WWYD?

[CouthyMow]

My DS2 is just finishing Y3. He has some SN's, and due to development delay has a few issues as he is not often playing the sane games as his peers.

He is quite old for Y3, he will turn 9yo just 7 weeks into Y4. He is very quiet, and doesn't speak out about things that happen to him.

Yesterday, my Ex picked him up from school, and was told that there had been an 'incident' that meant that DS2 had had to have his clothes changed. He wasn't told much else.

On arrival home, DS2 was behaving very uncharacteristically. Rather than stay in the front room with everyone (he doesn't like being alone, part of his SN's), he took himself off to his room and say quietly in there for hours. He wouldn't talk to me about what happened.

Looks good to me If you can quote the school's policy on its responsibility for safeguarding and/or bullying in the second paragraph so much the better. I would also add to last paragraph "to fully investigate the circumstances by which my son was injured" and put a time frame for a response on it or it may be allowed to fester over the summer holiday. Their complaints policy should give an expectation of what action is taken in the first instance and how long to receive an acknowledgements and response to a complaint.

Bump as I am just about to start trying to write the letter to the Governors and could do with some hand-holding and help.

So, to get this straight, the LEA-run school is not protecting your children at all, but if you try to do something about this by HEing, that same LEA will open a CP case against YOU? Beggars belief.
I've got nothing to add about how to deal with the school that hasn't already been said, but if you really aren't getting anywhere and HE is any sort of realistic option, can I suggest you talk to someone who really knows their legal stuff (Education Otherwise are good for that), because I wasn't aware that being disabled removed a parent's legal right to decide how and where their child is educated. Particularly if said parent doesn't have a disability that precludes them looking after their children...

Dear Chair of Govs

I wish to make a formal complaint about the bullying my child has experienced over the previous x years and way the school has responded to this bullying.

My child has been systematically bullied over a period of years. Some of the major incidents are listed below: Then list them with dates if you can. In the latest incident,......... (Be factual, state people who witnessed it etc)

Your school's bullying policy states that bullying will be dealt with in the following ways. Then list them.

However, in reality, staff have failed to follow the policy adequately and have not dealt appropriately with the bullying that has occurred. Then list what they have done wrong (e.g. failed to contact you, not told you of incidents, dodgey definition of bullying, not properly investigating what has happened, giving bullies lenient punishments etc). Where you can say "Your policy says that X will happen, but Y incident, Z happened instead".

I feel my child is at risk of serious harm through his attendance at X school and that x school is failing to safeguard my son adequately. Not only would I like an investigation into why the bullying has not been adequately addressed, I would also like to know what the school intends to do to ensure that school is a safe place for my child to attend in the future.

I understand that official complaints need to be responded to within X weeks so I look forward to hearing from you by X.

Yours sincerely

Incidentally, I am Chair of Govs at my school, and if this was going on, I would very much like to know. Good luck.

It's because I have to have additional support in order to keep my DC's, due to my uncontrolled epilepsy and fibro. And not having a rest from my DC's in the day, tbh, WOULD seriously stretch my ability to care for them effectively. Two of my four DC's have additional needs, both on the autistic spectrum, as well as having multiple health issues...

I just want the school to be a safe place for my DC's.

There is also the additional issue that BOTH my Ex's are VERY against HE, have met severe resistance in the past to the suggestion - both threatened to take me to court for custody.

HE, given my current health and court orders etc from my Ex's, and the resistance from the LEA, is not a viable option.

OMG - I am so angry on your behalf, your poor boy!

Your child was assaulted. Fuck the "little incident" crap, I can ever understand why children are supposed to ensure behaviour that would have adults in court. Both letters above are good - but do make sure you tell the school that from now on ANY incident that involved an assault will be reported to the police.

Contact the School Liaison Officer at your local station and go and have a chat. 10 might be the age of criminal responsibility, but if the school is that "middle class" presumably the parents of a younger child might not want the police knocking on their door - they should be willing to interview the family even if there is nothing they can do legally.

Make yourself the biggest pain in the arse you can be EVERY time something happens. You are being fobbed off because people think you are not important and they can get away with it - prove them wrong. Good luck!

Do I just address it to the Chair of Governors? It's just my friend the Chair of Governors said to address it to the complaints governor, and told me a name, but I didn't hear it properly (busy playground, partial deafness, not facing her, not a good combination, though I DID catch that it was a lady....). I can't find out who the 'Complaints Governor' actually IS, as the webpage I have only lists it as :

Mrs AAA BBB - LEA Appointment (Chair)
Mrs BBB CCC - LEA Appointment
Mrs CCC DDD - LEA Appointment (Vice Chair)
Mr DDD EEE - Parent Governor
Mr EEE FFF - Parent Governor
Mrs FFF GGG - Parent Governor
Mr GGG HHH - Parent Governor
Mr HHH III - Parent Governor
Mrs III JJJ - Community Governor
Mrs JJJ KKK - Community Governor
Miss KKK LLL - Community Governor
Mr LLL MMM - Headteacher
Miss MMM NNN - Non Teaching Staff Governor
Mrs DS2's CLASS TEACHER!! - Teaching Staff Governor
Mr NNN OOO - Clerk to the Governors

Oh, great!! Would DS2's class teacher have to excuse herself from the Governing Board when they discuss this letter, as the letter is in the majority, complaining about the way SHE hasn't dealt effectively with the bullying?! Or would she get to be there when it is discussed? Would it be classed as a conflict of interest or something?

If not, then what would be the bloody POINT FFS?! I can't complain ABOUT her TO her, can I?!

And any ideas which Governor would be the complaints one? I'm sure it's NOT the Chair, as she was the one who told me to write a complaint in the first place, and told me a name (not hers), which I didn;t quite catch...

Ah - I think it might be Mrs CCC DDD, the Vice Chair, it is the closest sounding name to Dimurphn Lugnargn....

But I still want to know if DS2's class teacher will be there when this is discussed? If so, I don't want to send the complaint tbh.

I agree with neolara's letter and I'm wondering if you could also request a copy of all the incident reports made by the school? I'm teaching in a different country but we're legally required to write up an incident report (including how we dealt with it) for every incident. I'd be surprised that a report hadn't been written up if there was blood (brick incident) or a hospital visit.
If he were my soni would hound them about this and query why there isn't any suspensions for the culprit. Every school I've ever worked at consider serious incidents as serious even if there is time between incidents.
That sounds like assault in non school speak, it's very serious.

I just wish there was more I could do to keep my DS's safe than write yet another letter.

Bwahaha at incident reports - nothing ever gets written down here (FoI requests for information the school haven't documented...), and what DOES get written down bears no true relation to the ACTUAL incident.

I DO have copies of the falsified RIDDOR report from DS1's incident 18 months ago though!

And yes, had it happened outside of school, then I would have had no hesitation in calling the police. But when I told the school this, they told me that threats like that could be classed as aggressive behaviour, and that they can ban me from entering the school site for aggressive behaviour...I will try to advanced search and link to the thread about that incident IF I can find it, it could have been 4 namechanges ago...

Oh dear, they sound useless. I would probably pop down to the police, tell them what's happened and ask them how to document/deal with next "incident". Depending on what they say would guide my next actions. FWIW I've had police called in over a bullying incident the parent thought wasn't handled well. It scared me, but I understood why the mother did it.

And you sound like you are doing a fabulous job under very difficult circumstances!

I think you are banging your head against a brick wall at this school. I'm so sorry you are not getting more help in what sounds like an awful situation for you and your children. I don't really know what to suggest, other than investigating further appealing and getting them into another school nearby. Just because they control their own admissions doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't get in.....If the exes cause a problem with moving schools then maybe spell out clearly to them how it helps your ds, or let them take some of the strain of making school do its job properly. Sorry probably not much help, I can see you are stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one....

Can you ask your friend who the Complaints Governor is , or it may say on the website if they publish the policy there or any minutes of meetings.

I'm Clerk to Governors at a Junior school, and if your letter was discussed at a Full Governing body meeting I would certainly expect the teacher concerned to be asked to leave while it was discussed.

However, if you are making a complaint, I wouldn't expect it to be discussed by the FGB. There should be a Complaints Policy which the school follow, and which should be available to you - ours sets down a procedure for complaints:

Stage 1 Referral to Head Teacher
Stage 2 Complaint referred to Chair of Governors
Stage 3 Review by governing body complaints panel

In all cases where the complaint concerns the school?s headteacher directly, stage 1 will be missed out and the formal complaints procedure will begin at stage 2

There is a legal requirement for schools to publicise their complaints procedures. It might be on the website, or available at the office, or from the Complaints Governor. If you don't know which one this is, contact the clerk and ask them.

Our policy also states:
"Confidentiality will be maintained within the Governing Body to ensure sufficient governors have no prior knowledge of the complaint to enable a complaints panel to be convened, if required, at stage 3." - this is why I would not expect a complaint to be discussed initially at the FGB.

If you can't get hold of the complaints policy, or if it doesn't seeem adeqate or fair, try looking for your LEA's model complaints policy. The LEA are responsible for ensuring that schools follow their agreed policy. This policy doesn't have to be exactly the same as the LEA model, but I would say that
it is reasonable to expect that their policy is at least as fair and robust as the model, and if it isn't the LEA ought to be asking the school why.

You might also find this page helpful.

So they are also trying to intimidate you into not contacting the police! Last time I looked reporting an assault was not an aggressive act. Do you have a local paper? "School threatens to ban mum for contacting the police after her child was assaulted" is the kind of thing our local paper would have gone for when I lived in England.

Can I suggest you include photographic evidence of injuries to the governing board - it would give HT etc less chance of being able to wriggle out of the "mother is making it up, not as bad as she says" excuse.
If you don't know complaints governors name I would either address it to the chair of the governors - they would have to forward it to the right people.
Or in the address use something along lines of...
Governor with responsibility for complaints
X School Governors
X Xchool
etc
Dear Madam....

You have had lots of good advice about complaints procedure, letters etc. Can I just urge you not to believe everything the school says about your position or rights. Speaking as someone who had a very difficult situation with SN and school failing to meet needs, I am amazed in restrospect at how I let myself be intimidated and believed things were impossible just because the school or the LEA said so. I never knew if they were actually lying or genuinely believed what they said- irrelevant really, in the long run. In the end we mentioned sueing and saw the HT crumple- it was obvious he had never even entertained the thought that he wouldn't be able to intimidate us.

Find out the facts, follow the advice of the experienced people on this thread, never take the word of any interested party. And above all, keep a paper trail. This is serious stuff and needs to be dealt with.

I am so sorry this is happening - your poor, poor boy.

I haven't read the whole thread, but wondered if anyone had suggested calling the non-emergency police number for advice. I know of someone whose dc was being consistently bullied over a number of years and the school was failing to deal with it. They did the whole complaint escalation - Governors, LEA etc thing, but also spoke to their community police officer, who was able to help.

Can't remember precisely what happened, but I think he spoke to the parents of the children involved and then to the children themselves, iirc, he also offered to go into school to talk about bullying etc and basically put the wind up the perpertrators.

My own ds has AS and was bullied over and over by the same group of boys from when he started school until year 4. Like you, there was no other school we could send him to and in the end he pretty much had a breakdown because of it.

We kept a detailed diary of incidents, including all the day-to-day, small under-the-radar stuff and more serious incidents and made sure we put a request in in writing for each of the more serious incidents to be properly dealt with, including a complete list of dates/incidents each time. In the end, after a particularly bad incident and on the advice of our aforementioned friend, we informed the school that we were going to involve the police and at that point the HT finally took it seriously and the bullies were finally dealt with. He is just going up to year 6 and this is the first year of his school life where there have been no bullying incidents.

Just read your comment about them saying going to the police is an aggressive act, so perhaps don't threaten, just do it and make sure you tell the police what the school said to try and stop you. You can just call and ask their advice in the first instance and the school needn't know unless you want them to.

I would also advise you to approach a Educational Solicitor for a free initial consultation and ask their advice on your/your ds's rights and what can be done.

Sounds like you too are being bullied.

You may already have written your letter, but if not then I hope the following suggestions help. My DH is chair of govenors at our local primary school.

1. Don't let your friend who is chair pass the buck to someone else - this is absolutely the reponsibility of the chair of govenors to deal with. If the school recieve a formal complaint it is the duty of the govenors firstly to oversee how the school deal with it and to hold them to account if they fail to follow their written procedures. If the complaint can't adequately be dealt with to the satisfaction of all parties by the school then a panel of govenors (which would NOT include the teacher involved) will be organised to hear the complaint.

Send copies of the letter to the head teacher and the chair of govenors, whether or not you identify a "complaint govenor".

1. Keep the letter as factual and to the point as possible. I recognise this is difficult when you are understandably upset by what has happened, but often DH struggles to distinguish the actual point from pages of mad ranting, it will increase the tendency for your valid points to be dismissed.
2. Include a timescale in which you expect a response (a week seems reasonable) and make no allowances for summer holidays. It is not your fault that this latest incident happened in the last week of term.
3. Think about getting someone to represent or support you if this does come to a meeting with the head or the govenors. You seem to feel that you are being belittled and ignored by staff, but your children have the same rights to safeguarding as every other child there.

move him hun, then see what the papers have to say

Just to add to messtins post - your friend who is the chair of govs probably won't be allowed to investigate the complaint personally because she will have prior knowledge of the situation as you have it discussed it with her. Her role will be to ensure that the complaints policy is followed appropriately.