Schools see this earlier than anybody. Before a police station, before a clinic, usually before any relative outside the house. The child is in front of you five days a week and something changes.
Most teachers notice and do not know what they are permitted to do. This is written to answer that.
What you might see in the child
- A sudden change — a good pupil who stops working, a quiet child who becomes aggressive, a lively one who goes flat.
- Exhaustion. Falling asleep in class is one of the most reliable signs, because nights are when it happens.
- Extreme reactions to raised voices, sudden movements, or a door closing hard.
- Reluctance to go home, or arriving very early and leaving very late.
- Taking on adult responsibility for younger siblings, well beyond their age.
- Fees suddenly unpaid where they were always paid, or a uniform no longer replaced.
- Absence that clusters, particularly after a weekend.
- Anxiety about a parent — repeatedly asking who is collecting them, or distress at a change of arrangement.
- Play or drawings that repeat a frightening scene.
- Perfectionism and terror of being in trouble, which is easy to mistake for a well-behaved pupil.
Any one of these means nothing on its own. Several appearing together, starting at the same time, is worth a quiet note.
What you might see in the mother
She stops coming to the school and somebody else collects. She cannot commit to anything without checking. Fees arrive late or in unusual ways. She is anxious about what has been written in a letter sent home. She asks that her number not be given to anybody. Or she simply seems frightened of a man who is perfectly pleasant to staff.
That last point is worth holding onto. Men who are difficult at home are frequently charming at a school gate, and the discrepancy is information rather than a reason to doubt her.
The four things that matter most
- Written collection instructions, and follow them. Keep a list of who may collect each child. If somebody not on it arrives, do not release the child, do not argue at the gate, and telephone the mother. This is the single most important thing a school does in these situations and it is where it most often fails, usually because somebody senior is not there and a teacher does not want to cause a scene.
- Never give out an address or a phone number. Not to a parent, not to a relative, not to somebody who sounds legitimate and concerned. Say that you do not release contact details and offer to pass a message. If a parent has moved, treat the new address as confidential within the school as well.
- Keep a copy of any court order about custody or contact, and make sure the person on the gate knows it exists. An order that lives in a file nobody can find at four o’clock is not doing anything.
- Do not tell the other parent what the mother has told you. Including where it seems reasonable, including where he asks directly, and including in an ordinary conversation about the child’s progress.
If a child tells you something
The first minute matters and most of it is about not doing things.
Listen and do not interrogate. Let them say it in their own words. Do not ask leading questions, and do not press for detail. Asking a child to elaborate can damage a later case and it puts them under pressure.
Do not promise to keep it secret. Say instead that you will only tell the people who need to know in order to help.
Tell them it is not their fault and that they were right to tell you.
Write it down immediately, in their words, with the date, the time and who else was present. Not a summary — their words. This is the record that matters later.
Follow your school’s safeguarding route and tell the designated person the same day. Where a child is at risk of serious harm, that must be acted on regardless of what anybody prefers.
Do not confront the parent. Not that day, not at the gate, not on the telephone. This is how children and mothers get hurt, and it is almost always done with good intentions.
If the mother tells you something
Thank her, and do not make her repeat it to several people.
Ask two practical questions rather than about the marriage. What would you like us to do, and who may collect the children. Then write down what she has asked for and make sure the office and the gate know the answer.
Offer the things a school can genuinely give: flexibility about fees while things are unsettled, a quiet word about uniform, keeping her details out of class lists and group messages, and a named person she can speak to so she is not explaining from the beginning each time.
Do not offer to speak to her husband. Ever.
Practical things that cost a school very little
- Keep the child’s school place open where fees have stopped, at least for a term, while it is sorted out. A child who loses their school in the same month as their home loses the last stable thing in their week.
- Take her off any published class contact list.
- Do not put photographs of the children on the school’s public pages without checking, and take existing ones down if asked. This is a common way a location is lost.
- Let her use a school address for correspondence if she needs one.
- Allow late arrival without a fuss for a period. Court dates and appointments do not respect a school timetable.
- If there is a change of school, transfer records quickly and do not send them to the old home address.
What not to do
Do not discuss it in the staff room generally. Do not raise it with the child in front of others. Do not tell other parents, including the helpful one who always knows what is happening. Do not require documentation of abuse before offering flexibility — most women have none, and asking for it is a way of saying no politely. And do not treat the child as a case rather than as a pupil; school working normally is frequently the best thing in their week.
Fees, which is where we come in
Keeping children in school is one of our six programmes, and it exists because it is cheap relative to almost everything else and does more.
If a family in your school is in this position and fees are the obstacle, tell the mother we exist, or ask her whether we may be contacted. We would rather cover a term than have a child moved twice.
Schools can also be a route in for a woman who has no private moment anywhere else. Ten minutes in an office with a closed door is, for some mothers, the only unwatched time they get in a week — which is why the school gate matters more than it looks.
Questions people ask
A child has told me something. What is the first thing to do?
Listen without interrogating, do not promise secrecy, tell them it is not their fault, and write down their exact words with the date the same day. Then follow your safeguarding route.
The father is on the birth certificate. Can we refuse to release the child to him?
Follow the written instructions you hold and any court order, do not argue at the gate, and telephone the mother. If you are unsure, do not release the child while you check — that is far easier to defend than the alternative.
He is asking for her new address. What do we say?
That the school does not release contact details, and offer to pass a message. Treat the new address as confidential inside the school as well.
Should we tell him what she has told us?
No. Not when he asks directly, and not in an ordinary conversation about the child. This is how mothers and children get hurt, and it is nearly always done with good intentions.
The fees have stopped. Do we have to remove the child?
Please try not to, at least for a term. A child who loses their school in the same month as their home loses the last stable thing in their week. Tell the mother we exist — school fees are one of our six programmes.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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