How disruptive does a child have to be to be removed from Primary School?!

[Juggletits]

Ongoing saga at our primary school. One child has been hugely disruptive since day one - attacking other children (stabbing with pencils, stamping on chests, stomach punches, facial damage with nails or sports equipment amongst many others), attacking teachers, throwing chairs, upending tables and regularly trying to escape.

Last term they brought a pocket knife in to school and showed it to other children, cut his own trousers and threatened other children that he "could stab them"

There is an ever growing list of assaults and incidents against many children and the parent community is absolutely baffled as to why the child has not been removed. They clearly need serious and ongoing support and our school is not set up for a child with such a level of additional needs.

The reason from the HT is that "certain thresholds haven't been met"

Does anyone know what these thresholds are from a legal/professional point of view?

It has reached the point that parents are keeping their children out of school because they are not safe in the classroom.

Multiple emails have been sent to the school, Academy Trust, Ofsted and MARU

What more can be done? An entire school is being disrupted by one child - this cannot be right?!

parents squared upto a child??? Jesus where do you live?

If they have additional needs it can be tricky.

It sounds like his needs are not being met hence the behaviour. School can't just exclude as they have to demonstrate they've done everything possible to support him and some schools, frankly, don't do what they should be.

Keep making complaints and ask how they are safeguarding other children and ensuring this child gets appropriate support too.

Point his mum to the Ipsea website.

The school needs to buy in training, because if the adults can't anticipate escalating anger, pre-empt and manage such behaviours, it sounds like there isn't enough expertise in the school. Surely all senior managers must have received some training in knowing what resources are needed.

It's awful. There was a boy like this in the year above my DD and it was so disruptive.

What is worrying is that if/when he really injures a child there will be investigations and platitudes but doesn't undo the harm caused.

Personally I would try and arrange a 'strike' and gather the parents and the children to attend the LEA office enm-masse demanding that action is taken.

I would also look to move schools

Nice 🙄they basically bullied a family out of the village

How long before a pencil is stabbed in a child's eye and they are blinded.

I hope those parents were arrested for bullying and intimidating a child ?

Small local school, close knit community...

The situation has been going on for at least 3 years, with severity of incidents escalating to the point that parents are talking to each other and have been sharing their child's experiences more and more. There is now a list of incidents being compiled to send to the Governers, Academy Trust, council and multi agency referral unit along with copies of each parents personal email detailing the events in more depth.

We've agreed to create a dossier of information as individual complaints appear to be being ignored and its felt that a collective action will have more clout.

There are at least 4 images of children with facial injuries caused by gauging/hitting or having an object thrown at them.

At least 2 of these still have a visible scar on their eyebrow or cheek

Jeez bringing in a knife?! Sorry but I’d be up complaining til they were sick of the sight of me and something was done. SEN issues/ bad home life or not, I’m never risking my child’s life/ wellbeing for the fear of coming across ‘not PC’! What are the school waiting for exactly?

If the child has special needs or is vulnerable then extra supervision is very clearly required

Or a change of environment should surely be considered. Taking a knife into school should be reaching the threshold to remove the kid I would have thought!!

Ridiculous....they are literally waiting an incident to happen. I would not allow my child to be put at risk by this kid

If children are being physically attacked and being threatened with a knife I think it's time the police were involved. Whether they will do anyhing is another matter. But nobody seems to be doing anything to stop these incidents. II agree with letter to head teacher and governors and copy to Local Authority. And ask for a risk assessment for your child.

I’m afraid I’d be reticent so send my child in, OP. It just sounds like a matter of time until a serious injury happens.

Yes, surely this warrants a SS referral. The school would never be able to disclose this though but I imagine if the home life is so bad that they’re working with SS already.

There was a very similar child at my DD's primary. The head wouldn't do anything about it. Letters to the head, to the board of governors were all met with hand wringing and "we're handling it". When he sexually assaulted my DD I pulled her out and moved her to another school. There was nothing else to be done.

If the child is under the age of criminal responsibility then I doubt there's much the police can do. If the child is 10 or 11 then perhaps the police might act but I think they and the CPS are reluctant to put young children into the criminal system.

OP has stated that the school is an Academy. You buy in to the neo-liberal academy principle, you can't then complain to the LA, who have to pick up the pieces when the privatisation model fails.

"Buy in"?! 75% of schools are academies. Parents often have no choice in the matter.

Write to the governors and report the knife incident to the police

You could also advise the school that you’ll be approaching local media. That’ll be unpopular with some but if it was my child being impacted I wouldn’t hesitate

I don’t think I’d send my child in to school under the circumstances. If the child in question is able to bring a knife and is still not removed I would honestly look at moving schools. I am empathetic to a ND child with a difficult home life but not at the expense of my DC’s safety.

Honestly, you have zero chance of making the school exclude this child. The school aren't going to just exclude a child because of pressure from you. If the child is SEN there is probably no suitable provision for them elsewhere. You are going to have to suck this up until you child moves to secondary school I am afraid.

It will probably continue until there is a more serious injury to themselves, another pupil or a teacher. At that point the school will have to take action because there is now a proven track record of them causing serious injury. Until then the disruption is easier to tolerate because it's quite minor - yes it ruins it for the other children and no parent likes to think of their child being hit etc - but schools aren't interested until there is something so serious they are forced to be.

This sounds a nightmare. Whilst undoubtedly there are issues to be dealt with by whatever agencies, it does make you wonder how many children have their school lives quite considerably disrupted and how long for by a small number of children that are so extreme. Sad that everyone has to endure this being looked into at the pace of a snail on tranquilizers

How old are they OP?

Carrying a knife and ABH are both criminal offences, it may be worth getting in touch with the youth offending team in your area (or threatening to).