Am typing late at night, tired and emotional, and a few glasses of wine the worse for wear, so I hope this makes sense!
This week has been an awful week for us, on Monday eve got a phone call from the Head of DS1's school saying there had been an incident where my son had hit another boy in the face, causing an injury, and she had decided to exclude him from school the following day. We were ed to say the least, DS (who is just 5, and in yr 1) has never been in trouble at school, except for a brief spell last year, when he started lashing out at other children, and it transpired that he was the victm of bullying, and this was the only way he could find to express his anger. All was sorted, so we thought, and he moved to year 1, and is in a class of mixed yr1&2 pupils. Anyway, naturally we have been to the school and spoken to the head, and expressed our concerns about him lashing out for the same reasons as before, and she assured us that DS would be closely watched to try to get to the bottom of it all. Meanwhile DS has sat and written an apology to the boy he hurt (VERY hard for him, he does not find writing comes naturally) and has personally given it to him under supervision. We are very angry that the head chose to exclude him based on this one incident, and given his previous record and age did not choose to investigate thoroughly before acting (we feel).
Further still a certain boy lets call him "Adam" has persistantly kicked and pinched DS over the past few weeks, and called him a squiny baby, and we wondered if this may have contributed to (but not excused) his actions.
If this weren't enough to worry about, DS came home last night with a bump on the back of his head and when asked told us that another child, let's call him "Liam" had held his head and bashed it against a wall. I felt sick, he was supposed to have been closely monitored. On top of this I had seen his teacher and specifically asked her at the end of the school day if he had been ok, and she made no mention of the incident. So, today there I was again at the school, being assured they were taking this all very seriously, but the little boy in question was denyinmg all knowledge and no one witnessed said incident. They are supposedly carrying out further investigations.
I feel like the school is some faceless machine, and all they care about is not admitting they are in the wrong, that my DS lashes out once and is suspended, but any little brat who feels like having a pop at him can do so. I feel the school has failed him big time. The question is, what to do? We want to appeal against the exclusion, just to get something +ve on his record, and write a formal complaint about the bullying and how it (wasn't) dealt with. Does anyone have experience of this? What is the best way to go about it? I know there are alot of knowledgeable and lovely people out there, and we really need your help. Any advice gratefully received. Just want to wrap DS up and keep him safe .
OK rant over, over to you.........