to think that this is not a suitable punishment for stabbing another child at school...

[ballstoit]

A Year 6 child at the junior school my DS is due to go to in September stabbed another child in the playground after school with a Stanley knife. He had carried the knife around all day, having brought it in from home and tried to stab the other child's face. The victim put their hand up in defence and was stabbed in the hand, and then the child was restrained by a parent before school staff also intervened.

The punishment, which according to the letter I have received tonight was approved by the police and 'Behaviour Support Team' in the council, is for the child to be kept in at lunchtime for a fortnight. The letter seems to be an attempt to calm the anger that a lot of parents feel about the incident. It doesn't detail the punishment but when I asked my DSs teacher she confirmed that this was the sanction the school had decided on.

AIBU to think this is not enough, and to be seriously concerned about my DS starting at this school in September?

[LeaveYourDignityAtTheDoor]

fairydoll That page is archieved and no longer applicable.

This Parliamentary Briefing Note is more up to date and advises that the age of criminal responsibility is 10.

[Omigawd]

@fairy @maryz re evil stabbee - clutching at straws methinks.....

Re sending your child to a different school - but that puts all the work, the onus, the hassle, the dislocation - on the victim. If there was a "victim support" that helped with that I might go with the flow, but there isnt.

I am also against hysterical petition signing by parents with incomplete knowledge of events, my solution however is to give them proper knowledge of events rather than force them to be hysterical petitioners.

[Birdsgottafly]

Part of the problem is not everyone 'believes' in SN (if he got a diaognosis) so it wouldn't alter the other parents opinions. Also there is still a huge stigma towards MH so if a child was found to have say schizophrenia, that could mean the child is a victim of a 'witch hunt' all of its life (and the family to). So arming the other parents with the facts wouldn't help. You sometimes cannot get professionals to agree on what intervention is needed, so how do you get other parents to be happy with whats in place.

The good thing would be that other parents would find out how little is actually available in some areas to help these children. But then enough may not care to change that because they want the child punished not helped.

I hear some very harsh views on here towards children from neglected or abused backgrounds on the basis that not everyone from an abused background behaves 'badly'. I wouldn't like to see the fate of such a child put in the hands of 'other parents'. It seems that a child has symphathy upto a certain age and then they are blamed from their actions which can be a reaction to abuse. Children do not learn what is expected of them if they live with aggression at home and if it is so wrong then how come they are living with it and 'society' allows it.

[sausagesandmarmelade]

I would want the kid removed from the school.

[sausagesandmarmelade]

Somewhere down the line, this child has been let down too. I just can't see any reason why a person so young would take a knife to school and use it if there wasn't something serious going on beforehand.

Am staggered by the above comment...absolutely staggered.

How old were the killers of Jamie Bulger?

We take too much of a softly, softly approach these days...and later on when the consequences so often result in the death of a child we hear there will be lessons learned, an enquiry or whatever!

It's too late then...way too late!

Children have a right to go to school and to feel safe within that school...and not to feel traumatised.

This child needs to be taken OUT of the school...and to receive the proper help that he needs until it is genuinely safe for him to be returned to mainstream education. For all we know he could be a psychopath in the making...

The parents of this school could petition together to get him removed.

[Birdsgottafly]

sausages- the boys who killed JB were let down, they should have had intervention (if not removed from their parents) much earlier. They also were out of school. I am glad you said 'psychopath in the making' at least you acknowledge it can be outside factors that cause such behaviour. Kick a dog enough you turn it vicious, it is about time that it was acknowledged that the same can be done to children (either physicaly or emotionally).

[EssentialFattyAcid]

Keeping the child in at lunchtime seems a laughable state of affairs.

Sadly, the primary school environment is one where children are not sufficiently protected from violent assaults from other children ime. They should have as much protection as adults in the workplace but they don't have this at all.

Going to another school probably won't make much difference in my view. There is is rightly a lot of emphasis on the children who are violent being helped and supported. What is wrong is that the choice of how to implement this approach seems to take very little regard for the safe environment of other children at school.

As a parent you want to keep your child safe and are legally entitled to expect schools to take the duty of care in school time. Schools are failing to provide this duty and you leave your child's life in poor hands. It is a disgraceful situation. I have tried to take action against my school to protect my child and got absolutely nowhere. Fortunately the child whose behaviour the school were unable to deal with eventually left.

[bigTillyMint]

I am quite shocked by the "punishment" and I work with children who do / are likely to do this kind of thing - normally it would be a fixed-term exclusion or possibly a move to a Pupil Referral Unit.

There may, of course, be extenuating circumstances that you don't know about, but that is pretty hard core, and most heads would do an immediate exclusion on hte basis of health and safety / safeguarding.

[Birdsgottafly]

btm- i think the child must have extenuating circumstances to be kept in school. Either that or the LA doesn't have space in the PRU for primary children, the OP will probably find that he has a key worker in the school also from now on.

[peanutbutterkid]

Sage words from MaryZ (as usual).

[Peachy]

One of the biggest problems is the acl ok places for kids like this to go.

DS1 is aggressive. He's less bad at school after I have worked my guts out on it for eyars but I have begged and begged becuase he could kill someone. probably me but SSD arent interested; he''s under the disabled chidlren's team and they have nothing to offer.

I've managed to get him a palce at a specialist ASD school for comp....... 2 kids got a palce. 38 were refused due to space. Many of those kids are as violent as ds1, I know a few of them.

PRUs are a notoriously bad placement for kids with SN, and at home exclusion place the carers at risk of the ciolence and any siblings as well.

None of this means it is OK for the kid to remain in school but often the options do not exist without someone being harmed down the line.

And yes 10 is the legal age of responsibility, trouble is ds1 at 11 might seem very able but he has no concept of cause and effect. He can't get that doing X will cause the police to do Y. he seems to believe he will just shrug and it will go away. I told SSD this, I told them I beleived I would die at his hands one day. they did offer something small for my other disabled son (help with transport to the summer schme all local kids access, I can't exactly drive both ASD kids to different schemes simultaneoulsy) but ds1- nada.

[TheOriginalFAB]

I would be removing my children from a school which allowed an attacker to stay in school.

The child who did it will have left when your other child starts school but I know that doesn't really help your emotions.

[EssentialFattyAcid]

fab "I would be removing my children from a school which allowed an attacker to stay in school."

I know where you are coming from, but I was in a similar situation and tried instead to address it with the school. I chose to leave my child at risk because I had no faith that other schools would be different. It is the SYSTEM that is at fault. It serves neither the children with aggression problems nor the rest of the children - it is not fit for purpose and we should be petitioning the government.

I am all for Riven's nappyhead protest on Whitehall and would do it again for this cause. I am generally pro inclusion (although I think parents of SN children should have decent options to make their choices from) but inclusion should never be at the endangerment of safety. There are too many LSAs who have insufficient training, insufficient specialist knowledge and inappropriately low pay supporting SEN children. Society pays the cost of this.

Peachy, you sound as though you are unimpressed by the support on offer, what is it that would be better?

[Peachy]

Essential

educational options for children with SN that that are easy to access- the 38 kids refused a palce at ds's school should ahve been able to access a decent provision but can't, it's the only ASD specific one in the county. I mean, 2 places per annum for a county with a city in? really? DS3 was non verbal and in nappies and it still took a total of around 2 years before we could move him to a decent provision. In his case he was at risk but the system is the same per child and as my tutor at uni (MA ASD) keeps saying: inclusion menas there being somewhere for every child to go that suits them; not just SNUs for those with severe SN, MS for the rest and nothing for anyone in between.

On a wider level I'd like to be offered aggression training but they don't to kids with AS locally (restraining etc). I'd like to be able to ask for soem occasional respite without being told that if we apply some other family will lose out who probably can;t shout as loud as me. I'd like there to eb some kind of emergency support for if DH si away where I could call and say ds1 is heading for meltdown as we have spent too many hours with the siblings locked in the bathroom for safety.

Actually sibling support is soemthing missing. i'd have run a group myself (was trying to) but there's no one eprson you can go to for help, just a list of people to apply to. I can mange an evening a week, but not endless meetings with people who want me to travel to different copunties to discuss my ideas and then just point me to someone else.

But it's univerally recognised there is nothing bar emergency support available any more. And then only for the more highly educated fighters. The post 16 services dept ehre offers proper help to people whoa re abusive towards their child or terminally ill.

[bigTillyMint]

Peachy, yes PRU's are not the place for identified (or identifiable) SEN, yet we have lots of statemented children as there are not enough special school places to go around

Having said that, we do our very best to meet their needs, and make an outstanding job of it

I agree about the keyworker / learning mentor/ inschool suport, but in our bourough, I would be amazed if there wasn't at least a fixed-term exclusion too.

[sausagesandmarmelade]

sausagesandmarmelade, how would you feel if the child was moved to your children's school?

Removing him from mainstream education (which is what I said in my post) would ensure he wasn't in contact with other children....any other children!

the law says that all children must go to school
That's rubbish.... How come so many children are home taught then?

Absolutely...no normal child would behave as this one has...which is why he should not be in mainstream education until he is deamed safe to do so. In the meantime the authorities need to find out why he behaved the way that he did...and get to the root of the problem.

[sausagesandmarmelade]

My concern is for the victim here..
To have been attacked by another child and have to face seeing that child every day. Who knows the emotional trauma that child may face...

OP I would not send any child of mine to that school...and I would tell the education authorities why.