A council has apologised after parents were offered a choice of class photos with or without children with complex needs in them. Parents at Aboyne Primary complained after being sent a link from a photography company offering them alternative pictures. Aberdeenshire Council said the decision was not taken by the school and the link to the photos was immediately removed.
I can't understand why the photo company took the decision to remove certain "special needs" kids from the photo, that would have been up to the school I'd have thought. And in any case it's discrimination.
It's surprising in these days of nannyism that school photos are allowed at all. If we have any trouble on the school runs, we're not allowed to use CCTV images to highlight the problem because it would mean looking at images of kids. We have to have checks done and certificates/cards issued to allow us to drive the school buses, AKA "non-paedo badges" as we call them. To allow full classes of kids to be sent out to any parent who wants them seems odd in this day and age. Sad too but it's how things are now.
Personally I'd opt for the image with no kids at all in it...
As a former teacher and SENCo, to even contemplate leaving SN children out of a class photo is appalling.
We used to have individual photos and/or those with siblings taken at the start and the end of each academic year. All teachers had their photos taken with their class at the end of the year. We also had them taken with any groups for which we were responsible. In my case that was all the music groups and the choir. We also had staff photos but they were only ordered by us, rather than parents.
Parents had the option as to what photos they ordered and proofs were sent home with each child so that they could make their decision. Many parents opted to have the class photos and the individual ones and every child was included in the class photos. Mind you, that was well before all this totally ridiculous woke nonsense.