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).