Do you teach your child to hit back?

Continue to report until the school take it seriously. If necessary report the school to Ofsted or the Department for Education for failing to take action. Continued to report to the police if necessary. Become more of a pain in their arse than the bully.

And yes kids can still be permanently excluded and sent to a Pupil Referral Unit if necessary.
https://www.gov.uk/school-behaviour-exclusions/exclusions

But if violent behaviour is not reported then of course nothing will be done.

I don't think it's as black and white as that.
I taught mine to stand up for themselves. If someone is mean to you, say something back straight away to show you're not afraid. If someone is attacking you, reasonable force to get away. We talked through different scenarios. E.g. if someone kicks you and run away, no you can't chase after them and kick them back - you tell a teacher. If someone has you in a headlock/strangling/grabbing you to hit you, then you kick/punch/whatever as hard as you can to free yourself. If it's a face on attack, fight back. In all but one instances so far, it has not escalated from the mean comment, the verbal responses have been enough to show that they are not an easy target. An older child did get my son in a headlock last year in high school - it was unprovoked, he didn't even know the kid, more of a "It would be really funny if I pick on this younger kid and scare him a bit" situation. His grip wasn't strong enough to hold my son so he wriggled free enough to punch him. I told him fair enough. The teacher who intervened saw it as self defense and didn't come down hard on him.

I'm sorry. That sounds horribly familiar.

One of our biggest thugs (during my final permanent tenure) was the son of a local police officer. The boy was an arrogant bully who tried to bully female staff as well as pupils.

When he was in S3, I had to report the fact that he kept sticking his hand down his trousers in class. (It was so blatant that I had called him out on it. He became aggressive.)

According to mummy and daddy, he was "only scratching himself." (He must have had a medical problem if he needed to scratch himself to that extent.)

What?! The son of a police officer thinks it's okay to scratch his bits in public?

Exactly what i told my dc.

I told my DS at a young age to hit back when no one else can see him do it

He's quite academic so a bit of a nerd I suppose

But whenever anyone tried to bully him at secondary school he'd just shove them away immediately and bring quite tall luckily they somehow just ended up looking ridiculous for having tried and also very very surprised at his immediate reaction and none of them ever tried it in again with him

I love him for that

Unfortunately, even when someone does manage to come up with a witty retort, this tends to enrage bullies even further.

I never hit back and wish I had because my bullies were merciless. I wish I'd kicked the shit out of them and damn the consequences. Then maybe I would not have suffered bouts of crippling depression throughout my life.

Police Scotland really are useless. The thug who has been attacking my son since primary 6 (they are now S2) has been allowed to do whatever he pleases. His dad is a police officer.
Every incident is followed by a text from his mum explaining to me that it really wasn’t his fault, he just can’t control himself and can’t even remember doing it.
The child himself looks utterly shocked when someone tells him off. He genuinely cannot believe he is being told off. Because his parents just don’t bother.

Police officer raising a thug and ensuring he gets away with everything.

Yes I was taught hit back twice as hard. I was hit by the big bully , told teacher nothing was done. They hit me again. My father said hit back twice as hard. I did they never touched me again. In fact they asked if I wanted to be in their gang.! Of course I didn't accept

I've taught my kids the same. Some are now adults. And I can honestly say after each retaliation they were never bullied again. I have a reception age dc and they will be told the same too.
One of my dcs teachers is a friend of mine and he's also told his dcs to hit back because in his words. Schools have their hands tied with discipline.

Jesus Christ! It can be hard to make a witty remark when your head is down a toilet. Youve clearly lead a very privileged life if you think you're capable of coming up with a witty remarks when you've been relentlessly bullied.

It’s good your school has such a robust policy on this.

Try and see it from the POV of someone who goes to a school that isn’t like that (which is far more common than the proactive, dependable school you have, IMO).

Your kid gets hit and they’ve been told two wrongs don’t make a right, so stand there and take it.
You make that same trip to the school to make your demands. They tell you that they’ll look into it and eventually suspend the one who’s hit your kid because you’re giving them a headache threatening to go to the police. You’ll get them suspended for three days maximum.

Then they return (or even before they return, they talk to their pals on Snapchat) and make sure that everyone knows that your child is a grass. That their mummy ran to the school because they’re a little geek who can’t stand up for themselves. They get laughed at on the bus, threatened by the excluded pupil and their friends to shut their mouth and take a beating like a man, their friends will distance themselves.

Every walk between classes, every time they go to the toilet, waiting on the bus…they’re the target because everyone knows they’ll do nothing.

What are those parents supposed to do?

My LA wlll only exclude for 3 days. There is no longer any such thing as expulsion. Instead, the LA will sometimes try to persuade the parents of violent children to agree to a whole-school transfer within the LA, thus moving on the problem.

Off-Campus provision has been cut and a pupil will only be considered for this if they're "known to the police". Even then, there's little guarantee of a place.

Nowadays, Police Scotland will do nothing with regard to children under the age of 16. How do I know? As a middle manager, I called the police myself or persuaded the SLT to do so.

In my last year in my permanent post, we had two incidents where two different boys brought in a knife. One incident where a boy held a screwdriver to a girl's throat.

The police did nothing other than talking to the pupils. The mantra is "We'll leave it in the hands of the school."

One pupil broke another pupil's nose during lunchtime, outside the school grounds. The police were called. The perpetrator was under 16. The police did nothing.

The victim stopped attending school.

The one time I can recall that the police acted was many years ago. A pupil inexplicably disappeared from our roll. It turned out that they had set fire to a homeless person.

Have any of your kids been relentlessly bullied? And I mean violent attacks, not snarky comments. Have any of your kids even been repeatedly attacked by an out of control child the school can’t/won’t do anything about because the child is adopted, has autism, dad in the police so even though they are teenagers and the attacks are very violent, the police haven’t acted?

You think a witty remark is enough self defence?

A clever remark? after you've been spat at by a up to 5 different kids with spittle running down your face. A clever remark after your water bottle has been emptied over your head once again. Or perhaps a very clever remark when you're being slapped on both cheeks and pushed to the ground in the toilets while your classmates laugh. All this happening to you everyday!. You've reported it, your mum has reported it multiple times and the bullies have been 'spoken to' but nothing changes. You would simply teach your dc to make a clever remark, Ok DM of the year!

I didn’t. School did fuck all. Then I did, he laid the bully out after getting attacked yet again and the bullying has stopped.

Yup!

No, teach them self defence by all means but don't raise your child to be violent. You're failing them before they've even started. We all know of local stories where someone died from one punch.

Don't be nonsensical. The point I'm making is that even when you do try to get away, a knife can be drawn on you.

Yes I absolutely would be not only ringing the school but going down there and demanding they take very severe action against the perpetrator, up to and including suspension, expulsion and even police intervention if necessary. Except that I wouldn't have to as our secondary school already has a robust zero-tolerance policy on violence of any sort.

Hitting back continues the cycle of violence and escalates it. A violent bully is more likely to be angered by being punched back, and to become even more violent. Plus, the 'victim' no longer has any justification in reporting the bully if they are also using violence. So the violence gets hidden from the authorities rather than being dealt with by them.

No. I teach them that hitting is what weak people do when they feel out of control & lose control over their emotions.

I teach them that it achieves nothing and that often getting in a last clever or well thought out remark leaves a longer impression.

Yep, they talk about The Street actually!

You’ll be glad you’re retiring from all the carry on in schools now!

So do you advocate everyone carrying a knife in case they need to 'defend' themselves against someone with a knife? As above, two wrongs don't make a right. I work in Crown Courts and they are full of young men who strongly believe they were in the right when they reacted violently to someone threatening them. The vast majority are found guilty and sent to prison. So, no, I will continue to tell my son that violence is never acceptable.

That sounds like it. In many schools, the dining hall area is also a thoroughfare and is referred to as "The Street".

In some of the schools, the tables are packed away before and after lunch hour.

I bet it is the same design.

I’ll need to look up BAM construction but the layout I mean is one where the dining hall is the centre of the school with stairs at one end and wraparound balconies, so you can look over the balcony and see directly into the lunch area. The classroom areas are off of the dining room area, in separate wings.

Sort of like a spider, where the body is the lunch area and the legs are the teaching areas, if that makes sense. 🕷

No I bloody don’t! Two wrongs don’t make a right!