A young mother has said she was “mortified” and “disgusted” after her 10-year-old daughter was given homework which included a suggestion that she writes about “fingering”.
Annette Farrington, 27, slammed the teacher who sent out the “inappropriately sexual” creative writing prompts in a worksheet.
She said the homework had been sent out to her daughter at Our Lady and St Philomena’s Catholic Primary School in Fazakerley, Liverpool just before half term.
Annette told the Liverpool Echo: “She got the homework just before half term but because there was so much, we had some leftover so we were doing it yesterday.
“She was doing work on the Holocaust, and I think it had got mixed up with that.
“When I was looking at it I thought that doesn’t even make sense, why would it be there? But after speaking to the school they said it was part of an English lesson giving examples to help kids make their own story.”
One of the English worksheets for her daughter included a list of short sentence prompts for describing how somebody may feel.
The examples listed under the header “How do I feel?” included, “He was fingering”, “When I ran my hand along it, I…”, “She fondled”, “I stroked”, and “She felt his…”.
Annette said: “I just said to her we won’t do that one today, saying I was confused with it.
“It took me about half an hour as I was in two minds thinking had I been reading into it too much but when I rang the school they said no you’re definitely not.
“The deputy’s head rang me back himself because he was mortified with it.
“He couldn’t apologise enough and said they’d been using a service that provides work for homeschooling and he was sorry that it had not been noticed before it was sent out to kids.
“I was mortified because at first I thought am I looking at wrong, but I asked a few other people’s opinions and I was stunned by it.
“It made me feel a bit disgusted to be honest, because whoever actually provided that work must have known what they were doing.
“It’s strange, surely no one can overlook that. No one could see what’s written on that paper and think that’s fine.”
A Liverpool City Council statement said: “This resource was included in a paper pack for offline home learning that was sent to a very small number of families in January.
“It had been sourced online by the teacher as part of a set of creative writing prompts and was used to supplement the other work provided.
“The material had not been recommended or provided by the council or School Improvement Liverpool.
“All other families who received this pack have been contacted by the school and asked to remove the worksheet.
“All schools in the city have also been advised to double-check any third-party resources and we have alerted the online provider to the issue.”
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