To think that school should have rang me........

[kidsx4]

To say ds 13 had been assualted from behind by another pupil?

YANBU
I would have expected they would have rang you with something so important

Why? What good would it have done? Was he badly hurt?

By the time he came home with smashed nose and told me i rang school and all teachers had already left for the weekend so have got to wait till monday.

What was the level of assault?

Yes, they should have.

sorry kids, xpost

If the nose was broken, they should have contacted you, or if there was brusing/ swelling

It was that bad that he had to sit in nurses room with cold pack on his face all afternoon.

Was it assualt, or was it horseplay that went wrong ?

Either way they should have called you.

The school nurse should have rung you. I would guess that she thought the teachers rang you and they thought she rang you. Not excusing it btw as there should be a clear system and both should have checked with each other to ensure you got a call.

My nephew recently fell and hurt his arm during PE at secondary school. Asin the OP my nephew was deemed bad enough to sit the afternoon out in the nurse's room with an ice pack. He says that one of the teachers wanted to phone home for me (emergency contact)but that the nurse insisted it was OK and just to tell his parents when he got home.

So he endured a busy school bus home with a painful arm. We took one look at it and decided he needed to have it checked at A&E so my sister took him straight there. Turns out not only was the arm broken but the nature of the break meant that the broken bone was blocking some blood flow around the arm and they may need to operate to allow the blood to resume flowing!!

My sister was livid for many of the same reasons as OP. If it was bad enough to warrant sitting out all afternoon then it was bad enough to call me. As it was he came home with a badly broken arm squashed on a school bus and carrying his school bag. Who knows what extra damage was done by that journey? Lastly there was no letter explaining the circumstances of the accident.

Typical these things happen on a Friday so I called the school on the Monday morning and explained that my nephew was going to absent and why. I asked the ofice if the PE staff would need to talk to my sister about an accident report and was told no it would be dealt with internally. I explained that my sister was disappointed that we had not been contacted to tell us about accident and allow us to decide about collecting him early and I was told that the year head would call us back. That was before Christmas and we have never heard anything from anybody.

Of course my nephew being at that difficult age of 13 doesn't want the fuss of us chasing it all up with the school and so we have dropped it. But I was really surpised that there did not appear to be systems in place to deal with these scenarios, especially at that age group. If my nephew had said nothing to me when he came home then the arm might have been ignored until he was in a great deal more pain.

It wasn't horseplay ds was hit round the back of head then punched in face he dosen't even know who by.

I only asked.

Bentneckwine.... that is outrageous. Never mind your nephew not wanting to make a fuss, your sister MUST follow that up - not just the original incident, but the subsequent inaction. I'm by no means a "sue-'em" type, but this is a grave dereliction of duty and could one day have serious consequences for the school if someone does decide to sue them. They should sort out their systems fast. And take parental phone calls seriously.

I would expect a call about that. (DS1 is 13).

I also think your sister should follow that up bentneckwine.

Hi

I agree that it should have been followed up again..but my nephew has struggled to settle into school since moving from primary to big school and so I think my sister was not keen to rock the boat.

The only communication my sister received was a letter asking her to contact them about him being absent with no explanation. This was on the Wednesday after the accident..I had called the school on the Monday to say that his arm was broken and he would be off at least all week until a decision was made about whether the operation was required. Whoever I spoke to on the phone took all the details and said to send a note with him when he went back. So when they received this letter about him being absent I called the school (my sister is hopeless at things like that) and was told I needed to call every day to report him as absent!! So we did this and I did mention a couple of times to the secretary on those phonecalls that his arm was causing concern and asked if the PE staff needed something in writing from the GP to confirm the injuries for their accident report.
Every person I spoke to bluffed past the fact I was trying to find out what was being done about it without me needing to be
too rude. Since he has gone back to school there has been no further contact from anybody there to discuss the incident.

Thankfully my nephew was told last week that the hospital are happy with the healing and no operation needed at this point...if he had needed the operation then he would have been off school much longer and I think my sister would have made much more of a fuss.

Thanks for your interest...bentneckwine

Kidsx4,

Sorry to have hijacked your thread...but I do agree with you that if your child (which they still are at 13 and beyond in a high school) is involved in any kind of incident that requiries a vist to the school nurse and missing classes than it is an absolute must that you as a parent be notified.

This could be done by calling you at home or sending your child home with a letter. (My primary aged son has come home with a sticker on his jumper that said 'I bumped my head today' which was my cue to check his school bag for a brown envelope inside which was a forming detailing the nature of the injury, how it occured and any treatment given)

bentneckwine

Maybe there's a difference between primary and secondary, then, although I'm not sure why there should be. Our office staff (primary school) spend a significant portion of time attempting to call parents about any bump on the head, however minor. And there are a number of kids who long ago cottoned onto the the wheeze that they can spend the cold lunchtime play in the warm medical room if they just clutch their heads and say 'ouch.' The school feels it has to cover itself in case of the one incident that might be serious.

Hi Clam,

Yeah I agree with you that it must be different in a secondary school. As soon as I heard my nephew had spent the afternoon in the medical room I knew it had to be really painful. Teenage boys are not the most vocal species and my nephew would certainly rather suffer in silence than do anything to destroy his streetcred (showing my age now) in front of his equally non verbal friends. So for him to have confessed to a need to speak to a teacher and explain what was wrong he must have really known himself that it was bad.
PE teachers of male teenagers must struggle to encourage their children to be honest about any injury. Whereas in primary school if my son is anything to go by...there is a pride in any accidents. The bigger the bump and the more blood the better!! Although I suppose in primary there is the problem of identifying the genuine from the oscar nominees putting it on.

Rather them than me.

But as they say all is well that ends well. I do think that if the operation had been deemed as a necissity then my sister and BIL would have been up to the school to find out what had happened. The thing is we all know how easy it is for chldren to be inured in the blink of an eye...nobody was querying the PE staff's supervision or behaviour. It was more the fact that he was left all afternoon then sent home on the bus.

Thanks again for your messages,
bentneckwine