaloom, 19, has been told never to return to the grounds of Hampstead School in Westbere Road again after setting up a website attacking the way it is run.
The blog, The Hampstead Trash, makes claims about the school’s spending on promotional material and lack of investment in musical instruments and gym equipment, poor attempts to listen to pupils’ views about the school and a failure to push GCSE results to a higher level.
Mr Zaloom started the blog in February and continued with a series of articles – many containing fruity language – criticising the running of the school. He has compared his work to the irreverence and bite of Private Eye.
But the school’s headteacher, Jacques Szemalikowski, told the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday) he took action because he was worried Mr Zaloom could be “developing into an anarchist”.
He went as far as calling Glasgow University, where Mr Zaloom hoped to take his degree-level studies, to tell them about the content on the website.
Mr Szemalikowski confirmed yesterday that he had blocked the blog from school computers, contacted police and phoned Glasgow University’s admissions officer.
Kinnan Zaloom, 19, has been told never to return to the grounds of Hampstead School in Westbere Road again after setting up a website attacking the way it is run.
The blog, The Hampstead Trash, makes claims about the school’s spending on promotional material and lack of investment in musical instruments and gym equipment, poor attempts to listen to pupils’ views about the school and a failure to push GCSE results to a higher level.
Mr Zaloom started the blog in February and continued with a series of articles – many containing fruity language – criticising the running of the school. He has compared his work to the irreverence and bite of Private Eye.
But the school’s headteacher, Jacques Szemalikowski, told the New Journal yesterday (Wednesday) he took action because he was worried Mr Zaloom could be “developing into an anarchist”.
He went as far as calling Glasgow University, where Mr Zaloom hoped to take his degree-level studies, to tell them about the content on the website.
Mr Szemalikowski confirmed yesterday that he had blocked the blog from school computers, contacted police and phoned Glasgow University’s admissions officer.
www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2013/sep/headteacher-reports-teen-blogger-who-criticised-school-police#.Uilca_zHc1U.twitter
This is a clear and appalling abuse of power by the head teacher. A kid slags of the school on a blog, and he thinks he's justified in not only throwing him out (after his exams, thankfully, although he does confirm that he'd have expelled him anyway, even if it were during his studies), but calling the police and attempting to blight his future by calling the university he'd applied to go to to 'warn' them about him. Absolutely sickening. I note that the police have, as yet, taken no action over it, and obviously rightly so - they should never have been brought into it in the first place.
Interestingly, there is a comment left on the Daily Mail's story about the issue here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2414197/A-level-student-reported-police-criticising-school-online-blog.html
As a parent of former pupils at this school I would say that this is absolutely typical of the man. I had to withdraw one of my daughters from the school as a direct result of his behaviour and move her to another school on the other side of the borough (where she thrived). In his little world he believed that his word was the law and his opinions were the only ones that counted, any dissenting voices were to be ruthlessly surpressed, whether pupils, parents or teachers, and a good public image was all that mattered; well finally the real picture is starting to emerge. That he has survived so long is a testament to the spinelessness of the then governing body who knew full well of his actions but didn't want to upset the public image of the school. Now it is out in the open, I hope that the current set finally plucks up the courage to deal with this matter properly.
If this is indeed a genuine and factual comment (no guarantee about that, of course, it being an anonymous comment on a website) it may be that this man has more to answer for than just this one event.
This is one head teacher who needs to be properly investigated for his actions.
