To involve the police in bullying...

[indigox]

DS11 is in his first year of secondary school, since starting a group of children have been bullying him, and more often than not this has involved him being punched repeatedly in class, or stabbed with pens/pencils. The school have done next to nothing about it and its continuing. I'm getting really fed up of sending my child into an environment to be abused everyday.

Now ultimately this is assault, and these pupils are just getting away with repeatedly assaulting my child - AIBU to start reporting this to the police?

Yes and have a word with the kids' parents! The school in my experience will do absolutely nothing. You have to protect your son yourself

I’d tell the school that if they don’t take it seriously then you will be contacting the police. Let them know that you mean business.

Yes but also report to the board of governors and ofsted.

what did the senior member of staff at the school say, when you discussed this with them?

Bullying must never be brushed under the Lino. Every single time it has to be called out. So police absolutely fine.

@XelaM

Yes and have a word with the kids' parents! The school in my experience will do absolutely nothing. You have to protect your son yourself

Don't approach the other child(ren)'s parents.

Follow the Anti-bullying policy the school has. To the letter.
Step by step
If you've done that, escalate to the Board of Trustees/Board of Management of the school. At that point, you can say that because this has been happening for X months, your next step will be to involve the police as it's assault and it's happening during school time and you feel that you're son is not in a safe environment.

In my experience, the police won't want to know.

It's a school matter. In their eyes.

I hope you have better luck than we did.

I suspect the police will just refer you back to the school especially for punching and stabbing with pencils - IME they only tend to get involved in the serious assaults. Find the complaints procedure and anti-bullying policy and then start a formal stage 1 complainant. Highlight the anti-bullying policy and where they are failing to follow it. Do not at this stage start copying in Ofsted and the governors. You’ll need the governors if you want to escalate to further stages and if you start copying them in too early it makes it very difficult to find someone to investigate and then enough to form a panel later on.
Keep records of everything in writing and make sure that any deadlines are stuck to. Any phone conversations follow up with in an email saying further to our conversation on X date you agreed X and Y and they will be done by Z. Be a very polite and persistent nuisance.

@LookItsMeAgain Unfortunately from experience, schools fo absolutely nothing about bullying and whilst you're waiting gor the school to deal with it or for the board of governors etc to respond, your child is suffering every single day.

Confront the bully and/or his parents head on to make it stop!

Your poor ds. I honestly couldn’t send my child to school under these circumstances. I’d keep her home with me.

I am so sorry for your poor son .
Thankfully so far i have no experience of this , 2 of my kids are adults and the youngest is 13.
I think i have always been vigilant about bullying with a plan at the back of my mind if needs be , as this worries me .
What i do know is that a school that is dismissive of bullying wouldn't be a place that i would trust to keep my child safe .
I would be looking at other schools and until i found the right one i absolutely would not be sending him in , he must be worried out of his mind not knowing what is going to happen to him each day .
I don't know whether i would involve the police , even if i wanted to ! for fear of reprisal but i would wipe the floor with the school for not keeping him safe .
I hope this gets sorted out for you very soon .