This is outrageous!
A child was excluded from a school trip celebrating 100 percent attendance because she’d missed one day – to go to her mom’s funeral.
St. Giles Junior School offered an end-of-the-year trip to kids with perfect attendance, however, 11-year-old Maddie Stevens was excluded from participating as she missed a single day of school. The reason why the decision caused so much controversy is that Maddie missed one day to attend her mother’s funeral.
The decision was made by administrators at St. Giles Junior School, which is located in Bedworth, England. They refused to let Maddie join her classmates for the trip to Frankie & Benny’s, a local restaurant.
Maddie’s mother died of breast cancer after battling the disease for two years. The girl felt sad not to go on the trip and stated that helping her mother for those two years was a difficult experience. Maddie’s father, Andy, was very angry with how school administrators handled the matter.
He stated that his daughter only took one day off from school, as they both wanted life to go on as normally as possible. He told reporters that his daughter kept on being amazing after her mother died and that he would be saying the same things even if she needed to take an entire week off to deal with the tragic loss.
“It made me feel sad not to go — it would have been a nice treat. Helping my mom for the past two years has been hard,” Maddie said.
The entire situation was made even worse as administrators at the school didn’t issue an apology at first, despite being provided with an explanation for why Maddie was absent on that school day.
“I got more and more angry each time I think about it, and I’m amazed they didn’t apologize to Maddie,” Andy said. “It feels like they’re now punishing us for complaining about it.”
It was only later that St. Giles Junior School issued a statement where the incident went viral. The administrators explained that following concerns raised about the practice, giving rewards to students for perfect attendance would no longer take place.
St. Giles released the following statement: “Following concerns raised, the rewarding of pupils for 100% attendance has been withdrawn.”
Sources: OpposingViews, Coventry Telegraph, The Mirror.