Violent in schools

[Badlydrawnmum]

I look at this and am horrified, really horrified:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/23874980.agenda-must-end-exclusions-care-experienced-children/

my child was physically assaulted on a daily basis by a child who happened to be in care. There was absolutely nothing the school could do apart from a temporary suspension every couple of weeks, which gave my daughter a few days of not getting beaten up, and now this! Violent kids have no place in mainstream schooling, regardless of their background. What does it take for the education department to see this????

how on earth are bullies supposed to learn to behave when there are zero consequences?

It's cuts, cuts, cuts everywhere. There need to be services in place to support care experienced young people to prevent this shit from happening. They are the group least likely to succeed in life (which is invariably not their own fault) so need all the help they can get.

And, it goes without saying that they shouldn't be allowed to bully and terrorise other innocent kids at the same time.

They are 100% free to terrorise whoever they want. No teacher in Scotland has any sanctions whatsoever they can use against kids. One child was permanently excluded last year in all of Scotland. Only one. I’d be interested in knowing what it takes.

Violent students need to be separated from other kids, but that doesn't have to mean exclusion. Were your school just letting a kid who had been repeatedly violent wonder round freely with the other kids?

We have fangs of teenagers wandering our corridors, often causing disruption because they refuse to attend the provision set aside for them in school. They're withdrawn from mainstream because of their behaviour but refuse everyone up to the Headteacher to attend elsewhere:

They also cause chaos - there was a fight this week where a teacher put themselves in between the fighting couple (one was getting absolutely annihilated so they felt they had to protect them) only to be attacked and punched in the head, leaving actually knuckle marks. The teenager involved is seen taking sim at the teacher.

They e had a 2 day fixed term exclusion and will be back.

Whatever decisions are made in school are usually batted back when our county LEA steps in.

It's so frustrating.

*gangs

Permanently excluding and washing your hands of them just creates problems further down the line. These kids need to be supported as early as possible. A rule that they can't be excluded is a good start, but they then need to be helped to stop behaving in the way that caused the exclusion in the first place. And the safety of other children needs to be considered.

Exclusions of any sort are an ineffective and counterproductive sanction. The more you use them, the less education a child gets and the more likely they are to end up with poor outcomes in adult life. They are used with a statistically high percentage of care experienced and disabled pupils, two of the groups that are most vulnerable in the first place. What is needed is a robust support plan, understanding and tailored adjustments to help pupils achieve. Unfortunately this costs money, there are not enough places in specialist schools and the support in mainstream just isn't there. What would your solution be OP? Short of a massive increase in budget for education, which would have to be funded by taxpayers I can't see one.

Can I just ask, please?

I only work in primary, but generally support older children with challenging behaviour.

I have always told them that when they reach 10 years old, they are at the age of criminal responsibility, as such if they are violent towards me I wouldn’t hesitate in reporting them. Am I wrong?

After 10 years of working, I’m thankful that I haven’t been attacked but if they were to strike me, would there be no consequences for them?

More parents need to report to the police. Whilst police rightly don’t want to criminalise the child police involvement will at least help to build up a pattern and help both parties to get intervention and support

Exclusions do serve a purpose - they allow the rest of the class to continue their education with less disruption.

The child that repeatedly assaulted my child day after day was charged by the police with assault many, many times. What do you think that means? You’d think they’d be some for of consequences wouldn’t you? Absolutely none whatsoever! She was sat in my daughters class the very next morning. The school aren’t even allowed to make her move class without permission from the bully’s parents. It’s insane.

As the headteacher of my daughters school put it:

People think my job is education, it isn’t. It’s safeguarding. I have a lot of kids who have charge sheets the length of my arm and my sole job is to try to protect the other pupils from them, but I have been given minimal tools to allow me to do so.

whatever you think the solution is, sticking violent kids in classrooms with other kids that want to learn and muttering ‘inclusion’ and ‘resilience’ when my kid gets beaten up again is not it.

These kids deserve help, but other kids deserve to learn in a safe, calm environment. They are not getting that in Scottish state schools at present.

We moved our child to private school. We aren’t familiar with private schooling and don’t agree with it as a concept, but felt it was our only option and the state school agreed although they had offered to move my child to another state school (but why should my child move? And the antibullying tools in the next state school will be equally ineffective).

It’s an oversubscribed school so kids can be asked to leave at no cost to the school. It’s a different world. Kids respect the teachers, teachers respect the kids. Teachers teach, kids learn. And yes there will be bullying, but if a child is charged with assaulting another I can’t imagine it’s just brushed over with no action. Why can’t state schools be like this?

"And the safety of other children needs to be considered." Someone above had this line in as the last sentence in a post which talked mainly about how exclusion isn't good and these pupils committing criminal assault need to be supported. No no no. The safety needs come first and are paramount. No one's child should be used as therapy or collateral damage for some other kid!! We need special units elsewhere which these miscreants dread being sent to but which do what they can to get them back on straight and narrow. Ordinary schools can't cope. They certainly don't have resources to keep other kids safe.
My relatives in teaching tell me that these feral kids are unstoppable by any measures available to them. They have nothing and nothing to lose.
What it means of course is that the kids with parents with money able to move to a better school area or go to an independent school escape - the other victims are left to suffer. And we'll now have people come on to say bullying happens to in private schools too. It does, but it's far more likely if it's severe and certainly physical that the miscreant will be shown the door very quickly.

@EvelynBeatrice You didn't read my post at all, did you?

Please explain how general mainstream schools with no money, no extra space and no extra staff can achieve this.

For one child this week it took 7 staff to keep them safe, to contact parents, to look after the other 30 children, to clear up mess and to file paperwork.

I understand exclusions are associated with poor outcomes later in life but I did watch students leave at the end of Y11 having been kept in school for five years of violence and chaos with no real consequences and go straight into prison or, I'm really sorry to say, the morgue and I can’t see that we helped set them up for success by using school as a holding pen for them. All that happened was that other students suffered and staff got ground down and burnt out. Just deciding not to exclude doesn't help anyone.

@Badlydrawnmum my ds (11 at the time) was strangled by a much older "boy" (17) in class infront of the staff until he passed out! The boy also viciously kicked and punched my DS's PSA who tried to get him off ds.
The "boys" reason for attacking ds was that ds is doing a higher in coding at age 11 and that's not right (should say ds has asd, adhd and other issues and is working on Nat 1&2 for everything else still and we're in 3rd year now).
The school did nothing refused to even suspend the "boy" and wanted my ds to have a restorative justice meeting and then go back to the same class with the "boy" in question.
I had to call the police, I had to get the crt to order the school to remove the "boy" from DS's class and later the school after he threatened to stab ds and had a knife with him. The police and fiscal couldn't understand why the school refused to expel the "boy" because he had a right to an education.
If I could have moved school I would have but his is the only 1 that can meet DS's needs in the entire council area. It's a joke and quite frankly I'm of the opinion that the right to an education should come well behind everyone else's right to safety

@Anewuser the age of criminal responsibility was increased to 12 in Scotland, and if anyone under 16 is charged with a crime its up to the lord justice if they get prosecuted or offered a diversion from prosecution. Also if they are under 25 then no matter the crime they must have a reduced sentence that prioritises their rehabilitation, which is why rapists are getting community service and diversion from prosecution. It's very difficult for the crts to punish anyone under 25 and why the "boy" who tried to murder my son was only given councilling and a 8 month suspended sentence for everything he did to ds and his PSA.

These academics with their policies seem incapable of thinking of other stakeholders. What’s best for the violent bully May be one thing, but what’s best for the teaching staff and the rest of the pupils is probably the opposite. What’s best for them is totally disregarded though.

It's refreshing to find someone on here who actually sees the bigger picture. I totally get that parents will focus solely on the impact on their own child but it's so sad that many don't see that these demonised children have been utterly failed by the people who are supposed to protect them. Exclusions will do nothing but exacerbate the problems. Out of sight out of mind is not how you treat a child.

It can't achieve it. That's the problem. Inclusion only works if it's properly funded and supported. Being told there is "no money" is nonsense though as there is money being wasted al the time elsewhere. It's political spin. Governments don't think long term. They don't see education as an investment in the future. They just do what they can to pacify the public for however long they are in office. It doesn't affect their children as most politicians send their kids to private school.

Unfortunately they aren't thinking about what's best for the violent child either.They are solely focused on what is the cheapest /easiest option. If they were putting the violent child's first (as many Mumsnetters seem to believe), the child would actually have support in place to overcome some of the shit they have faced in their young lives. As it stands, none of the children involved are getting what they really need to thrive. Children shouldn't have to face violence at home or in school. The system needs overhauled.

I think ultimately the government will end up paying a huge amount of money to support these challenging kids over their lives. Kids who are extremely violent in school stand a very high chance of going to prison. A quick Google search suggests that it costs the state on average £48,000 per year to keep someone in prison. Add in financial support over a lifetime if you can't hold down a job because you don't follow rules or kick off / become violent if you get into a disagreement. I strongly suspect that it would make much more sense from an economic perspective to provide the right kind of support when the kids are at school to stop things spiralling out of control in later years.

But the system we have isn't working for these children either. I saw SLT congratulating themselves on getting students through to the end of Y11 without excluding them. But after eleven years of punching whoever they wanted and only facing the consequence of a nice chat about their feelings afterwards, they went out into a world that wasn't going to accommodate them at all. We hadn't taught them any skills or coping mechanisms, only that they could behave violently and nothing would happen. But outside of school, that was no longer the case. Without all the necessary support that goes along with inclusion, it just doesn't work for anyone.

I completely agree. I commented previously about how the system needs an overhaul.