Is my child in danger at school?

[Softheart15]

Hi, a boy in my daughter’s year punched her friend in the throat and kicked another in her stomach, he recently struck again on another child but this time much worse, kid ended up
in hospital again unprovoked! Turns out he’s got anger issues and does MMA so lashes out randomly and whoever is there gets it! School are brushing his behaviour under the carpet but I’m worried and have raised this with the head only to be dismissed as have other parents.He was suspended for two day so we’re all waiting for him to strike again but he gets worse with each attack. I spoke to
some of the parents and turns out he’s been doing it inside/outside of school for years! His parents are total Aholes and don’t care and his mum even told another mother to talk to her and not the school but I don’t want it to be my child next. Am I making a big deal for nothing?

https://www.isc.co.uk/schools/sub-pages/safeguarding-children/ You need to do some more research, but from the 5 mins I've done, isc, appears to be the equivalent to Ofsted for private schools.

Again, and with respect, you just cannot know that for certain. School cannot disclose such things.

@Macaroninecklace theres loads of us looking at different secondary schools, such a shame as the school has a great reputation externally due to its age but completely failed with safeguarding and is putting its own interest ahead of protecting the children.

@ReadingInTheRain583 actually I can because there are no records of hun when I spoke to them and explained the situation. Even though they sympathise, the told me what they told the other parents, the school needs to do a referral.

Slightly off topic, but I watched 'Crimewatch Live' this morning, and they featured a young man who died from ONE PUNCH, as a music festival. This really hit home with me, how easy it is for an angry person to kill someone with one lucky/unlucky punch. Therefore, if this school isn't capable of handling a child with violent tendencies, then I would be taking my child out of there right away.

Also, as a teenager in school, I was punched in the face by a lad who was 2 years above me, simply because I told him to 'watch out', after he accidentally banged his school bag into me. I reported it to a teacher, but absolutely NO action was taken. because the staff were scared of the boy/man, who was over 6 feet tall, and well built. This was in the days before violence became the problem that it is in schools today, and thankfully I wasn't badly hurt. However, if the school feel they are unable to deal with violence, then surely THEY should be calling in the police? This sort of behaviour just IS NOT acceptable, and shouldn't be swept under the carpet for ANY reason, so if school won't or can't deal with it, then the police MUST be involved.

@stichguru spoke to both, ISI referred me to DoE who said it’s actually the ISIs remit. No wonder so many people give up, no one wants to know…

Social services absolutely are not going to disclose anything to a random who phones up asking questions 😂

@FranceIsWhereItsAt the police unfortunately won’t take any action because my child has not been attacked. Even though I told them about the past crimes, so it’s now down to the parents of the kids who have been attacked to report it.
This thug is definitely capable of killing someone, I guess that’s what his MMA teaches him! such a shame as I and some other parents have tried our hardest to prevent this but besides an. Sympathetic ear no one can help!

ver 10 years old and the child has criminal responsibility for behaviour so yes police report is a must. Parents need to report each individual incident.

Formal complaint to the governors

@ReadingInTheRain583 actually called to report thug but he’s not on their system!

You can't report him to the police, he hasn't attacked your child.

He very much does have SEN, he has SEMH (social, emotional and mental health) needs. School should not be informing you whether or not he is on the SEN register; it's not your business, particularly since your child has not been attacked.
You say he is just a rich thug whilst acknowledging that his parents don't appear to care about him much

Social services should not be telling you he's not known to them, just saying thank you for the report.

Frankly all you can do is tell the head that you are concerned enough for your daughter that you are looking elsewhere for high school places and that is entirely down to the apparent lack of safeguarding of other students in the presence of a lad who is known to need additional support around anger management and doesn't seem to be being effectively supported by school.

The other stuff is hearsay and gossip or restricted info you have no right to.

Sometimes children end up hospitalised in an unintentional way. It's very distressing for the family but it's important when maintaining perspective. There's a big difference between a kid, say, sitting astride someone on the playground and punching their head or banging it on the ground until they pass out and so they are hospitalised, versus shoving someone once in temper and they fall over awkwardly and break their wrist. Both times children are hospitalised but the intention and levels of violence are entirely different.

If I were a police officer and a parent rang me up and said "there's a violent 10 year old at my daughter's school, no he hasn't attacked my daughter but someone else got hurt, go and DO something" my eyes would be rolling so far back in my head that I may never see forwards again.

Gosh that's dismissive @EinsteinsFineWine neither of your examples of violence are ok regardless of level of intent.
And neither SEN or SEMH or anger issues should be seen as 'oh well then' when the child is violent.

I am not saying that violence is ok, or that shoving someone who then falls and gets hurt is acceptable. I am saying that knowing only that someone was hospitalised doesn't give sufficient information. You can't assume that a child acted with the intention to seriously hurt. It is a different scale of concern if the child was deliberately violent enough to serious hurt, eg by stabbing, versus the hurt being an unfortunate byproduct of the situation.

And whether it was intentional or an accidental outcome of a less serious attack it is still wrong and something school must deal with, but they aren't going to tell all and sundry how they are dealing with it. Unless your child was the victim, it's not your business.

I am saying that OP has no right to information regarding this boy. Neither school nor social services are going to be able to tell her anything. You can't report someone to the police - especially a 10 year old - when they haven't done anything to you.

I have a lot of sympathy actually, it must be horrible. But a bunch of people going hysterical and persuading OP to report a 10 year old who has done nothing to her family to the police is just over the top. They can't act on that.

Also, I gave specifically said what OP can do, which is point out that whatever support this child is being offered is inadequate as it isn't safeguarding the other children. That isn't me saying this child has SEN and therefore carte blanche to do as he pleases. School is clearly not doing enough. However, OP cannot do anything direct or be party to any information about the child, especially as he hasn't hurt her daughter. She can only complain about the school's actions around ensuring the children - all of them - are safe and free from fear.

@EinsteinsFineWine punching a girl in the throat sounds pretty intentional to me to cause maximum damage. As for the child hospitalised, for an unprovoked attack in which he could have kicked, pushed or even punched him but he did much worse to cause maximum damage. Of course accidents happened, every parent knows that but this thug knows exactly what he’s doing, is becoming more dangerous each time and shows no remorse to his victims!

@Softheart15

As I keep saying
You are not unreasonable to be very concerned indeed about how the school plans to safeguard other children.

However, as you are not yet directly affected - and tbh even if you were - GDPR means there is a very limited amount of info that will be shared with you. You have no right to know if school has referred him to social care, or the police. You cannot yourself refer him to the police as he has done nothing to you or your family directly.

All school is likely to be able to say to you as a concerned but not directly involved parent is that they are aware of the situation and dealing with it.

You are entitled to counter that whatever they are doing is not working since there have now been several incidents and they are escalating.

I feel for you as in a similar situation I too would be concerned. However the law is the law!

You need to be careful with what you are doing too. You seem to reporting a 10 year old every where you can think of based on hearsay. This could be considered harassment. Would you be comfortable with group of parents doing the same to your child based on rumours and gossip?

@IOSTT no girls and boys, thug seems to be intelligent enough to do it when he thinks he can get away with it. Just found out that his parents go on a massive PR drive every time he strikes so unfortunately looks like some parents are falling for it ☹️

You were warned upthread that the police couldn't do anything with a report from you as your child was not a victim. I'm curious why you went ahead?

@Coruscations because I have a duty of care towards my child and others!

Take a breath and think about it logically. The boys parents contact the police and say Softheart15 is harassing my child. They contact the school who in your opinion will say 'we have no concerns about the boy'. They have evidence that you have made 'malicious' reports about this boy to them and SS. You need to step back. Talk to the school. If you're not happy, withdraw from school. But leave the child alone.

My daughter has ADHD and if she did this I would be nothing but apologetic to the parents of the other child, I wouldn't attempt to defend my child's actions because it's totally unacceptable, ADHD or not.

You are in av difficult situation and it's oe that we have recently come through. Again, a private school that refused to properly deal with one boy punching my child ( his nose was broken) and the repeatedly attacks by him and his two bullying friends. My son (then 8) had no chance when repeatedly surrounded by 3 of them. The school played it down,made excuses. When my son talked about suicide, I reported the attacks to the police and rang the office to ask for the safeguarding governor's contact details, to make a formal complaint. The bursar then rang the head to let her know I had called and was making a complaint. The head told me: "If you think you are going to complain about me, you need to start looking for another school."

To fast forward, the bullying continued by one boy (the main bully left) and my son was diagnosed with PTSD. I was too scared to follow through with complaint to the governor. The head began questioning the credentials of the trauma therapist, who Kidscape employed to help us, and who wrote the report citing PTSD and that my son was still being bullied on school and was not safe.

The level of stress was horrific. Funnily enough, the one boy who continued to bully my son, slowly gave up as his parents decided to pull him out at the end of that term. They had not accepted the school's sanctions and did not accept he had bullied my son. The mum spent all of her time making counter allegations against my son. Everyone of which was rejected.

My son started to become extremely distressed again in the mornings, begging not to go into school. The headmistress was calling him into her office everyday and telling him to leave. "You're making me and everyone stressed, why don't you just leave?."
She questioned him about what school he might go to, where we had looked around and told him if he didn't tell her, she would call him back the next morning and the next, until he told her.

She was meant to be overseeing a safety plan for my son, agreed with teh trauma therapist, but she made him write out what she told him to - that he was not being bullied. My son said his hands were shaking, and his heart racing and "my eyebrows stayed up" and that he kept making mistakes and she made him start again. He was clearly having panic attacks.

Then she started over punishing him. She was extraordinarily hostile and nasty to my little boy who could not get away from him. She was awful to me. She made it clear that she was angry because we had threatened to make a complaint. The other two sets of parents had put in complaints about her because they did not accept their sons had bullied mine.

In short, she made my sons life hell. She forced him out because I had tried to contact the governors and because she was panicking about the PTSD report.

I pulled my son out. I told the governors. They told me it hadn't happened ( the head bullying my son) but obviously admitted my son had been bullied by the 3 boys. The head re-wrote the 18 months of pupil bullying to "3 main incidents".

This was at a private school outside of York, towards Hull. The governors were only concerned about the school's reputation. The head lied to them about what she did.

It has taken over a year for my son to recover and he is still scared and distrustful of staff.

Very best of luck to you. It is very unfair, but in the private system, they are more concerned about fees and people leaving ( in our case the 3 bullies all had siblings at the school and that is why they were never properly punished for repeatedly attacking my son).

That's awful @EstHall
I think I would have publicly shamed the school on SM afterwards.

I hope your son can put this behind him. Sadly, I know how much impact bullying leaves on a young person, and it will take time