Alleged bullying at school.

[curiosity]

DS1 has been involved in a situation at school.

He has been taunted since September by a certain girl, and ignored her at first. During the last couple of weeks he has started to respond with some namecalling. She then complained to staff of bullying. DS was spoken to, as was the girl.

DS explained the situation from his perspective, but had never previously complained about the girl.

DS has now been accused of bullying, given an "official" warning and the member of staff issued what amounted to a threat about him having to change school if the behaviour was repeated.

I am aware that DS is at fault in his response to this situation, but we have some concerns about the way the situation has been handled.

What would you do?

any advice?

Anyone, please?

Don't panic about the changing schools thing. They haven't excluded him, and I suspect they are appearing coming down hard on a "first offence". Have you spoken to his head of year/form tutor?

I teach in a secondary school. Students have been excluded for persistent violent bullying, but name calling in Y8 is hardly an excludable offence.
Contacting parents and a detention should sort that out. Probably just a threat although a bit OTT.

DH is going to ring the head of year tomorrow.

I'm not panicking (yet) but I am concerned about the lack of communication.

If the situation is so serious as to warrant the threat of changing school then surely we, as parents, should be informed of the incident(s).

Yes, it is namecalling - on both sides - although there appears to have been no sanction against the girl.

No contact from the school.

I would request a meeting with his teacher and/or head, when dh calls, to explain your side and just have it on record, otherwise it will look as though your ds was the instigator.

It isn't a serious threat. More along the lines of "this is what happens to persistent bullies" I suspect. As far as I'm aware there is no system of "official warnings" with regard to changing schools.

The girl may have had the same conversation.

Yes, Saadia, DH will speak to her about it for that very reason. We are meeting next week (for the usual progress/target-setting day for the year) but we want it dealing with so that the incident doesn't take over the whole meeting iykwim.

BBS, I see where you're coming from, although she definitely stated that it was an official warning. The girl only had to see her once (my DS twice - once to explain his side, once for the sanction) and she's told my son she had no warning (although obviously he only has her word for that).

Thanks for your advice.

Have gone away and thought about this. If we excluded every Y8 for name calling then we would have no Y8's at all (or Y7 come to that-or even staff!) Name calling is classed as bullying, but very low level, please don't panic!

Lol, I'm not panicking.

Thanks.

I think your dh's planned telephone call to set the record straight and to clarify matters is exactly the way to go.

School appear to have handled this less than effectively

Wow, DH has already spoken to the Head of Year, (I'm impressed - sometimes it takes a while for obvious reasons).

As I originally stated, DS1 was out of order, but had not said much about the previous provocation.

Head of Year made it quite clear to DH that expulsion was not an option until way way down the line, so whilst not an idle threat, like you said BBS, a sort of "this is what can happen".

DH explained other incidents which had occurred to DS1, which she had not been aware of (well she wouldn't, if he won't tell staff), but at least he talks to us.

A case of one of those 100s of incidents teachers have to deal with every day, and one, mostly well-behaved 12 year old, being scared and hearing a different message.

Thanks for responding last night.

Next question: how DO you get a proud 12 year old to ignore taunts and to tell staff what's going on?

glad it's kind of sorted curiosity, but obviously not good that ds has to deal with this stuff. There are several bullying threads around at the moment and it's making me very angry that so many children are going through this. Not sure what the answer is though, hope someone wiser comes along soon.

i would send letter in stating whilst your son was at fault - the other girl was also at fault - you dont mind your son being punished but want girl to also be punished.

you would like girls parents yourself and both children to go into a room to discuss.

funnily ebough did exactly this thing last week.

had phone call from other kids mother saying she dident want to come into school.

fine. as long as we are all clear there is injustice here - dole the punishments out fairly - and investigate thoroughly.

It is another tactic of bullies - if you try to fight back, they come on even stronger and get you into trouble. The whole situation gets turned around from the point of view of the authorities. You can see what will happen in the future - DS1 says "she is bullying me" then the girl says "no - it was him, and this has happened before".

At secondary school I reacted to a bully on the spur of the moment. I told the teacher that the bully had stapled my book to my desk. Some of my friends cut me dead for the rest of my time at the school - it was against their prep school ethos to whistleblow.

Curiosity, I think you have handled it well, but I would not follow up with Custy's letter myself.

Thanks.

We have the afore-mentioned meeting next week, so we will take the opportunity to speak again about the issue, to ensure that DH's conversation has been recorded appropriately, for future reference, and we will ask if any further action has been/will be taken with the girl involved.