Bullying In Secondary School

[Nibbi]

Hi All-regrettably my daughter (age 14) has been subjected to a sustained period of bullying, both verbal and social media. I've provided school with over 50 copied texts, WhatsApps etc and they are investigating. The bullying continues. The young adults concerned seem to refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and believe they can do this without consequences. I'm am now considering involving the Police, as cyber-bulling is classed as illegal bullying. Has anyone any experience of this? Does anyone know whether the Police can actually/do actually do anything about it? Also does it make life better/worse for the victim? I'd appreciate if you could share your experiences with me. Thank You.

How long have the school had to deal with it? Have they issued any sanctions?

You could phone 101 for advice? If the school sanctions don’t work, or if the school seem to be dragging their heels then that would be the next step. I’m not sure what the police will say, obviously it depends on the messages.

In the meantime can your DD block the people/delete social media?

Hello both and thank you for taking the time to write comments. School are dragging their heels and it is only as a result of continued daily pressure on my part that they are actually doing anything in the school, during the school day to help her. Unfortunately too little and too late. The bullying behaviour has now spread to a group of approx 15 and my DD has to face this pack on a daily basis. The school are in their 3rd week of investigation and now trying to downgrade from bullying to merely an argument. They are saying that all the abusive messages received from different students took place in a 3 day period and so constitute 1 incident. Their argument runs that a repeated pattern of this behaviour is needed for bullying to apply. However the bullying continues on a daily basis which the school are conveniently not regarding as incidents. I’ve contacted the police and will contact Ofsted. Can anyone comment on whether I should also be contacting the LEA? The school is an academy.

Safeguarding incident, you can still involve the LA even if they’re an academy and don’t let them tell you otherwise.

You need to follow the schools complaint procedure

I think your DD should remove these DC from her contacts. I feel you have to wait for the school to investigate, reach a conclusion and decide on a punishment before you can complain about them doing nothing. When you know the full outcome of the investigation based on the furth info you have given them, you can complain if it doesn’t meet their written bullying and behaviour policy.

Bullying is usually defined as behaviour that occurs over a period of time and a short span is usually an argument. That isn’t to say that 15 DC being angry after an incident and sending inappropriate texts isn’t something that shouldn’t be punished. It should be.

I think you now have to log all further contact with your DD (if she still keeps in touch with them of course) and prove that it’s continued over the summer. What do you think should be done with these children who are contacting her and what happened in the first place to trigger it if it hadn’t happened before?