Sorry your DD is being targeted like this and I hope the meeting is helpful.
My youngest DC is in Y7 and a couple of months ago I found out they were the subject of a peer's 'hate campaign' for want of a better description. DC hadn't wanted to tell us about it but did once a friend's parent alerted me to it. DC is small for 12, wears glasses and twin block braces which hold both jaws in a fixed position so makes for a fairly classic target. It turns out the queen bee (QB) had taken against DC because they'd asked QB more than once to let DC get on with the work. DC is quite shy but can be quite direct about things and this seems to have triggered months of anti-DC behaviour including threatening to break bones, shoving, throwing things at them, making unkind comments in the Google Classroom chats, making accusations in the class whatsapp group and threatening anyone in the class who spoke to DC.
QB was given a two day exclusion for physically assaulting another student so DC was able to see that QB wasn't as invincible as she felt she was but also that classmates were possibly going along with QB because she was more scary than DC. My DC really wanted to deal with it and said she would talk to her form tutor with the one remaining friend but in the mean time agreed to practise a 'killing with kindness' approach. Nothing witty or clever, just unsettling QB by saying 'hi' or telling her the time if asked, as though QB was as ordinary as everyone else.
The evening before DC and friend spoke to their form tutor, I emailed her and the Head of Y7 with a very dispassionate account of what had been reported to me. I explained they'd be coming to talk to her and that I didn't want her to mention that I'd emailed. I also explained some of the strategies we'd talked about at home. I acknowledged that I may well not have the full story and that DC can be quite blunt. I requested:
- DC be moved as far away as possible from QB in the seating plan
- the school look into what was happening and apply the relevant parts of the anti-bullying policy
- the whole form receive some input on the mental health impact of passive bullying
The form tutor and head of Y7 were brilliant. They sprang into action, did a massive investigation and all the students on the receiving end felt heard. QB and her sidekick were interviewed last of all by which time, they were apparently extremely nervous. I'm not sure how the adults have achieved it but QB has turned over a new leaf and she and DC have, off their own backs, chatted about why there was ever an issue (QB didn't like that DC had dared to stand up to her and so this was a punishment).
My DC is so much happier but I'm almost more delighted for QB who already had a pattern of fixed term exclusions - something those teachers said clearly reached QB in a way exclusions hadn't.
I consider the school's response to have been spot on. It was swift, gave all parties the opportunity to feel heard and has put a stop to the ongoing, targeted unkindness. It has also been empowering for the whole form group who've seen that reporting ongoing unkindness isn't about getting someone else into trouble but about being kind towards the person on the receiving end as well as giving the perpetrator/s an opportunity to make different choices about their behaviour.
In your meeting, perhaps you could request that your DD have someone pastoral to check in with every day by email so any incidents aimed at her (including those she thinks may not have been deliberate/mean) can be investigated quickly but without her having to report in front of the perpetrators. The actual act of recording each incident, no matter how tiny, will also help her to process it instead of letting it take up her energy. Strategies such as letting her go into the classroom first and/or sitting on the back row may be useful to her too so she doesn't have to walk past the students who are being unkind and so she knows there's nothing going on behind her back. If you've told the form tutor who the boys are, maybe they could be moved to the very front of the class so there's less scope for undetected meanness in class at least. I would hope the boys would be given the opportunity to give their accounts (ideally in writing) of what's been going on and to be asked how they would respond if they were the adult in charge... and be told that any of them who continued to be actively and deliberately unkind to others would be candidates for being put into different form groups.
Provided the school is willing to be proactive and puts some proper effort and support into building your DD's coping strategies - whilst simultaneously challenging the unkind behaviour of the boys - I would look to keeping her at her current school where she has at least one definite friend. However, it would also be worth arranging a weekly review with the form tutor/pastoral person to keep on top of things. Perhaps you could ask if the school would support a managed move for her if the unkindness hasn't stopped within the next two weeks.