Murder in school

[hmb]

Now that Alan Pennell has been found guilty of the murder of Luke Walmsley, it has been mentioned that he has had two previous court cases, one for violence to a policeman and nother for punching another student in the face three times.

This boy has a tragic background as his mother was killed in a drunk druving accident. However the question has to be asked, should children like this be educated in mainstream schools?

I have no training in how to defend myself, or the children in my care from this sort of violent student. Shouldn't kids like this be in schools where they can be correctly monitored, keeping themselves and everyone else safe?

Bring back Approved Schools for violent young offenders IMHO

[Piffleoffagus]

reading the interview of Alan Pennells sister in the news this morning...
She says she hopes he rots in hell.
Apparently Luke's sister was Pennells ex girlfriend and had a fight with Pennells new girlfriend, this Alan Pennells sister says that whatever was said on the phone after that caused Alan Pennell to put the phoen down and say in front of his family, I'm going to stab him...
With ref to the schools, how much reponsibility cna we place on under resourced schools to factor in these children. It is a mixture of parenting, diagnosis and care.
Easy huh... I despair at times, how many of us have seen future violent kids while out...

[Hulababy]

Not had time to read all this but from the bits I egt I have to agree with hmb on this. Most state schools don't have the resources to deal with pupils with such severe issues, and certainly not to deal with such tragic consequences of these.

Have to say also though that don't forget that this wasn't a young child. The offender was 16??? So, even with EBD (assuming no other SN, etc.) would know that stabbing is wrong. Yes he has had an awful life, but it can't condone what he did - it was a terrible crime and he must be opunished through the courts/law as such, surely?

School should be a safe place for our children. We have to keep it that way.

[misdee]

my sister worked in a special unit fior kids with EBD amongst other things. i could never do it. she was assulted a few times, and found the work very tough.

At 14, most children know stabbing someone would seriously imjure if not kill some-one. Even if he did have a tough upbringing, then IMO its no excuse. other people have lost parents, been in care etc, and even tho they have found things hard they dont go stabbing anyone. IF he did have behaviour issues, then that should have been dealt with. i cant get my head around the whole thing. you send your kids to school, thinking they will be safe, but kids and getting stabbed, assulted etc in schools. it all seems very sad to me.

[Jimjams]

integration obviously rather than reintegration....

[Jimjams]

Meanbean- no-one can ever take the long term view on anything.

Sorry suedonim I was down on middle class parents yesterday- just heard some whisperings from the school gate...... here though they have attached the unit to one of the worst schools in the city (with some of the biggest problems and in one of the most deprived areas) which I think is a bad mistake if you want to try reintegration- the kids/teachers in the mainstream part of the school have more than enough to deal with.

[suedonim]

Jimjams, re your comment about autistic units and middle class schools. Dd1's previous primary school, which was very m/class, had a unit for autistic children attached to it. No one objected to it being formed, the children in the main school were educated about the new children and afaic, it worked well. Another unit was set up in the nearby town, also in a m/class area and that ruffled no feathers either, it simply wasn't an issue for anyone.

[Rowlers]

I don't believe anyone is truly evil. What is evil anyway? He's a neglected boy with little going for him. I still can't get my head round what he did but evil? No. Pathetic yes. Pitiful yes. Misguided yes. Stupid yes!

[Janh]

I am agreeing with you, hmb!

(Still regret the way this boy's life has turned out though, and the mess it has made of so many others'.

"Pennell's mother had been tragically killed in a car crash, along with her boyfriend, when the boy was just four. With his father often away working as a lorry driver, Nottingham Crown Court heard that Pennell was often left to his own devices and spent much of his youth getting drunk and hanging around with a succession of girlfriends."

Nobody loved him properly or taught him how to behave or, probably, even paid him much attention at all. Luke's mother has described him as an evil boy. Is that fair?)

[hmb]

TBH, I think that the buck should stop first at the parent.

Schools don't have the facilities, resources or the rights to stop this sort of thing happening. You only have to see how hard it is to exclude a child for repeated violent behaviour to see that.

Did he think it would kill him, possibly not, but I'd eat this keyboard if he didn't mean to do serious harm, inguring him badly if not killing him. He hit him so hard that the knife cut through the breast bone and went right through the heart. A flick knife has no other use. The boy collected knives and voilent videos. And I bet the father is saying, 'why didn't the school do something', forgetting that the responsibility for the boy was his.

[Janh]

It will cost nearly £2500 a week to keep him in a young offenders' institution. That amount of money paid to each school with a child like him to deal with would make a huge difference...but then most kids who go off the rails don't end up stabbing someone.

There is no easy answer. I know he rammed the knife into the boy's chest (not 7" though, that was the full length of the knife including handle, the blade was either 3" or 4", not that that's any better really), and there was a lot of rage behind it, but did he actually realise it would kill him? He had said beforehand that he would stab Luke but did he really really mean to kill him? Did he even know exactly where the heart is?

Have just had this "discussion" with DH who said "the school should have dealt with it before it got this far". Yeah, right. Whose responsibility is it? Who decides which kids might kill someone? Who pays to deal with them before it's too late?

[hmb]

Spot on, mean bean. Agree 100%. The crazy thing is that while these kids are in school and off the streets the problem is being ignored. And there do seem to be more children in need of help these days (she says, sounding as old as hell)

[MeanBean]

And the sad thing is that it would probably cost less, long term, to have proper support for these children than to let them run wild and then lock them up for years. I've seen mentoring projects for young offenders which have turned their lives around and stopped them re-offending, so saving taxpayers thousands of pounds of police time, social services time, court time and prison costs, but for some reason nobody wants to invest in proper support. Long term, it would be an awful lot cheaper.

[hmb]

Lack of funding is always at the root of the probelm

for that matter if I had, say classes of 12-14 with a classroom assistant I could teach most of the kids I have come across, and could actually teach them something. But the funding isn't there for that sort of set up either.

The crazy, dangerous thing is that we are not helping to get these ebd kids to learn how to control themselves. It is all well an good understanding why they have problems but naff all good unless we do something about it. It we don't they will be walking timebombs when they leave school and their actions suddenly have real consequences for them and everyone else.

[Jimjams]

Your unit idea sounds good hmb but bet it wouldn't work because a) it would be underfunded and b) ime of autism units very little attempt is made at the integration into mainstream bit. The autism unit we turned down was pretty much totally seperate from the school (and was attached to a school with a very bad reputation in a very dodgy area- where frankly they have enough to deal with without trying to mix a bunch of autistic kids in as well) I suspect `"better" (for which read middle class) schools would be up in arms though is someone tried to attach a unit (whether for autism or EBD) to them. We turned it down because of the underfunding though- the necessary staff ratios just weren't there and I bet any EBD unit would be the same.

[hmb]

However sad his upbringing the boy stabbed another. He did so with enough force to push the blade 7 inches into the lad's chest. He did so with so much force that the hilt of the blade brused the skin. And when he reailed the magnitude of what he did his response was to say ' he walked into the blade'. ie he lied to try to save gis skin. These are not the normal responses or a normal adolecent. These are the actions of a child in need of psychatric help.

[Janh]

From the BBC news website:

Pennell had earlier fallen out with Luke following the break-up of a brief relationship with Luke's 12-year-old sister.

Pennell began boasting that he would kill the younger boy. He appeared jealous of Luke, who was a popular sportsman with a happy family background.

Pennell's mother had been tragically killed in a car crash, along with her boyfriend, when the boy was just four.

With his father often away working as a lorry driver, Nottingham Crown Court heard that Pennell was often left to his own devices and spent much of his youth getting drunk and hanging around with a succession of girlfriends.

Pennell told the court that he had felt "gutted" when he heard Luke had died from the stabbing, adding that he knew what it felt like to lose someone because of the death of his mother.

Threats

Friends who had heard Pennell's threats to kill Luke had believed they were empty.

On the day of the killing, they told him to put his knife away when he began twirling it round his fingers outside a classroom.

But as the murderer's best friend told the court: "Once he gets it into his head that he's going to do something you can't stop him.

"There are playground fights aren't there, but I didn't think anything like that would happen."

Witnesses said the stabbing of Luke Walmsley was sudden and had appeared little more than a punch.

But the knife punctured the 14-year-old's heart and he had no chance of survival, despite attempts at the scene by paramedics to resuscitate him.

[Rowlers]

Parents eh? shoot them all!

[hmb]

We had a girl who was out of control, parents refuse to admit that there was any probelm, school was 'picking on her' etc. Right up to the point that the kids was help ovenight in the police station. Then it was all, 'why was nothing done'

[Rowlers]

It has become incredibly hard for schools to discipline children effectively for many many reasons. Firstly, it never ceases to amaze me how many parents simply won't accept that their child has done anything wrong. They will fight any punishment a school deems fit to hand out. What message does this send the child??!? Secondly, schools need a vast amount of evidence of what has been done to "help" a pupil who has been having problems of this type in school before they can remove them. Parents have the right to appeal against exclusions and often will appeal, evenb when a fresh start for their child would be of great benefit to them. It's all this parental choice crap. LEAs are often also on the parents side for some reason. Probably funding again. We had one pupil who was completely antisocial. We did EVERYTHING possible but he was truly wild (Outside of school he got up to all sorts of things including setting a tramp on fire). His parents simply refused to accept that his behaviour was a sbad is it was and we had to keep him for almost 3 years beofre they finally lost all appeals. He went to another local school but lasted a very short time there. I don't think he even goes to school now. What can you do?

[hmb]

The trouble is, Luckymum is that it isn't treated as an asault, and that send the worst possible message, that things that happen in school are somehow 'not real'. If a stranger had punched your child on the street then the police would have been involved, why is it different in a school?

Some of the kids I teach are bloody enormous 6 foot lads, what an I to do if one of them punches me? Or one of the other kids in the school?

[luckymum]

That happened to my son hmb....he was punched in the face by another boy when in year 7, so hard that my son lost a tooth. The boy did 5 days in the isolation unit (not even suspended) and then back into class as usual. My son wasn't the first he'd assaulted (because thats what it is)and won't be the last I'm sure.

My thoughts are with Luke's family.

[hmb]

That was very interesting about the PRU.....classic case of underfunding by the sound of it.

So there will be a call for metal detectors and the money might be found for them, but not for the help these kids need to learn how to behave! Crazy, sad, mixed up world.

[Janh]

Thanks for translations, hmb!

Freckle, I don't think there was any advance warning, it sounds as if it all blew up very fast. He brought the knife in, threatened the other kid (football team one) the same day (?) and then stabbed Luke - it sounds as if he "had to" to save face.

And it's claimed Luke had said things about his mother - whether he did, and what the things are supposed to have been, I haven't heard. With a disturbed, damaged and inadequate kid like this, who was already desperately jealous of Luke's popularity and thought he was going to steal his girlfriend, you can see with hindsight that he could lose control, but nobody would have believed he would actually do it until he did.

Luke's parents had been concerned about bullying of Luke that term but even they can't have thought this might happen...it's just tragic.

[Rowlers]

There was a scheme in recent years to have just such units in schools. PRU something or other they were called (sorry, my memory is still appalling) We had one in ours and there was a lot of anticipation that this would solve all our EBD problems. However, as is often the case, the unit in reality didn't live up to expectations. It was staffed by IN (Individual needs) and as these types of pupils often require one on one attention, whenever pupils were referred to the unit, staff were told that there was no room or IN staff were involved in exams etc etc. School budgets are the problem - they are so tight these days that schools just can't afford such units. Another point on this - the pupils are still on school site and therefore are mixing with their classmates at break and lunch time anyway - it wouldn't take them far enough away from potential victims.

[hmb]

Jimjams is right EBD tends to be very badly coped with. I've had kids who are given a target on their Individual Education Plans of 'Not to hit anyone', but nothing is done to help them reach that need. You are warned that you should not be confrontational with some kids and not to 'back them into a corner' as it will provoke them. That is all good advice but what will happen to that child when they grow up and some one confronts them in a pub? Thei will get into a fight. We are not dealing with the probelms that these kids have, helping them to learn to control themselves, we are skirting the issues until they leave or are expelled and thein they become the police's probelm.

And why is it OK for a child to punch another in a classroom? If they did it on the street it would be abh! Kids are led to believe that their actions have no consequences, and that is as much at the root of this probelm as the boy's tragic background.