Thank you for your replies. I have spoken on MN before about HE-ing and juliesonshoes you have very kindly given me advice in the past too.
DD1 has had a terrible few months at senior school - she's a lovely sweet natured 13yr old girl who desperately wants to do well at school but has been the victim of bullying for about the last 6-7mths. I have been in and spoken to the school about various incidents (bag emptying, name calling, sneering, evil glares, excluding from groups, not allowing her to sit down and eat her lunch, thrown her contents of her bag across a sodden playground, hitting her with a racket in PE, jumping on her back, and last but the final straw she was burnt last week during a cookery lesson, deliberately)....and the school have done absolutely nothing and in fact BLAMED DD for encouraging this horribly nasty bitchy behaviour because she's such a nice girl and, at times, quite sensitive. This I find utterly ridiculous and a complete cop-out by the school in not being able to admit they have a bullying problem within the school. So yesterday, after she came home from school after another awful day I made the decision to pull her out telling her to empty her locker and come home, which she did. At the time of the burn she was interviewed three times during the course of one day, by three members of staff, wanting to know if the burn was an accident or deliberate. She said it was an accident because she felt unless she said it was she'd been on the receiving end of further harsh treatment from the ring leader of the group she was up against who was responsible for the burn. We did not ask the school to question DD - we actually requested a meeting, at school, with the girl's parents - a request that was ignored.
I have looked around other senior schools but all seem the same to me. I'm surrounded by foul mouthed (yes, even with an adult present) girls who are either on their mobile phones or ipods, I've seen kids drop litter at my feet, smoking around the corners of the buildings and general horrible behaviour. I know 'kids are kids' but I don't want my DD to go to another school to have it happen to her all over again because I think she's been knocked down plenty far enough already and whilst she's got such good grades with her latest report I feel I need to grab at that now and keep her up there and hopefully sail through the next 3 years she has left before her GCSE's. I plan to get her to do her GCSE's at our local school and hopefully then into our local college. She was bullied before, when she was in Year 5, by a group of horribly intimidating girls coming home with the most awful bumps/bruises, damaged uniform, missing PE kit and finally an incident that went on for a few days whereby she was sexually bullied by a boy in her year. I moved her from that school pretty soon afterwards even though the school agreed it was bullying and excluded the boy for one day (wow!) he continued bothering her when he returned.
Anyway all this has now resulted in me wanting to look at the possibility of HE-ing for the remainder of her education. I see it is the only way I can ensure she won't be bullied again and I don't see three years as terribly long. I have another DD (she's 8yrs old) and she is the complete opposite of DD1 - absolutely loves school, is a real tough nut and I plan to keep her in school.