In light of the Austrian school shooting - in no way am I justifying or condoning the massacre that the shooter committed… but finding out he was severely bullied at school, which most likely played a part in why he did what he did, made me think of all the bullying report i see from the uk. Are schools doing enough about bullies? More often than not the bully’s get away with it and the victims are the ones being pulled out of school, changing classes, basically having to change because the schools can’t deal with it properly.
DS 17 who has ASD was bullied in year 7, it started because DS was sat in a seat the bully wanted to sit in despite the teacher doing the seating plan, for the next 3 months this kid wouldn’t leave him alone, we also learnt my son wasn’t the only one, he’d walk down the corridor calling year 11’s C**ts, pushed people into walls, became evident this kid had problems of his own. Even said to DS that DS probably rapes his sister and and several other disgusting things. Eventually one day he wouldn’t leave DS alone in the corridor and DS told him he didn’t really care. Boy saw red and started viciously attacking my son. It took 3 teachers to get him off, the kid was back in the following week, they kept trying to get us to move DS to the other half of the year, we argued why should we move DS when all his friends were this half of the year, he’s the victim, finally after a bit of threatening of county hall we won the battle. Before anyone asks, at the time they had a fantastic Sen department, the head of which fought our corner especially after the head of year said to us that maybe this school wasn’t right for DS, DS was adamant he wasn’t moving schools. They didn’t kick this kid out until half way through year 8 and even they he would hang around the school after because his mum basically refused all of the special needs schools offered to him. So then I had to take my high school aged son to and from school (8 minute walk) because of one bully. They dealt with the next bully slightly better albeit he wasn’t as bad as the first psycho,.
i honestly feel like more needs to be done, it’s almost like some schools are afraid of the bully’s too.