Attacked at school no help

[Nicolasaa9]

Hello,

I’m looking for advice and would appreciate responses that are helpful :-). I’d like to keep the details brief for privacy. Two weeks ago my 16year old daughter was attacked by another student at school, resulting in an eye injury that required a visit to A&E. She is now also experiencing neck and back pain and her visions been blurry. We have all relevant medical reports for this.

The school’s response has been completely inadequate and they are downplaying the incident. The outcome they provided does not address the seriousness of the situation, and it feels like proper safeguarding measures are not being followed.

Has anyone had experience taking legal action against a school in a situation like this? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

You’ve had lots of good advice about getting hold of the safeguarding policy and checking the steps have been followed. You could also request a meeting with the head of safeguarding to go though it with you.

It’s also good advice to consider what outcome you want here. There is a difference between what a legal case would do (which would take a very long time to resolve) and a complaint and review through the governors. You might also want to check the school complaint process.

If your motivation is compensation, only legal action can do that but you’d need to evidence that the school were negligent. Having a known bully in the same place as your daughter is not that.

Perhaps if you can say what you want out of this, it would be easier for people to advise you?

You would need to go to the governors to express your displeasure. The problem (for you) is, the school isn’t obliged to share with you the sanctions on the other girl - so I’m not sure how you know they’ve downplayed it? I would concentrate on making sure your daughter has a place to go at break / lunch away from the other girl, and make sure all teachers have been informed that the two girls are to be kept apart in seating plans if they are in lessons together. Out of interest, what would you consider not “downplaying” the issue - what outcome are you after? Obviously I’m sure you’d love a perm ex for the other student, but that’s not realistic. If the police didn’t see fit to press charges, I’m not sure what you think the school could / should do. Going down a legal route seems highly unusual. Ofsted might be a possibility, but I would imagine that the school have followed procedures, it just may be that you don’t think their procedures are stringent enough. Good luck to your daughter, I hope her physical and mental scars heal as soon as possible.

If they are in NI or Scotland thats not the case. Most continue in the same school until 18.

Have you tried contacting school governors? Suspension or explusion surely is the course of action here?! Anything less and I would be livid in your shoes. Did the police not offer an option to press charges for assault?

10k out of approximately 9 million children in schools - so pretty rare. In my experience these are not for one assault on either a pupil or staff member - apparently it is necessary to give multiple chances to violent teenagers. The only one-off incidents I’ve seen perm ex for are bringing weapons or drugs to school.

You need to get the behaviour policy, safeguarding policy and complaints policy from the website and use these to write to the head, making it clear that you are complaining and, importantly, how you would like the matter to be resolved. I assume that what you want is a robust plan about how they will ensure that your daughter is safe in school.
They can not and will not tell you what action is being taken about the abuser. As a trustee, I would expect a suspension and some plan to keep them in school but away from others until GCSEs. Or possibly (but less likely, a place in a PRU). This should be achievable. Rightly or wrongly, it is hard to permanently exclude students in exam years, school will need to try all they can to get the student to the exams. Permanent exclusion is not a simple process and can be quashed by an external review.

So focus on how they will keep your child safe, make sure there is a plan and that they follow it.

Not much point in copying governors at this stage; they get involved if you don’t get satisfactory resolution from the school. Copying in too early just limits which governors can look at a complaint as they need to be neutral.

Somebody I know who's child is in y7 and got attacked by another Y7 got the police involved. The child has been expelled and I think the police are also doing more. It was a vicious attack. School likely have cctv of the attack.

Schools don't have CCTV everywhere. When my DC was seriously assaulted at secondary school, the formal complaint I submitted (because of multiple failures to follow its own safeguarding and behaviour policies in dealing with the assault) resulted in CCTV being installed in the blind spot where it had happened. Whilst my DC can be 'unassaulted', that was a positive outcome of my complaint.

Before taking legal advice, I would follow the school's official complaints procedure which should be available on their website. They will be required to respond to this in writing. I think it would be very difficult to prove anything against the school legally.

This, rather than the usual defenders/ apologists of the bullies on these posts.
”oh well your daughter should leave then”
”you’re not entitled to know what’s going on, that’s the bullies personal business”
”that girl may have other things going on, tell your daughter she needs to be kind and not make an issue of being assaulted, that’s so judgemental of her!!”

So the police are not interested in pursuing? I am not sure what legal action would trump that as the law often begins with police response as its foundation (whether you agree or not). There is a significant process that needs to be followed before “going legal” with a school, ensure you have followed every stage and are not just making meaningless threats, it seems to quick for a Department of Education response to have been received to warrant your action

Like what?
the dd to be blamed for being attacked? Having brought it on herself? Ah the old mn “she needs to learn to move away when she’s being attacked” as oft quoted?

Did you tell the police the girl has attacked other pupils? I'd say your beef was actually with the police, who are doinbg exactly what the police often do with assaults related to school - expecting the school (which has very few powers indeed) to deal with it.

Them commenting that they thought the school hadn't dealt with it very well was absolute brass neck of the highest order.

As others have said, however, you need to go through the school's complaints policy first. If you still want to bring some sort of lawsuit against the school, you can - but using "safeguarding" may be difficult.

The OP should not go directly to governors (as a pp has stated, this can limit which governors are available should the complaint progress through the complaints procedure to them), but should use the complaints procedure in the first instance.

Who in the police decided that words with the perpetrator was sufficient for the assault?

I think the police are who you need to be pressuring, OP. A deliberate assault with injury by a 16 year old should be dealt with formally, especially if she has form for physically assaulting your DD or others. I would start with a complaint about their handling and see if you can get them to reopen and deal with it formally. Especially given the ongoing nature of the injuries.

For the school - I don't think you have much hope suing them at this stage. The bar is really high. Check out their behaviour and bullying policies. If they haven't followed them, put in a complaint and follow the procedure to the letter. If you know of other parents this child has attacked, I would get together with them and put in a group complaint, so that the ongoing nature and seriousness of the child's behaviour cannot be swept under the carpet by pretending it was a one off.