School Incident Between Children

[chocolatecakeluvva]

Last week mine & another 2 children were attacked by another child during play time. This child attacked our kids by strangling them and causing marks on their face & neck, punching one of them in the head. The school gave him 1 day internal exclusion, however the child was out at playtime in a different playground with younger children the day after the incident. Then back in class the following day.
Yesterday this child has attacked another child in the class again strangling & hand over the mouth. school has told the parents of the victim this was isolated incident, however I have told them this has happened last week.
Ive had a meeting with the HT and not really happy that it’s been brushed under the carpet.
Where can I go with this? I was advised child protection or ofsted.
please advise, many thanks

Ofsted won't do anything until you've followed the schools complaints procedure. I'm assuming primary age?
Request meeting with headteacher
The question from you should be what are they doing to keep your child safe from harm.
They won't be able to discuss the other child with you or what the sanction has been, equally they wouldn't be discussing your incident with the other parents from the latest incident. Be aware that to permanently exclude a primary age child is extremely difficult and the head teacher has to have a cast iron case of all the interventions that have been tried.
Ask for the meeting to be minuted and clear actions to be taken.
Often schools are dealing with different situations to how they present to other parents, 'violent' child may be waiting for assessment or a new placement etc. This means that your focus should be what are they doing/putting in place to keep your child safe.
If the outcome of the meeting still leaves you dissatisfied then you can escalate to the chair of governors. If you haven't had the heads meeting first, then the governors have to pass it back to the headteacher.
Check the schools complaints procedure and anti bullying policy and follow it to the letter.

@chocolatecakeluvva horrible situation how is your dc? Did you get photos of injuries?
Sadly in similar experience, school very much tried to shut it down and lots of 'be kind' and being told 'your child needs to learn to move out of the way...' also kept being told these were isolated incidents....but then finding out this child had attacked many others.
As @Lightuptheroom has said things only happened when all the parents were putting concerns (not 'complaint' natch) in writing.
Voicing anything about dc regularly being assaulted as an issue was very much not acknowledged but as a 'concern' seemed better responded to.

age of the child makes a difference - if he is 10 or older than its a police matter for a start
and I would be speaking to safe guarding person / plus school governors

How old is the attacker?

And do you know who at the school told the other parents it was an isolated incident? It's possible that whoever was dealing with it simply didn't know about the attack on your child, but if they did, that level of dishonesty is really worrying as it means you won't be able to trust what the school tell you.

Agree that in your meeting you need to make the focus what the school are doing to keep your child safe. If your child is young, though, I might start looking at other schools, especially if it appears they are untrustworthy.

You have to file a complaint with the school. Ask them for their complaints procedure and follow the process.

My son was 'sucker punched' when he was in Yr 6 by a boy who was notorious for attacking other kids. He spent a night in hospital with concussion. When we complained, the school said he, the attacker was from a broken home. In hindsight, we should have gone to the police as this was assault. I would encourage any other parent to report to police as these thugs don't learn, they just become adults who attack.

OP were you told it was an isolated incident when it happened to your child? If so, you might ask around and see if that's true (unless you've already decided to move schools - not much point then). Don't try and rile the pitch forks, but if the school are deceptive about what's going on you may have to do work to coordinate complaints by parents of affected children to make them take more action.

Interesting what CaptainFuture says about wording it as "concern" rather than a "complaint", though.

Just to say that you can report it to ofsted without going through any other complaints procedure… ofsted will investigate and contact the school.
(typo corrected so it made sense!)

At my DD’s old school parents were also given a “it’s an isolated incident” line. Then when parents found out from each other that it was not and that this child was regularly violent to other children, the school sent a letter telling all the parents off and telling them not to discuss things like this with each other. Easier for them if the parents all think it’s an isolated incident.

If they do this, then the school, have in written issued something that can be investigated if parents remain unhappy. They remain accountable for their actions. You would have to keep going through the correct channels and understand that it might be easier for you to remove your child from the school in the interim...

Age, sex of "attacker" "victim(s)" and circumstance are needed.

How old are the children involved? This is importantly as to whether you can and should involve police.
Document any injuries. Medical attention if needed.
can the school keep your child safe? If not can you pull them out?

So sorry. Don’t worry that by escalating it you are harming any of the children. The attacker may actually get the help they need.

This is appalling. I work in a secondary school and this would likely be a permanent exclusion. Make a formal complaint and chase it.

I would think the school are possibly working with other agencies to help this troubled individual but they can’t share that with everyone. It’s not a good situation but I doubt it’s being ‘brushed under the carpet’. If you are concerned by all means speak to the HT but please have compassion for all the children concerned.

The school are already lying, I’d consider the police at the outset. Schools are notorious for brushing this type of thing away as much as possible.

If they tell you they will keep them apart, gets specifics, how? How long etc. Follow up with an email. Create a paper trail.

What ages are the children...

Strangling is serious to be completely honest id ve looking at the police and pressing charges. A child could die or be brain damaged

How they are handling this child is none of your business. However, their first job, above all else, is to ensure the safety of the children in their care. If you are concerned this could happen again, talk to them about how they are going to prevent that. If they try and shoo you away, find the complaint procedure and start from the beginning.

How often does it happen?

All the time, I work with behaviour in schools, and am shocked by how often a sanction set by staff is removed by those higher up or the behaviour policy isn’t followed, or the victim
is told to stay away from the other child, which is often impossible if they are in the same year.

The likely hood is the other child is involved with outside agencies and is being supported by the school, but this isn’t op’s concern. The school needs to safeguard both children, and op needs to concern herself with safeguarding her child.

I would not be happy with this OP. I would be asking the safeguarding lead to refer this child for assessment by social care - going around strangling other kids, where are they seeing that? At home? If they do not refer, you can do so via NSPCC or direct to children’s services. As you are not a professional making a referral you can remain anonymous. The age of the child is important too. If they are 10+ the police need to be contacted.

I’m pretty sure they won’t!

That isn't what you were on about. You were on about schools lying to parents to sweep things under the rug not them removing sanctions or following the behaviour policy. I asked how often that happened that things are swept under the rug by lying.

Maybe in your school that happens often so I wanted to know how often is often? Please could you share some figures on this?

The safeguarding lead should certainly not discuss with OP whether there has been any referral of someone else's child or any SS involvement.

It could be they are being supported because of issues that the family are not aware of I agree.

They may not as there may not be underlying issues there.

What this child did was a choice behaviour and rightly so should be held to account for their choices.

I’m afraid this isn’t quite the case. Whilst Ofsted will take the complaint, in practice, they have no jurisdiction or capacity to investigate. The only exception to this is where they receive multiple safeguarding complaints or a ‘qualifying’ complaint, in which case they would inspect under Section 8. Any other complaints are referred to the local authority, who carry out the investigation on Ofsted’s behalf. Invariably the first question the LA officer will ask is ‘has the parent followed the school complaint process?’