Pleased to see that, at last, she has done the decent thing.

The school is closing down anyway to make room for more over priced houses!

At least she has some sense of the tragedy.
My partner has asthma , I can't begin to state how angry I feel that someone seeing a person with an asthma attack just left them in a corridor and didn't ring 999, or at least a gp or nhs direct..
About time for criminal charges against the other 'professionals'.

On a big fat pension no doubt, should have been sacked outright

No pay off Hmmm

curiousyellow:

She may have been off site when the incident happened, she was probably off site a fair bit. But if an Ofsted report had said the school was 'Much Improved' in one of it's audits, she would've took the credit no doubt. As with all organisations, the buck should stop with the person in charge.

Although if the teachers directly involved kept their jobs, that's a disgrace. They should be in prison.

I would like to know what happend to the staff who didnt find it nessesary to call an ambulance when that poor boy was in this terrible distress,surely they didnt keep their job or??? If yes then there is something badly wrong with the whole education system.

She was not to blame for this, she wasnt even on site

I hate the way everything always has to be someone's fault.
Even though some things just happen
Some things just happen!

Curious Yellow

Before her retirement my wife was the sister in charge of the medical centre at a large boarding school. One of her first comments was that the Head MUST be held responsible for this dreadful situation.
She stated that the entire procedures to be followed in the event of a medical emergency are, or at least should be, very clearly set out and EVERY teacher MUST be made aware of these.
This head did not do what is usually considered a basic minimum and as such she IS responsible for the boys death.

If she was dismissed by the governors she would have been sacked so no pension.
So she resigned, doesn't go on her employment record can carry on teaching.
STOCKPORT LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITY SHOULD HAVE DISMISSED HER STRAIGHT AWAY.

Undoubtedly school staff do need to be aware when pupils - or, for that matter, other employees - have chronic illnesses, and be in a position to know how they should best respond if someone in that situation becomes ill in school hours. In a large modern comprehensive with many pupils and a large number of staff, that almost certainly does require a written policy with which everyone in positions of responsibility should be familiar.

And I've some sympathy with Anthony Cutt's view that the buck does, in the end, stop with the person at the top of the tree. I can hardly believe that, in the current risk-averse, "heads must roll" climate, the school didn't have some sort of written policy to guide staff as to how they should respond, but whatever they did have clearly wasn't adequate, as it so utterly and tragically failed in this instance. Head teachers are, these days, extremely well paid in recognition of the responsibility of the job, and it's by no means unreasonable that they accept part of the responsibility when something like this happens.

Nevertheless, "curious yellow" of Rusholme has a point too in suggesting that "we've all got far too messed up with this 'blame' culture". When I was about 13, a fairly recently appointed paedophile teacher was discovered in my school. He'd apparently developed an obsession with one particular boy, had cajoled him into meeting him after school, and imprudently written him passionate letters which the nonplussed kid left in his pocket or his schoolbag, where his mum came across them. The teacher ended up before the courts and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

I mention this only because this was fairly widely known by the kids, and, presumably, by at least some of the parents, but caused hardly a ripple. People presumably felt that the school, and the courts, had dealt with the matter adequately once it had come to light, and that the school had learned from the experience. No one at all called for the resignation of the headmaster, or the department head, or the governors, on the ground that this man had been appointed on their watch.

To judge from the tone of some of the contributions to this thread, some posters think that Evelyn Leslie, and the other staff directly involved, have got off too lightly. I can only imagine what sort of fate they'd want to mete out to the senior staff in my school, had they been around in circa 1958! But I'm not at all sure that today's more frantic obsession with blame is healthier or more constructive than the more sober and matter-of-fact response from parents and other involved people in my school over fifty years ago.

She will be allowed to teach as no action taken she has resigned her post but will be allowed to work on agency and apply for other posts. To be honest if she was not there on the day I dont know how she is responsible common sense should have prevailed with the others involved. If it was known he had asthma they should have acted immediately but even if they were not aware to see a child struggling to breath should have prompted them to act always better to call and ambulance than not.

What emerged later was an institutional failure by Offerton School. And when failure is institutional, the person at the top must take responsibility. The school failed to implement an integrated asthma policy, failed to ensure staff were trained to deal with children having asthma attacks, failed to keep an up-to-date health plan, and it failed to monitor Sam’s condition when he was seen using his inhaler in a corridor between 12.20pm and 3.15pm on the day he died.

TAKEN FROM MEN

Most of the managers, consultants and doctors at Manchester hospitals have yet to make their minds up. I suppose they will stay on because the money is so bloody good. Patients are powerless anyway.

It is tragic when a young child dies and I cannot comprehend how his parents feel but how can you blame a person that wasn't even there. Yes policies should have been in place but would they have saved him? I doubt it. As a person with asthma who has suffered many frightening attacks I am fully aware that I, like every other asthmatic could die from an attack at any time! Do I blame somebody for this? No, because that is just the way it is. People die from asthma all the time and there is nothing anybody can do if this is going to happen. As for the the child being left in the corridor to die-are we to believe everything we read in the paper? As for the student who claimed to see Sam gasping for air-that is widely known to be a false statement from a bitter student. The courts were aware of this but still allowed it to be quoted in the newspapers. I am waiting for the day the press get the full details of the case and apologise for the damage they have caused the school. I suspect that will be a tiny paragraph on page 121!
As a person who works for a Stockport school and knows many members of staff at Offerton it upsets me to think we can blame anyone person for this tragic death.
It would appear that media coverage of this case is extrodinary bearing in mind that a child died from asthma in another Stockport school last year (Sam Linton did not die at school) and I don't remember any news coverage. Probably because the family involved accepted that these tragic events happen and you can't blame any individual for that.
As a teacher the stress we are put under is immense, we are not doctors or nurses-we are teachers, trained to teach not offer or administer medical advice. I wouldn't expect my local GP to advise me on how to split the atom. Attending a First Aid course for a day does not make you proficient in medical matters, it gives you the basics.
It is so sad that we live in this blame culture where everything is somebody elses fault and witch hunts ensue because of over sensationalised newspaper/television reports that bear little resemblance to the truth are the norm!

@ jelly bean some good points there.. BUT if a child was struggling for air and was blue in the face I think common sense tells you there's something wrong.

Pied Piper-you sound almost bitter reading your posts, maybe you need to get a job to take your mind of things (posting on here at all hours is not really a job by the way). And as for thinking that I have the monopoly on stress, not at all. That's just your thinking, you're clearly a public sector hater! I was simply stating that training for one job does not make you proficient in many other fields. I am not moaning about anything apart from the sensationalising of newspapers etc that lead igmorant narrow minded people like you to believe everything you believe. I don't think for one minute that Sam Linton was left dying in the corridor, in fact I know it not to be true and one day the truth will come out but people like you are won't be reading the papers then will you? Because people like you like to jump on the bandwagon and moan, moan, moan about people like me. I can only guess you had a terrible education and a bad operation and now hate anybody in the education or medical profession! Get a grip of yourself-were you there? Or is The Sun you main informant?

Excellent, irrespective of whether Ms Leslie was on site or not, the School and its operating procedures did not have the focus on the student and their mental/physical well being. However, you shouldn't need to a have a policy for knowing when something is right or not but clearly this level if thought was missing.

Right its about time all the bad comments should stop.
what happened to sam is very very sad but i cant see how you could blame the head teacher from the school when she wasnt even at school on the day.
i sypathise with sams parents and i do know what they have been through but its time now to move on.do you think that sam would want any of this.NO.I DONT THINK SO.
so please stop trying to blame the head teacher of the school.
i dont want to seem heartless in anyway because believe me im not.but time has to move on.
my daughter goes to offerton school and she loves it there.its a very good school indeed.and we hope that the school does NOT CLOSE DOWN.