school is failing my son and boys

[Loopylewanderin2]

Hi I am new to this, but after doing a search thought mumsnet may be helpful - I have a bit of an ongoing issue with my sons primary school (he is yr 4)..
I moved him to this school last Feb following 4 years of bullying at his old school, this led to low self esteem, aggressiveness and my son was under cahms and thenwhen school was changed he was discharged as the problems went away.
Behaviour changed again in autumn last year to something very similar but also he began making comments about hating hislife, wanting to die and went so far as to attempt to burn his hair off (he is strawberry blonde but gets called for it) schhol initially would not listen and placed him on school action plan and his IEP said he had to refrain from shouting out answers in the class, lying about his peers. I (single mam) and my mother (ex social worker) met with the head and she finally began to listen and investigate, it was found he was not nbeing bullied as such but that inhis year group there was a group of boys (of which he was part) who all wanted o be the leader of the gang so to speak and therefore play and such was very rough (they were alowed to play dodge ball in the yard etc) she would keep an eye on it!
Things seemed to settle down and he became established within the group of boys, made a best friend and behaviour at home setled down again and he actually wanted to go to school. I recevived numerous positive reports about him, he even won pupil of the week, is top table maths and science and second top for literacy/comprehension. In his parents review his teacher kept referring to him as a 3 point child and all was very positive.
Then I witnessed an incident in the yard one mornoing where these boys (inc son) were getting very rough with one another, one child had my sons arms behind his back another child had hold of another child by the ears and this child was on the floor - one parent shouted at their child to stop i just went over and removed my son from the situation and took him to the teaching assistant who was on morning yard duty. I explained what had hapened and was confronted with "have you told your mother what you did yesterday" znd from that thigs escalated. my son became very upset and annoyed and was taken into school. When i called later i was advised by the acting head (who is also my sons class teacher mon - wed) that my son had been removed from the class because of his actions that morning in the yard - I asked what she meant and she informed me he had (in front of me) dragged another child across the yard and had injured the childs back! I advised her i witnessed the events and that had in no way occurred also other parents had witnessed it and wouold support me - she said I was his mother therefore would defend him. THings escalated again and i did lose my temper and threatended to remove him there and then from school she threatened me with the EWO and social services! so i contacted the EWO and schhol nurse myself, they set up a meeting with the acting head, me, son and themselves for the following week - the meeting was very positive but the acting hea took no notes at all, the ewo and nurse didand the conclusion was that the school was not cping with this group of boys very well and instead of looking at the bigger picture were singling out my son as he was owning up to any of the fighting etc that was happening, however whn he would then deny having involvement in other incidents they said he was ying and as it had been him before it was hi now! The EWO remedy was to involve an outside behaviour person who would work with the group of boys! I since found out that the acting head wil only allow her to work with my son as he is the instigator apparently!
On friday i received a call from her at 3.25 asking me to come straight to school and collect my son as she was not allowing him to atend the after school cricket club - i asked why and she said beacause she was unable to supervise it and she felt after an incident at lunch time my son was a danger to the children at the club. I got very defensive and demanded reason as to why and she said he had kneed another child in the privates at kunch time, and then in afternoon break another child had ran at my son and to stop him my son had raised his knee again and had caught the child in the thiogh but it was obviously meant for the privates, and great injury had happened. She said she woild be discussin exclusion with the head on monday.
My immediate reaction was to collect hima nd shout at her!
When i had collected him i asked what had happened and he said theother child had kicked him in the shin (showed me huge bruise) so he kneed him back, he said the later incident was not intentioanl but the boy was running at him so he raised his leg to brace himself for the impact!
I fell like the school ( inparticular the acting head) is using my son as a scape goat - I am at a loss as to what to do - the princiapal head is a very scary lady and is retiring hence she is only working mon - wed. I amvery concerned about what to do with my son tomorrow - send himin or keep him at home!
Also where do i stand with this - as my son has an IEP still (he was taken off but then placed onit gain wheni contacted the EWO) surely they cannot exclude him as although he has not got a statement isn't an IEP an indication he has special needs? or are IEP's a way to get an outstanding ofsted report ( school recently got this awarded after only being a god school before but teaching side was still only satisfactory) the ofsted report also points outh they are not catering for boys's needs. I am really at a loss!!!
Sorry for the waffle but am new to this and will gte used to the abbreviations I should be using!!!
thanks to anyone who can help in advance!!
xx

[mrz]

I would hate to live in your black & white world learnandsay real life is never so full of certainty as you seem to be on everything.

[learnandsay]

Too true, mrz, too true. (We shouldn't really be getting personal.) But I have heard that criticism of myself before. But I don't like these grey areas in life. They seem to spread and spread until nobody knows what's going on. I've tried grey areas a few times and it's never worked out.

[mrz]

There will always be grey areas when dealing with people

[Feenie]

(We shouldn't really be getting personal.)

No - especially where other posters' children are concerned when we haven't got a clue.

[learnandsay]

Well, that's true. But in my day many of them were settled by the cane and the slipper. There's only so much behaviour re-arrangement that you can organise by talking to challenging children. I think we're getting much too touchy feely these days and it's all going down hill as a result.

[learnandsay]

Well, Feenie, the boy has been fighting and that's a bit of a clue. And teachers have been saying we all need a break from you. That's clue number two. So Miss Marple could be getting busy here no problem.

[mrz]

learnandsay I'll repeat I'm so relieved I don't live in your world

[Feenie]

But you weren't talking about the OP's ds, learnandsay - you addressed GooseyLoosey directly about the reasons her ds were being singled out. From just one innocuous post. His teachers hadn't said any such thing.

[learnandsay]

Oh, right, Feenie. That's my mistake. I thought Goosey was using the first person to refer to the OP's child. You're quite correct. But it was a mistake on my part. I wasn't intending to make any statement about Goosey's child.

[Feenie]

You'll be apologising profusely to GooseyLoosey any time soon then.....

[learnandsay]

Quite right,

Goosey, sincere and abject apologies.

[Feenie]

But in my day many of them were settled by the cane and the slipper. There's only so much behaviour re-arrangement that you can organise by talking to challenging children. I think we're getting much too touchy feely these days and it's all going down hill as a result.

Wrong forum - surely you meant to post this in the DM comments section?

Would you be happy for your own child to be hit with a cane or a slipper at school?

[learnandsay]

Well, I'd sincerely hope that my children wouldn't do anything that would require such treatment. But if they did, I'd much rather that they had short sharp shock treatment than this depressing, disruptive, long drawn out failure that seems to be associated with all of this touchy feely inclusion behaviour on the part of schools and LEAs.

[Feenie]

touchy feely inclusion



So, if your child, God forbid, had something horrendous to deal with in their life, and their behaviour went downhill for a while as a result - let's be clear here - on comments you've made here and elsewhere, you would be perfectly happy for them to be a) hit by someone in authority at school b) removed elsewhere (you still won't say where) so that they don't 'interfere' with the teaching of other people's children ?

[5madthings]

it sounds like 6 of one, half a dozen of the other to me tbh, boys this age can fight, and they often start off simply playing rough and then get carried away, they still lack impulse control at this age and may not mean to hurt each other.

i think the op was wrong to lose her temper with the ht? and i think she needs to set very clear boundaries with her ds, that he must WALK AWAY when its gets rough, tell a teacher if he needs to. but at this age it is hard for them in the heat of the moment to remember to do this, but it still must be insisted on and i woudl have consequences for this kind of behaviour if i was told by a teacher it was happening (and i have been through it with my ds2) in our house it was no xbox, or not football club (the worst punishment in the world to my ds2)

i think its interesting the EWO thinks all the boys need help managing their friendships and behaviour and its wrong for the school to single the one child out when it does sound like they are all involved.

did the op mentino exclusion? which would be an over reaction to this situation,t he school need to look at other options, have they tried lunch time detentions, a reward chart style behaviour chart? this worked well with my own ds2, he had a report card type thing he had to give to the breaktime and lunchtime moniters and he would get red or green depending on his behaviour, it really helped him to focus and think about his behaviour and he is good now at walking away when he starts to feel wound up etc. In my sons case other childrne were deliberately provoking him as they knew he would react, the school were great at talkign to these children and making it clear that was NOT ok.

all these children need to learn boundaries and they need help to do so.

also if they are happening predominantly at lunch time/break time it may help if the school organise some more structured play ie football or other games where the boys can run around and burn off some energy (which they need to do) and be competitive in a more controlled way. this is also a technique used at my sons school.

i dont think the op needs to go in all guns blazing, i think she needs to say, ok there is an issue with my sons behaviour and i want to work with the school to resolve this, so how can we back each other up and work together. :)

[5madthings]

oh and op if you are friends with the other parents of the boys involved, it may be worht approaching them and saying you are aware there is rough behaviour with the boys and you are dealing with it etc, and see if they are talking to their boys, maybe even get the boys together out of school so they can play together and work out how to play wihtout being rough.

[learnandsay]

Perfectly happy is probably the opposite of what I'd be feeling. But that doesn't make it wrong. School is not (in my view) the place for dealing with broken children. It's (in my view) the place for teaching them. So, suppose that my girls had some awful trauma to deal with, and this is not impossible, then I would not expect their school to be in any way qualified, experienced or responsible for dealing with it. If my family couldn't deal with it, or worse, was responsible for creating it in the first place, then eventually the children would have to be taken away from us by Social Services. What (in my view) should the school do? Tell my girls to behave or face sanctions.

[Feenie]

If my family couldn't deal with it.....then eventually the children would have to be taken away from us by Social Services.

Oh, so now disruptive children, who may have already have had terrible trauma in their lives have the security of their school life AND their home life taken away from them?

[5madthings]

this isnt 'broken child' its a boy who has a history of being bullied who is struggling to fit in and find his place in a group of children at his new school! so yes the school should be dealing with it, in conjunction with his parents to help him!

and you do know that 'broken children' who are looked after by ss DO go to normal schools as well? my dp works with these 'broken children'as you deem them and they deserve an education just as much as any other child and that means going to school with the support of the school and any other services deemed necessary!

[learnandsay]

Well, some of them already do. I didn't invent Social Services.

[learnandsay]

5mad, not all of these comments any more necessarily relate to the OP.

[Feenie]

There are many, many unhappy children, learnandsay, and some of them do misbehave because of their horrible homelives. School is sometimes the only little bit of security they have.

[5madthings]

so you are saying they shouldnt go to school?!

removing a child from their home is quite rightly a last resort and ss will do all possible to help a family so they can stay together and to help the child and the parents work together to resolve problems and part of doing that means they go to school, they need an education, simply stopping them from going to school will simply make a bad situation worse.

[5madthings]

ALL children deserve and are entitled to an education.

[learnandsay]

Feenie, I'm sure that's true. But it shouldn't be true. If broken children do require additional social or psychological support then it shouldn't happen in schools because schools aren't staffed by psychologists and social workers they're staffed by teachers. If you're going to put social workers and psychologists on the school staff, then fine.