School Safeguarding Concern

[ItsMyGoldenHour]

Name changed as outing. The week before half term I got a call from school to say my son had fallen and possibly broken his arm. I took him to hospital and contacted the school as I could tell I wasn’t getting the whole story from my son. They told me as far as they knew he had fallen and their concern was getting his arm attended to.

I took him to hospital and he had snapped the bone ja shad a fracture and was lucky not to need surgery. The following day I had a call from the head of year asking if I knew what had happened. I told her I was told he’d fallen but didn’t believe it. She then went on to tell me that an older boy had come over to my sons friendship group on the school field at break time and bet them they couldn’t push one of the others over. The teachers story is my son agreed which he insists he didn’t but was pushed over. This resulted in the broken arm. They had taken statements from his friends and agreed it was more rough play than anything serious and more stupidity than maliciousness.

My son has come home today and told me that one of his friends has gone to hospital with a suspected broken arm as someone had slide tackled him on the field at break ‘as a joke’.

I really feel like I want to contact the school again and raise concerns about this as how can two children break their arms in a few weeks as a ‘joke’.

My son doesn’t want me to ‘be a Karen’ but surely this needs addressing? I don’t know what the answer is but it sounds like no one is supervising anything as no teachers/staff saw this happen to my son or this boy.

If kids are being dared to do things, the school needs to be clamping down hard. Have you seen the story about the kid who died this week in Scotland, by the sounds of it because of some sort of dare game at lunchtime?

There's always going to be the odd scuffle and fall, but it sounds as if there may be more going on here.

School Safeguarding lead here. You would be entirely reasonable to contact the school about this. "Rough play" that goes to far and leads to injury does happen, unfortunately. But schools don't just throw up their hands and say "oh well, shit happens!" when a kid breaks their arm on school premises. There are procedures that have to be followed. Two broken arms in the space of a couple of weeks, especially where the boys are in the same friendship group, is really unusual and definitely warrants further investigation!

Yes definitely say something.

It is better to potentially be over reacting than have this carry on.

As a teacher I have to report even small concerns as these could create a much bigger picture.

We had a similar thing happen just a few weeks ago where students were harmlessly doing dares and it was just fun stuff but it escalated and resulted in sexual assault.

This was only found out because 1 student overheard what happened and was brave enough to report it.
As it was ‘friends’ who were doing it, none of them wanted to dob their friends in and get them in trouble or be seen as the snitch.

Without that 1 student saying something these things would still be happening and still escalating.

I work in a secondary school with the year 11s and the "thing" before the exams was to kick their friends in the calf so obs they would fall to the floor. Unfortunately they did it to a child who has a bone condition and it snapped a bone, he missed 2 months of school before his exams. He is coming in to the exams on crutches and still has his leg in a pressure boot.

The school sounds terrible !