Mother suing top private school 'ranted at meetings and became fixated on children's grades even challenging daughter's near-perfect spelling test score'

Mother allegedly complained about trivial issues and acted aggressively

Claims school promised to give her children good references but failed to uphold deal

Parents are seeking £50,000 damages from the West London school



A mother who is suing a prestigious London private school has been accused of 'ranting' at meetings and criticising teachers in an aggressive attempt to push up her children's grades.



The woman sent teachers a flood of letters and emails about her children's education, a court heard - including a complaint when her six-year-old daughter received only 19 out of 20 on her spelling test.



She is also alleged to have filed complaints about trivial issues such as a fight over a glue stick and water bottles being placed too near pupils' shoes.



Claim: A judge at the High Court in London, pictured, has rejected a damages claim brought by an 'overbearing' couple against a school, after it asked their children to be taken out

The mother and her husband, a businessman, are seeking £50,000 in damages from the school in West London, claiming teachers backtracked on a deal to give their children good references after they were withdrawn from the institution.



At a High Court hearing, the school's barrister Jonathan Auburn said that the woman had acted in a 'rude and inappropriate manner - including insisting on interrupting staff when in the middle of meetings, speaking over people, haranguing them, and on occasion screaming at them'.

He added: 'She placed oppressive expectations on her children of constant outstanding achievement, and would admonish both child and school if her full expectations were not always met.'



The woman, who cannot be identified, allegedly pursued 'trenchant complaints' over unimportant matters, such as bottles of water being positioned too closely to muddy pairs of shoes.



Mr Auburn asked her, 'Do you think - with hindsight - that that was quite a trivial matter?', but she replied: 'It was a matter of hygiene.'



The school, not pictured, was accused of back-tracking on a deal it made when three children were withdrawn (file photo), but this was rejected by the High Court

On one occasion, the court heard, the mother complained that her nine-year-old son had been given an A rather than an A+ for a geography project.



'It was good but not good enough,' she said, adding that some children who achieved an A+ had failed to include a contents page in their essay



Mr Auburn asked: 'So your child got an A and you wrote in to raise that with the school, to say he should have got an A+, and you don't see anything odd about that?' - she replied, 'No.'



He told the hearing that the school had no problems with the children themselves, but felt forced to ask the parents to remove them thanks to the adults' 'particularly poor behaviour'.



The parents withdrew their children from the school, which cannot be named for legal reasons, and are now seeking damages for alleged breach of contract as well as an injunction barring the school from discussing them with any other school.



They claim they struck a deal with the school after a 'stormy' meeting in which the headmaster promised to provide a good reference to any school the children applied to.



But instead he told another head that the parents had 'harassed' him, the court heard.



Both parents deny behaving unreasonably towards staff, insisting they were doing their utmost to ensure their children's needs were met by teachers.



The mother said the school failed to communicate adequately with her and she only pursued issues where she felt teachers were not responding to her children's needs.



She had become particularly concerned by the school's failure to provide her with her offspring's test results, she told the court.



Friction between the parents and the school came to a head at a parents' meeting which left staff 'visibly shaken' and finished with the couple 'storming out', Mr Auburn alleged.



However, the father denied claims that he and his wife were 'aggressive and intimidating' at the meeting, insisting the atmosphere was 'always polite and courteous even if we disagreed'.

