Fights in school, how often?

Depends what you mean by "fight" - low scale violence [one-sided bullying and/or part joking around] where one child slaps another around a bit - very common, a more or less daily?/weekly? occurence.

Something serious where one or more partipants gets hurt - hard to say... depends obviously on many things, including but not limited to: the size of the school [more pupils means, other things being equal, more fights]; the type of school [e.g. I'd other things being equal expect an all-boys inner city comp to have more fights per head than a co-ed grammar or private school in a leafy provincial setting]; how good a handle the school has on discipline; etc etc etc. I'm not sure that we as parents would always have a really good handle on how much of this sort of thing there really is.

DH has taught in the same school in a relatively affluent London borough for the past 15 years. There have always been occasional fights but in the last couple of years these have increased massively in both scale and aggression. There are sometimes girls fighting as well as boys. There has also been a large rise in the number of pupils who are known to be affiliated to gangs.

It's newsworthy in our house with 3 in high school. So must be quite rare. One of them is in quite a rough school too.

My DD has mentioned fights a few times - they are big news at her big mixed rural comp. I don’t feel that they make her unsafe at all though, it’s particular kids who fight with each other, not random attacks on kids quietly going about their business. Obviously it’s less than ideal but doesn’t feel like a big deal for her school experience.

Just counting my own boys --
and what you call a "fight" --

or maybe not. That any single DC is aware of, that staff would consider serious, I'd say 1-2 fights/fortnight. 220 pupils / year group, rural secondary.

I'm a secondary teacher - not at all normal!! We'd have parents up in arms about this. Have you contacted the school about it? It would be perfectly reasonable for you to do so.

Both my kids had never seen a fight at school they are 15 and 16 and at seperate schools. Last week the 16 yr old witnessed two fights and my 15 yr old one. One fight was two yr 11 boys fighting over a girl, another was 2 girls ripping each others hair out over a boy and another one was when a child from a different school managed to gain access at the the end of the day by borrowing a friends uniform and stealing a bike. Up until last week they had never seen a fight. Last week was 3 fights in 4 days!!! Both schools are outstanding but my DD said teachers were really scared because they have never had to deal with a fight before and it took them a while to break it up.

Laughing so hard at the wheelchair comment. Ex first aid lead here at an inner city comp and I would say a fight broke out at least once a week. Ranging from a scuffle to a full blown.

Never did run out with a wheelchair though 😂😂! But did have my radio and first aid box with me of course.

God I miss that job!

@Billsbill my DD is also at an outstanding high school with exactly the same problem. Nothing has happened to DD but I'm not happy she's being educated in that environment.
It's a rural high school (though we're not far from a city) & yet my friend's children go to an inner city high school & in a larger city where a fight is an extremely rare occurrence. Friends school is rated Good, but the school is very strict even down to what you have in your pencil case! Once children are on the school premises mobiles have to be put away & not used & if they are seen then the phones are confiscated until the end of the day. Generally pupils behaviour is excellent.
I'm wondering if it's a rural high school thing as other friends of mine (in another part of the country) have children at a rural high schools & fights are almost a daily occurrence......once again a so called outstanding school!
We are moving to another part of the country due to work so at least DD will going to a different school, one with better behaviour standards this time.

“Dd isn't bothered at all. I am though. I want to think my children are safe at school.”

She is not bothered
She is not unsafe.

If she is happy and doing well at the school stop fussing!

You tend to have additional staff on call for breaks and lunch when fights are more likely. Hence it depends on the cover for the day, the design of the school, the cohorts and if new children have affected dynamics and how the school deals with it. Fights do happen but it depends on the severity. If you asked the Governors about fights they would say there are none because they haven't been told about them. But on viewing PEX data you see children with several previous fights and tiffs and yet looking like angels before you.

Dd isn't bothered at all. I am though. I want to think my children are safe at school.
You keep saying about wanting your children to be safe, but there's zero evidence they're not safe.
Your DD isn't bothered. She's not concerned.
Most people on here have said that proper fights are rare and when they happen they tend to be between specific students with their own issues, not random attacks.
Many people have also said that occasional scuffles are just that, scuffles often to do with reasonable boys (typically) trying to seem the man but not really being that committed to the cause.

That's not to say proper fights don't happen. They do. But they're not the norm in most schools and most students aren't involved.

About twice a month in Dc’s Outstanding Comp in a v mixed area. It is a successful happy school, fights are skilfully dealt with very fast by staff.

It doesn’t affect anyone not involved. Pupils can either ignore and walk away, or cluster round rubbernecking and getting in the way of staff dealing with it.

I am sure your Dd will be in the ‘walk away’ category.

@Theresnobslikeshowbs I've laughed about this for years. The woman is a legend.

Ds has been involved in a couple.

One was on his way home from school. Another boy attacked him (ds has had problems with him and was being a bit mouthy and the otehr lad threw him to the floor and started trying to kick him but he's not very clever and chose hometime right outside the local primary school to do it so residents intervened). Ds made a calculated decision not to fight back at all as he reckoned there were so many adults around he was quite safe really.

The second time ds punched a boy. This lad had been bullying some of the girls and one of them was in tears and ds had been sticking up for them but he's a bit of a coward (as bullies often are) so waited until he had a large group of friends then cornered ds so he couldn;t escape and came towards him threateningly (lots of witnesses). Ds threw his drink over him and threw a punch in order to escape.

Both boys were sent to different areas to calm down and had to spend a day in isolation but secretly I think a lot of people (including the girl's mum) were quite pleased someone had stood up to the bully.

Ds has told me of a few other fights he's heard about or seen but he mostly spends his break times and after school in the music room rehearsing so is out of it most of the time.

Dd is in Y10, she’s never seen a fight at her school but a lot of her friends go to a different local school and she tells me that there are regularly fight videos posted online - this is a school regarded as good that people are desperate to get their dc into

DD is in Yr 9 at the local comp.

There have been a couple of fights since she started there but these are usually Yr 7 boys trying to look tough in front of the other Yr 7s.

The school comes down on them like a ton of bricks though. DD told me once how the teachers who broke up a fight had then rounded up anyone who had appeared to be cheering them on.

I don't think I've heard of any fights amongst the older students.

Mine are at an outstanding rural comprehensive and the children often talking of fighting, DD said it was daily. DS said in his year it was a traveller girl and think it was same in DDs year. Vast majority of the children are lovely and very gentle. It's very hard though as the one in DS's year is now just getting no education at all and rumours the girls can be made to marry at 12. It's very difficult for the school and I would prefer she was in a school but school has to protect other kids too.

That SENCO/Nurse comment made me laugh. Reminds me of our secondary school, we had a 'Matron' who was about 4 and a half foot tall, quite advanced years (it seemed so to a young person) and who everyone was scared of. Woe betide if you were having a scuffle and she came bombing over to split it up. One screech from her of 'break it up, NOW!' sent even the year eleven boys sprawling

The SENCo/ nurse runs out to the field with a first aid box and wheelchair to bring in any casualties

Wtf??? I’m sorry but this has made me laugh so much!!

Ds is year 10, he was involved in a bit of ‘pushing’ a few weeks into year 7, because he had a go at a boy for calling this other boy names as he was a red head and wore glasses. So Ds took offence to the name calling. Head of head phoned me and said she wasn’t at all concerned, because he was sticking up and trying to prevent bullying although he’d gone about it in the wrong way. So we laid the law down when he came home, how disappointed in his actions we were, but could understand it was coming from the right place etc. And the boys are now friends, and we have not had an incident since.

We actually spoke several weeks ago about ‘fights’ in school, as one had happened in another school, was filmed and sent around. Ds said apart from his pushing incident he’s never seen one in school. He did break up some year 7’s before last Christmas- but again it was some shouting, with one child crying, and he and a friend took the year 7 to the year 7 head of year, as he was afraid to go to class, and they didn’t want to leave him alone.

But that’s it, never any punches etc have happened. They are a 6th form high school too.

"Proper" fights are apparently about once a month (so some of these they only know about by hearsay so ...). There are verbal fights or minor scuffles most days though - depends what your DC means by "fight" I suppose. I suspect size of school must make a difference though - this is in a big school.

Bella
That's a good point. Even at the school I worked at where fights was more common, it was almost exclusively between students who had reputations for fighting, who'd wind each other up and point score for top dog position. It was all about ego and drama between specific students, not random attacks on others.

My friend teaches at a pretty rough school and from what he says they are not unheard of. Supervising lunchtime is pretty stressful...