@Myothercarisalsoshit
If it is a good school there will be lots of things going on in the background. I suspect the child has some form of SEN or Social Emotional / Mental Health issue. The school cannot discuss this with the parent of the other child. It would be unprofessional and unethical. I have been a teacher for over twenty years and have seen quite a few children who present like this. There is always something going on in the background. Of course, when your child bears the brunt it can be very upsetting and the parents will want to see justice done. But what is justice in this situation? The police categorically will not act against a child with SEN. The school is probably trying to get reports, CAMHS, the Ed Psych etc but these things take time. This is a consequence of schools being staved of funding, expected to accept more and more children with complex emotional needs and the dearth of places in Special schools. OP I understand you're upset and your need to advocate for your child. I feel that the school have been remiss in not supervising the other child properly and putting mitigations in place such as separate lunchtimes / playtimes etc. I would still try and work with them to find a solution if your child still wants to attend the school. But don't expect the other child to be permanently excluded as the school can't do that if the child has SEN.
I agree with this.
Advocate for your own child’s safety in a calm and measured way, by following policy and procedure and working with the school, you should be able to come to an agreement where they put plans in place to prevent future incidents. In my dc’s case that involved retraining staff and lunch supervisors re playground duty, planning where staff stood at break and lunch times to ensure all lines of sight were covered, so no corners where things could occur unseen. They generally do a mix up of classes in upper juniors anyway, so they made sure my dc and the bully were put in opposite halves of the school year so they were rarely together and increased monitoring and supervision of the bully.
Prior to the formal complaint, school did nothing to ensure the safety of my dc, no matter how bad it got. In our case, the formal complaint led to school taking action to safeguard my dc and the bullying stopped, purely because the other child no longer had the opportunity. What is sad is, what didn’t happen was appropriate intervention and support with the underlying cause(s) for the other child, which is how things escalated at secondary, ultimately destroying both their life and that of their victim. So both children, were utterly failed in that respect. I actually suspect, having had to fight for my own child’s support, this was more down to the LA than the school.
Following procedure to advocate for your child is not a bad thing, as some on here have suggested. If the other child has SEN or social/emotional/MH issues, the school will (or should be) be gathering evidence of need, to support any assessments they have been requested. Without gathering this sort of evidence and showing that they have tried various strategies already, it will be very hard for them to access support for the child. By following procedure, you are actually putting the incident on record, which is more evidence for them and the needs of both children will be looked into and ‘hopefully’ addressed.
I wish I had known to put in a formal complaint sooner, as my dc is still dealing with the MH and self-esteem issues that directly result from what he went through.