Kent ‘lamb slaughter’ teacher gets her job back

- Published: 06 April, 2010

A Kent primary school headteacher, who resigned her position after sending a school lamb to slaughter, has been reinstated in her post.

Andrea Charman, former head of Lydd Primary School in Romney Marsh, was heavily criticised after sending Marcus the sheep to the abattoir last year, despite a campaign to save it.

The announcement made by Kent County Council that Charman would return to her post was welcomed by local MP Michael Howard, who told the BBC that the pressure put upon her was “horrifying”.

Howard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “She had a terrible time of it.

“It was a terrible example of what I think you can call cyber-bullying, because the thing that really made life so difficult for her were the campaigns that were launched on Facebook and other sites that really made it very difficult for her to do her job as a head teacher, and that’s why she decided that she ought to step down.”

He added: “Lydd is in the middle of Romney March, it’s a farming community, and the whole purpose of the school farm was to teach children what farming is all about and to give them an insight into it and I don’t think there was anything wrong in it at all.

“I think the pressure that Andrea Charman was placed under was quite wrong and quite horrifying.”

The animal was reared by pupils of Lydd Primary School, but a school council voted in September to turn Marcus into meat to complete a project on the origins of food, as well as raising money to buy more animals.

A petition to remove Charman at the time received 2,515 signatures out of a target of 5,000.

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