DDs Classmate smashed a Window today - Would you expect the School to tell Parents?

@OligoN yes, and teachers often get hit in the cross fire, I was accidently punched several times splitting up fights and at secondary with students much bigger than me. Technically you aren't meant to put yourself in danger and meant to wait for staff trained in restraint but I couldn't let students be beaten up in front of me.

Also, I often advise the children I teach to discuss things with their parents if they want to. I want to make it clear all communication lines are open and don't want them to bottle things inside if they are worried.

It's not nice and far from something every child will see but I'm surprised you're surprised. It's no secret there is a massive shortage of special school places, a massive lack of school funding for extra staff and a massive lack of early intervention work happening. Pretty much every mainstream school across the country will have children who are capable of smashing a window.

Also my daughter’s class in P1 was evacuated so often that she stopped telling me about it in the end. It just didn’t phase her any more.

There have been a number of incidents in my son's class, where one particular child has caused damage to property (the most recent saw him throw paint all over the book corner, ruining a number of books and making the area inaccessible to the children for a while). We were not notified. I trust that the reason is because my child was safe, despite the commotion.

I work in a school; children who have these moments are quite common, it seems, but we don't send home notifications unless another child was injured (which, with children in crisis, has thankfully never occurred).

I'm a teacher and a sendco with children if a similar age to yours. I'd expect an email/parent mail stating there was an incident which has been dealt with in school and that the child in question has been supported. To reiterate that there are policies and procedures and these were followed and XYZ will be put in place to further safeguard all involved.

Exactly. Yes it's not great but teacher have enough crap to do without sending out a memo every time one of those things happens in class.

Definitely get in touch with SLT. Nothing much is going to change unless the parents express concern otherwise its just another day in the classroom.

What?

If fists are being thrown basically daily then schools are utterly failing those children exposing them to that level of violence whilst supposedly acting in loco parentis.

I probably would expect some brief communication from school, just so parents get accurate account of the incident, rather than the creative version they might get from a child. I would if course not expect them to name the child who did it, although your child will probably tell you. It was probably quite scary for all the children, so it would help parents to support their child through any emotional consequences of the incident. They are not obligated to tell you, but it would be helpful I think.

When a child in my daughters school set the fire alarm off in the school, they emailed us to inform us what has hapenned.

We once got an email alluding to an “incident” that had taken place in the classroom, just in case any child was upset, but the email didn’t state what had happened (slightly alarming email to get in the middle of the working day, but ok).

parents were unimpressed tbh. All it led to was speculation and then everyone talking in the group chats etc about the behaviour of the little boy at the centre of it. If they’d said nothing, no one would have been discussing it.

What the teacher meant is that they are all fed up of the consequences of the child's behaviour but can't do anything about it unless parents start to complain. At which point they might be able to start the application for extra funding/EHCP/1:1 for that child, or getting SLT to take it seriously. Getting your child to tell you about it is getting that message across the long way round.

I would expect them to tell the parents of the child who broke the window. Not sure why they would tell the other parents?

@OligoN all of those apart from attack with a weapon are run of the mill events in lots of schools and happen every day.

What level of aggression/violence would there need to be for you to feel that informing the parents was appropriate?

Screaming at teacher?
Upturned tables and chairs?
lashing out and hitting a pupil accidentally?
Hitting a pupil deliberately? With a fist? With a weapon?
hitting teacher a weapon?
What about if a pupil uses their Judo skills to put the thug on the floor?

it is actually shocking that schools have become inured to this level of violence and still think that they are capable of keeping children safe.

Older as it was secondary but we had a fair few "incidents" at school which AFAIK were never reported to parents back when I was at school

Had a couple of incidents in primary too actually... Mum never mentioned them so either they never said or she just left it to see if I'd say anything

A local school had students setting off fireworks on their field during lunch break (the very same day they had done the Firework Safety video). Parents weren't told.

If the school wanted to inform parents they would most likely send out a letter rather than a text or email. The admin behind sending school wide letters is time consuming as it takes a ridiculous amount of time to stuff envelopes so if they did inform you I would expect the letter in a day or two.

I’ve never been contacted about incidents like that and I think that’s fine . I would only expect to hear if my child was hurt in the chaos.

Ps I hope your daughter is OK, I understand that this must have been really upsetting. Unfortunately things like this are increasingly normal in schools now as a result of severe lack of funding and lack of special school placements.

But nobody was hurt. And if anyone had been, those parents would have been informed.

Read the school behaviour policy. They should follow that. It will probably state all involved children's parents should be notified, but broadly speaking that is open to interpretation in this instance as involved is technically the perpetrator child only as no-one else was hurt or aimed at.

Put it this way, would you prefer the form teacher to waste 1 hour speaking to 29 sets of parents, or spend that hour calling social services, educational phycologists, writing up the incident and ultimately working towards getting the perpetrator child the help they need sooner? This child is clearly in crisis and that should rightly be prioritised by the school staff.

There’s a couple of children in school that have challenging behaviour, kids are regularly evacuated to the corridor whilst they do their thing in the classroom. Dc tell you about it the school does not in my experience. I appreciate it’s upsetting but they can’t talk to you about other children. If it happens again they will evacuate the children.

Honestly it’s being going on for years and hasn’t improved. Best thing to teach her is self preservation. Ie don’t try and intervene, head down and a quick exit.

So the school will probably contact parents tomorrow 🤷‍♂️

If anything, to stop the whispers and the story getting out of control.

I should say he casually mentioned it six months AFTER the incident

There is a child in my sons group that has thrown a table around we had no email and I had no clue till my son casually mentioned it the school thought I knew and I was just being supportive and trusting them to handle the situation (the child has difficulties which means this behaviour happens) I do trust the school and they are handling it appropriately but my son can occasionally go non verbal and just wipe his mind of incidents so a quick heads up would have been great 😂

For a neurotypical child I would expect them to tell me themselves