Help m daughter has been banned from proms

[Catherineandoh]

Please can anyone help me, I'm typing this message in tears, I feel like I've failed my daughter as a parent. My lovely hard working daughter which I adore so much has been banned from proms and it's so unfair, she was involved in an unprovoked attack, she was attacked by another girl who has behaviour issues, my daughter was held down when this girl was beating her up, she had bruises, when she finally broke free she was taken into the safety of an office but for some reason the attackers boyfriend got into the office and attacked my daughter pushing her and hitting her head onto a wall. When the fight was going on she couldn't breath or free herself to defend herself because her head was in headlock and another child was holding her down. When she finally broke free she acted on impulse to hit her attack but she ended up hitting a teacher by accident. The teacher even explained that my daughter hitting him was an accident. The school excluded her for 5 days and invited us to a meeting with the board of governors who have now decided that she can't attend the proms, we've even appealed but they still say no. My daughter is very stressed now, she won't eat and is complaining of severe headache, she's currently doing her GCSE and I'm sacred this can affect her performance. She's never had any problems in school and she's a good student, she worked in te school library, raised funds for charity, been a year and school council and even raised money for proms. What can I do now. This is no fair at all. Please can anyone advice me on what to do. Thanks

I don't think they could move a year 11 at this point to another school if they're taking GCSEs. You're entered for a particular exam in a particular place.

If they moved school (and most schools are on study leave if not now only have next week before they are) then they'd have to come back to sit the exam at the school.

I would concentrate on calming your dd down and getting her through the GCSEs. Rushing round trying to get her un-banned from prom (and I would have felt the 5 day exclusion was more important to have overturned before it happened) is going to focus your and her energies in the wrong place.

Dont name the school
Dont start an online petition
Really really dont.
This is ruining your daughters life at the moment
Having a permanent online record of the whole thing could ruin her life indefinitely.
Genuinely you need to do 2 things. Reassure your dd that you are doing all you can to resolve this.
Let DD know that it may not go in her favour. That it will be unfair and a poor reflection on the school not on her. But she will get through it. That all will be well and she will have a good life.

Pupils with known behaviour problems attack other students, cause disruption in lessons but are given lots of support and understanding to continue their education. Pupils who regularly have their lessons disrupted by those with behaviour issues, deal with verbal abuse and assault in school and are just supposed to put up with it. Very unfair

Op can you clarify at what point the teacher was hit please. I accept it was an accident but if it was after they were separated and your daughter went to find the other girl to hit her that would be considered an aggressive act in itself and not self defence. It would explain the outcome.

An online petition?
what would it say?

The police should have been involved. Proms are overrated anyway. Can you imagine the kind of trouble that would start up if any of those involved attended?
Concentrate on the GCSEs.

Glad we never had proms in the 80s. The best we could hope for was a school disco and escaping the bullies who wanted to shave your eyebrows off.
Now, it's all ball gowns, suits, stretch limos and sneaking vodka into the Prom.
It's all too 'Carrie'. Horrific!

There is some poor advice here on complaining. Ofsted do not deal with complaints about individuals and that includes safeguarding. They only look at complaints about education leadership and management and only after you have exhausted the complaints procedure which includes head, governors, DFES etc. For safeguarding concerns you need to speak to your LEA - generally the LADO.

By all means contact the police. I have spoken to the police on a couple of occasions where parents have phoned them.

If you are unhappy with the exclusion and then removal of prom place then use the school complaints procedure and then follow through. It is usually head, governors, and then DFE. Be factual, polite, (no over emotion) but make it clear that this won’t go away. You won’t get anywhere with the press/petitions as the school will just release a statement to the effect that they are unable to comment.

However you really need to focus on assault and not the prom as if that is resolved then everything else should fall into place.

Sorry but you need to understand the way things work in schools. Firstly in most schools there is a disconnect between being able to register a complaint and exclusions. The behaviour policy and the exclusion policy will probably say that in the case of an exclusion that the complaints policy cannot be used as a second line of complaint.
If you then look at the exclusion the only person who can have given the 5 day exclusion is the head teacher and by default they will also be the person who will have decided that not attending the prom was part of the punishment.

The exclusion guidance is very clear on process and that the head teacher before making a decision to exclude has to take into consideration all possible reasons for the behaviour. Quite clearly as described by OP there was provocation and especially the incident in the office is just beyond what anybody should be expected to put up without reaction. So I have to ask the question what did the exclusion letter say, was it for the whole of the incident or was it for hitting the teacher and just what did the headteacher say your daughter's involvement was? If the teacher has explained it was an accident to the headteacher then I struggle to understand the punishment.

You also need to understand the legal guidance for exclusion. If the exclusion was for 5 days and there has been no other exclusion in the term then the governing board must consider any representations made by parents but does NOT have the power to decide whether to reinstate the pupil. So whether you like it or not the exclusion once given could not be rescinded and the person who has made that happen is the headteacher by only giving a 5 day exclusion. If it had been 6 days then the governing board could have reinstated.

You are I am afraid stuck in what you can do legally. I would try to go to the complaints procedure in a written form saying that the headteacher has punished your daughter twice both by exclusion and secondly by imposing the ban on going to the proms. I suspect that you will be told that you cannot use the complaints procedure but you should then escalate it to a complaint to the governing board over the head' s refusal to consider rescinding the proms ban. They will say the same probably but that is the only way you can take this forward. There is no further action that you can take other than involving the police but that is not about your daughter and the proms that is about the actions of the other pupils and can only from what you have said lead to further potential issues.

Total Safeguarding failure by the school. I’d go on the metaphorical attack from that angle.

If a teacher was close enough to be hit then what was your DD defending herself from? Was the teacher actually hands on during the physical altercation? There must be more to the exclusion than 'accidentally' hitting a teacher in self defence.

I think the Prom is not important. It might be for your daughter but not really. You need to complain about the lack of support for your daughter and the lack of safe guarding. The school failed to keep your daughter safe. Go to the police and press charges against the other girl and boyfriend for attacking your daughter.
The striking of the teacher is odd but if he says it is an accident...

Witchend

from memory (and its been a few years since I have had to deal with something like this) If the attack was deemed severe enough the other pupil would be sent on early study leave, taking their exams within the same school.
Expelled no chance of exams (rare but it happens).
or had there exams moved to a different school but wouldn't be attending the school.

I think you have been advise of this already but whatever you do, when you go to the police do not make this about prom. It will sound like you have an axe to grind. This is about the attack on your daughter. You need to have an explaination about why it has taken you so long to go to the police.

Have you been to the police op?