Bullying culture in one specific year group

[longdiling]

I am about to have to go back into school about an ongoing issue with a group of boys in the year above my son who seem to be particularly violent and unpleasant. It really puzzles me because there isn't a bullying problem in the school as a whole, but this year group seem awful. My son has been thrown to the ground and kicked amongst other things...my daughters class has been mixed with theirs and they have been bullying other children within that class too. What can I expect the school to do about it when it's such a large group of children? Has anyone else experienced this?

The school can start by calling the parents of these bullies and telling their children will be suspended if they carry on bullying other children. You should remind the Head that they have a duty of care to all their children. It is not acceptable for your son to be thrown to the ground and kicked.

How old are they? How many of them in the group? Is there more than one class in the year

They are year 5 and there's a group of about 5 or 6 of them. Worst bit was, I only found out about the last incident because my dd overhead them laughing and gloating about it and how they'd made ds cry. I didn't really ask for anything specific to be done last time, just spoke to the teacher who was horrified and assured me she would deal with it. I think I need to be more robust/assertive this time. Thanks for your reply

You definitely need to be robust about it. Make sure you send a follow up email after any conversations you have with the teachers so there is a record of it.

The school should be capable of taking on five or six 10-year-olds but I think some teachers think if they turn a blind eye they won't have to deal with the unpleasant task of contacting the parents to tell them their children are bullies.

Be robust and assertive. Before the meeting look up their anti bullying policy (behaviour policy - legally must be on the school website). Also focus on your children - how this is affecting their ability to access education in particular.

Don't expect to be given specifics about what is done. That is confidential to the other children.

If the behaviour continues look up the complaints policy (should also be on the website) and follow the next steps.

The year below mine at secondary school had this problem. It was a girl's school. As that year group got older, they even started trying to bully the more timid girls in the years above although that didn't last as we had a few fairly nice but extremely tough girls further up the school. I would have hated to be a year younger there, and even decided against 6th form there as Upper and Lower Sixth had the same common room etc and I didn't want to end up having to mix with them while trying to lead up to exams :/

Pointless anecdotes aside, there will be a few ringleaders influencing and pressuring a larger group, rather than a whole cohort of horrors. Hopefully the school can identify them and scotch it that way. But I'm not impressed that it's got this far as I would expect their class teacher to have raised it as an issue with SLT when s/he first realised how difficult the group was.