School move after assault or face the issues?

[CheeryAquaRaven]

My daughter is in an infant’s class, last week she was knocked over and broke her arm. The kid who did it also went onto threaten others in the class that they were next. The school tell me that the kid who did it has behavioural issues, and that despite targeting my daughter they do not feel he understands what he did or how he frightened the other kids by making threats. As such their solution has been to just move him to another class, I have asked that support is put in place for him as he is sadly still waiting for additional educational input. The problem is that I want to move our daughter out of this school as she will still be spending the next 5 years with this child, and it’s not a big school. My husband disagrees as outside of this our daughter is settled with a small group of good friends. He also believes that she needs to understand the ‘real world’ and that removal will not help her learn about managing difficult situations. It is however not the first time she has been injured by a child with additional needs and I have totally lost faith with the schools ability to manage its mixed class groups. I feel that we can also maintain the positive friendships she has, but that it’s better to move her at this young age rather than wait. Should I force the issue and remove my daughter to another school?

You cannot request anything for or about another child BUT you can ask for assurances things are in place to protect your child. I am surprised that they have given you as much information as they have
The child in question should not have pushed your daughter and it must be very upsetting for her to be badly injured but the boy can't have known she would break her arm.
Hopefully moving him into another class will help and your daughter heals well and has no lasting effects

The school knows that he is not safe to be around. Moving him to another class is not enough in itself. He needs a 1:1 to keep all the children safe. I would raise this formally with the Head, and then with the governors. If they are unable to take appropriate steps, then yes, move your child.
Work in a school and if supervision is required to keep children safe then the school needs to provide that. I know finances are tough, I hear that he has not yet been approved for funding, but that does remove the school’s responsibility.

As a Governor I would listen politely to the request that another child has a 1-2-1
Refuse to discuss another child with The Parent and then agree that while its not what we want if they choose to remove their child from the school we would support that
Its not fair and no school wants a child there that may hurt other pupils but schools can't just pull money and/or staff from nowhere

So your husband wants his 5 year old to learn how to tolerate violence in her day to day life, how to continuously face her abuser and to put up and shut up.
If your 20 yr old was pushed and her arm broken by a work colleague that’s also okay? Can her partner do the same and that’s okay?
He’s setting her up to tolerate abuse.
For many known and unknown reasons schools have more students with behavioral issues. You will struggle to find a state school without children who display similar problems, faith or private can be better.
If you don’t support your daughter who will. Even if 1-1 in class it’s rare that carries into the playground.

How will you guarantee that there are no children who use disruptive or aggressive behaviour in the next school? Or that none will ever join?

I think classes with no children with additional needs are fast becoming a rarity.

Well it depends really on whether you can afford private or if it’s ’out of the frying pan and into the fire’ re another state school where you could face similar issues. We had a similar dilemma. We waited it out before finally making a decision to move a few years later. I wish we’d done it for the start of year 3. Things in my experience worsened significantly in juniors. ECHPs still not in place despite being very obviously needed and my daughter is scared of some of the agressive boys she needs to see every day. I wouldn’t have to put up with that at work and we’re expecting young kids to learn and put up with pretty horrible environments in some schools.

So my view is if you want to move, do it now while she’s young. The only caveat I’d say though is that my daughter has broken bones twice doing very innocuous things and tripping over her own feet so there is still a chance that it was genuine accident and playing a bit rough v the sort of situation you’d imagine to get to a break. You’ve got to have a really clear view of what happened and future risk to make a decision.