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

I don’t know what you’re on about. No idea what 'look squirrel' means! (Edited to say I’ve just looked it up and apparently it’s about getting sidetracked, so I don’t see the relevance at all.)

I never said OP asked for all that info, or that "of course" those things are happening, I was simply pointing out that even though OP said "nothing seems to have been done", for all she knows a lot might have been done that the school can’t tell her about.

Gosh there's some nonsense spouted on this thread and all threads like this.

OfSTED won't do sweet FA until you've followed the school complaints policy. That will almost always be Head then Governors first.

Nothing at all about this incident is unusual, at all. It's despicable behaviour but it is behaviour that is happening in schools everywhere, every day. Any form of exclusion has to be heavily backed up by documentation and policy and is almost never going to be based on a handful of situations, no matter how serious they are. My teaching friend was stabbed in the leg by a child with a pair of tweezers he'd smuggled in from home, and he wasn't excluded. This is nowhere near, and I mean NOWHERE near, criteria for anyone to stomp around school and demand an exclusion.

Police will do absolutely nothing.

In my experience, you will have the most success if you target your requested outcomes as being to safeguard your DC, rather than punishing the other child. Things I have seen work in school settings - your DC having somewhere separate to play e.g. going with a small group of friends to a different playground, being allowed to play inside. Your DC being allocated an adult to supervise safe play by being close to them on the playground (often involves juggling staff break times but usually can be done). Your DC being allocated a buddy from an older class. Your DC being allowed to be collected at lunchtime. Etc.... if you come at it from the angle of 'how are you going to proactively safeguard my child from physical violence on the school site', rather than 'how are you going to punish that child so that he doesnt do it again', then you will have more luck with the school and waste less energy in directions you can't do anything about.

@TheQuietestSpace so with all that its the child who's being assaulted whose school life has to change? They end up being marked out as 'different' rather than consequences for the attacker?

What redtoothbrush 🪥 said.
Happened to us too. In a private school. We just removed our child. They refused to take any steps to keep child safe as 'recollections may vary'.
No wonder men are still beating up their partners when they are taught they can get away with it from school age.

@CaptainFuture yep. Awful, isn't it?

Absolutely. When did this change in schools happen. That all the focus and care is on the violent child? That it seems only their needs/wants are important and that there shouldn't be repercussions ever for their actions as that's 'not kind'.
I spoken to friends who's dc have violent and destructive pupils in their class, who rip art work and displays from walls, assault other children/staff,.throw furniture about and there's never anything done other than the other dc getting told to 'be kind and accepting'.....

@chocolatecakeluvva Even if the police do get involved they won't do anything but refer to social services, family soultions, and likely CAHMS for support with the child's aggression etc; which the school has likely done. Whilst he's at the age of criminal responsibility they try bit to criminalise, even older kids in fights will often just be referred to youth offending team to give them support. They also will be unlikely to recommend permanent exclusion and you cannot ask to do a report yourself or with the DSL to safeguarding. It's not your child and that's breaking GDPR rules. However you can ask for a better risk assessment and for the other child to be away from your child in the playground, classrooms etc (depending on the set up the school has). You can also ask for any extra support for him (access to mental health services, if he's being bullied or understandably shaken from what happened.

@TheQuietestSpace is right, if you complain to OFSTED now they will go back and say you need to have finished going through the schools complaint system. This is because they're getting too many vexatious complaints these days which also go to the LADO (when they have nothing to do with LADO issues), TRA, DfE etc. Not that your complaint is vexatious but as a result of them overwhelming the system, that's how they're dealing with it. The Education secretary has spoken about plans to set up 1 complaint system (after you go through the schools) to streamline it but will likely take a while. You could complain if your school is in a MAT to the MAT directly, if you still feel the risk assessment isn't good enough, but go to the school's governors first.

I started teaching nearly 15yrs ago and in my first year, I taught a child who used to be so violent and destructive to property that the entire classroom would regularly be destroyed. I had three new computers that year as she'd smash them with chair legs, she broke two whiteboard screens, she dislocated my shoulder. In the course of that year, we had training on 'safe holding' i.e. restraint training, we had a behaviour specialist tell us to evacuate all the other children from the classroom and leave her in there - this meant taking 29 children into the dinner hall multiple times a day and trying to teach them without any resources as they were left in the classroom she was destroying. The school paid out of their budget for educational psychology for her. Then they paid out of their budget for a 1:1 TA who had her nose broken so went off sick within two weeks and we spent the money on sick leave instead. The council paid for a padded room to be installed in our art cupboard, for her to be placed in but of course not restrained in so she just used to walk out. They paid for a 'nurture room' so she could spend her day trashing all the sensory resources that cost a fortune instead. None of the other children (who by this point needed the nurture!) were allowed in there as she would go ballistic if they touched her stuff. At around February half term, a group of parents literally created a protest complete with banners outside the school, and were then moved on and given warnings by the police - the irony being that I was literally restraining the child at the moment the police arrived and there was no suggestion of any help. More bites, cuts, scratches and bruises than I could label.

What happened to the child? Well, at the end of the year they moved on to year 2 and the cycle repeated again. The only difference was that there was only half a class left by the end of that year as parents voted with their feet. As did I, and the Year 2 teacher.

There is No. Point. Trying to get the school to exclude etc. They cant. Hands are tied. The only way to protect your child from these situations is to either vote with your feet, or come down like a ton of bricks on the specific ways that they intend to protect your child.

It's beyond awful and quite seriously one of the main reasons why my child is privately educated- not because you don't get badly behaved children there, but because the school can kick them out! Once they've weighed up the risk of other parents (read:money) leaving vs the cost of that one child's fees being taken elsewhere.

This. It’s beyond unjust and disappointing. My child was SA’d in the playground in primary school by another child in the class. The next day, she was taken into lunch time “Lego club”, whilst the perpetrator continued terrorising other children on the main playground unsupervised. I deregistered my child after a couple of weeks of no satisfactory response from the school. She re joined the education system for secondary, which has also been a complete shit show.

Those are specific ways to attack someone not just the usual hitting or tripping up

It is a concern OP

Id also be concerned where this child has learned these behaviours- what have they witnessed especially if they are younger and it’s not age appropriate content from media
Possible safe guarding issue for the child and other children alike

Don't think ofsted will do anything unless it has come to them via school.
Go back to the HT in light of furthur incidents and inform the governors via the chair. Child protection is again perhaps difficult you may need evidence. Photographs,statements etc

I know brothers like this. Both sexually inappropriate, bullying and strangling. This is an important point /. What would happen with a call to social services?

Just out of interest. Has anyone ever approached the parent of a violent child whos attacked your child?

xxx

Sorry op wrong thread