Bullying and the schools response

[Holly1301]

Hello. This is the first time I have come on here but I am very unsure on what to do. My daughter is 14 and is being bullied by exclusion by one particular girl. Other than this one girl she is well liked and has nice friends. The bully is loud, funny and other girls are also afraid of her. As my daighter won’t tackle it in any way (she has simply withdrawn herself more and more from the group) we wrote to school to ask for advice. There is a house mistress (it’s not a boarding school but they have houses which are single sex). We specifically said please do not say anything to either child and merely observe and could we have a call with her
to ask for advice. First thing this morning she asked to see my daughter at lunch time. Daughter is distraught and is crying, says she has to come home and can’t cope with it all. I am furious with the house mistress as she has done exactly what I asked her not to do. What are my next steps?

Hi - just replying to get you some traffic, particularly as it’s your first post!

You might want to re-post on AIBU to get more responses, although it can get quite “boisterous” there and you might not like all the replies.

I understand where you’re coming from with your desire for a softly softly approach from the school - but actually I think you need to trust the house mistress that she knows her job and knows what she’s doing.

The school will have a policy on dealing with bullying (including for assessing potential bullying) and they will stick to that even when a parent asks them to follow their own ideas on what to do.

I would assume that the house mistress wanted to get your DDs point of view on what was happening so if there were any concerns she could nip it in the bud more quickly than “just watching” and then reporting back to you.

I know it’s hard but you need to trust the school to know what they’re doing and know how to help your daughter; so you need to let them do it their way.

That said, they should have told you that’s what they were going to do, and they should keep you updated. I think your best bet right now is just to ask for improved communication.

Good luck getting it sorted! I was bullied multiple times at school and nothing the teachers did ever made it better but my daughter’s school is amazing with this. I don’t know how they do it, but as soon as my daughter reported a problem to her teacher the teacher said she “put it into the system” and half an hour later the girl in question voluntarily apologised to my daughter. The teacher’s response when she called us to tell us was that our daughter really should have reported it sooner rather than being upset for days first.