2 day suspension for vile attack

[Poptart22]

My 13 year old niece was physically attacked at school by her ex best friend. The bully had threatened that she was planning to do this a week earlier, which we informed school of and pleaded with them to keep her safe, however the attack happened on school grounds a week later.

Some other pupils filmed the attack in which my niece can clearly be heard saying several times she did not want to fight, and did not retaliate once. The attack was vicious, she was repeatedly kicked and punched before eventually the teachers arrived.

My niece had to attend A&E. Police were informed who advised she can press charges, but we haven’t yet. However they went and warned the bully to leave her alone.

School suspended the bully for a measly 2 days. She has returned and continued harassing my niece, commenting on her weight and laughing about the attack.

To make matters worse my niece is a looked-after child in the care of her grandparents, with an already troubled and traumatic past.

I wrote a very angry email and attached the vile video of the fight to the headmaster asking why the attack was able to happen on school grounds when we warned them, why the punishment was so weak (in my opinion), and requested that the bully be excluded.

Today I received a phone call from the safeguarding officer advising ‘teachers can’t have eyes in the back of their head’ and that the punishment is pretty standard, as ‘fights happen all the time’. Also tried to put some blame on my niece for failing to report all ongoing incidents of harassment.

In my opinion, if the bully had been properly punished, the harassment would not be continuing.

Im planning on requesting a meeting with the head, since he hasn’t bothered responding to my email.

Where do I stand on this?

My niece is terrified to go to school and completely humiliated.

(I am dealing with this on behalf of my mother who is in her 70’s and struggling to cope).

Is sending her to another school an option.

@RosesAndHellebores You said "I expect schools and their leadership teams to set standards. It is regrettable they do not know what acceptable standards are."

And now you're saying "I know what the situation is vis a vis how hard it is to exclude nowadays"

So you actually know that regardless of a school or leadership team's ideas of acceptable standards, it's out of their hands.

You have missed the point that if school.leadership teams disagreed with the prevailing standards, they'd have kicked up a sufficient stink to ensure they were high.

I maintain that if school leaders believed in high standards they'd have not allowed the current situation to arise in the first place. As it has arisen, if there were any appetite for high standards, they'd be kicking up a stink. They managed to kick up a stink by striking over their pensions and pay. I might have supported that if they'd made any noise whatsoever over the reintroduction of consequences for unlawful and anti social behaviour. They haven't.

You have missed the point that if school.leadership teams disagreed with the prevailing standards, they'd have kicked up a sufficient stink to ensure they were high.

Have you missed the last 14 years of what has happened in education regardless of what school leaders think about it?

Many school leaders and staff have tried kicking up a stink, get nowhere and leave.

No one outside of education wants to hear about it. No one cares if violent children are in school. The only time people do care is when it affects their child.

The government backed by ofsted, judge schools on their exclusion rates. Too many exclusions and your ofsted rating falls.

Wait until you hear about Scotland where they cannot exclude at all.

It can happen, but very rarely does because there is a significant likelihood that the decision will be overturned at IRP.

Even before that point, the paperwork involved isn't just filling in a two page form and sending a letter; it's many, many pages of reports, statements, behaviour logs, letters, PSPs, records of phone calls, more statements, evidence of being tested for dyslexia, CAT4s, KS2 data, reports, assessments. Because if something isn't included - perhaps because there had been approximately zero need to perform a dyslexia assessment upon a student who had a reading age of 15 at age 11 - it gets overturned.

I think this part of the OP is where the energy needs to be shifted to:

She has returned and continued harassing my niece, commenting on her weight and laughing about the attack.

Since the abuse is still continuing, the two day exclusion didn't work. What else will they be doing going forward in order to resolve it. They can't just allow this to go on as it'll be severely damaging to OPs niece. It'll impact her mentally and compromise her learning in the long term.

@RosesAndHellebores Many school leaders have kicked up a fuss and I can assure you most teachers are not happy with the standards of behaviour in schools or the extent of powers/consequences that they have to deal with it.

My school was known for its excellent behaviour for years - we made the news on a few occasions for the achievements we made in behaviour, standards and academic achievement. It was a wonderful place to work - staff and pupils thrived. Then around 2017/2018 things started to changed - gradually one by one the consequences we used were taken away from us by the higher powers that be. Our school leaders fought back but eventually their position became untenable. We were forced to go down a restorative justice process where teachers and pupils had to have a chat about where they had both gone wrong (in whatever behaviour had occurred) and inevitably pupils started to think they ruled the school which I guess they did. During that time, I had an object thrown at my 8 month pregnant stomach on purpose and the pupil was supposed to have a “conversation” with me as his consequence - he refused and faced no further action. A couple of years before he’d have been excluded for a week as a minimum. Similar things were happening around the school, the teachers tried to change things but are ultimately powerless without support from higher up and anecdotal evidence shows those who would have supported a drive in standards in the way you would like have been pushed out of their positions. Teachers have tried, leaders have tried - people with the power don’t listen.

My advice to @Poptart22 is to involve the police. The schools response isn’t good enough but ultimately is a product of the way things have been heading in schools for a few years now.

I don’t think schools like to permanently exclude as it makes them look bad. It does mean assaults get relabelled fights. Also that they try to apportion blame to both parties and resolve with a conciliatory chat rather than calling it bullying which takes work to resolve. Personally I’d press charges and contemplate a move to another school. You absolutely shouldn’t have to but I think a lot of victim blaming goes on and you the complainer ( and by extension your niece) is seen as the problem as opposed to the bully as there isn’t really anything they can do there.

Probably yes. We transferred our daughter to the independent sector at the end of Y8. Due to a disruptive and violent minority that the Head refused to deal with and who were allowed to disrupt learning and make life a misery for the rest of the class.

Involve the police.
Ask for a risk assessment put in place for your child Vs their child. Your niece is the victim so the risk assessment should be detrimental to the aggressor e.g. aggressor cannot use school canteen, cannot use same toilets, cannot be on same area of yard- should they be allowed out at break and lunch initially?
If the harassment and bullying is continuing then in my mind this is the next focus . What is the outcome of any continued threatening behaviour ? This should lead to a longer suspension.

I'm so sick of schools not dealing with these vile bullies! It's disgusting.

I'm well aware.
I've worked and volunteered in schools for years

Hopefully this website will be able to advise you:
https://www.nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/kids.html

LA Exclusions officer here.

I agree this could have been a PX if the circumstances are as you say, and I have overseen PXs for similar on many occasions (that I have not challenged) but there may also be other context that influenced the decision of that headteacher, and of course you're not party to that. It is difficult to PX because the threshold is very high, and rightly so, it shouldn't be easy for a school to PX a pupil.

The statutory guidance gives a lot of discretion to heads in what level of sanction they choose. There are no benchmarks and the list that another poster screenshotted is examples of reasons for suspension or PX, not just PX.

The suspension is done and cannot now become a PX, so I would shift your mindset and focus on asking the school what their risk assessment is and their plans to support your child.

It sounds awful and is of course completely unacceptable, I hope your child is ok.

Oh and I would also agree with police involvement and pressing charges.

Forget the head, press charges through the police instead. Better the school has the embarrassment of hitting the local news

School governor here...

It should in my view be a permanent exclusion. And as a govenor I have upheld an heads decision to exclude in a very similar case. However you cannot determine the punishment of another child or even be given information about that. Going forward your focus has to be on your child.

What you can do:

1. Go ahead with the police. If the police are willing to take action they have grounds. You can ask the police for a non-mol or restraining order which means the child has to be kept away from your niece - including in school.

1. Report this as a complaint in writing using the complaints policy which should be on the school website. This is important as you cannot take things further until you do this.

Focus the complaint on your child.

• Your child has been physically attacked of which the school has video evidence - they perhaps also have cctv?
• your child has been constantly verbally attacked over a signifcant period of time

• Child is now frightened to be in certain places in school.

• Response from school in protecting your child is inadequate and goes against their own behaviour policy (which you will find on their website) and will likely result in further physical assaults - more verbal assaults have already occured. Therefore your child is not safe in school.

In terms of what you want as a resolution

• Your child to feel safe in school and for this not to interrupt their learning including social time in school. (I.e. the response is not separating your child from their peers).

• The girls need to be in separate groups/classes but it should be the bully that is moved as your child needs her support group and should not be punished when she is not in the wrong. Your child should not be denied gcse options because of this separation need (where there is only 1 class for a subject for example which will be an issue in small schools especially)

• A meeting with the DSL (Designated safeguarding lead) where the risk assessments pertaining to keeping your child safe in all parts of school - specifically following these incidents - are shared.

There should be 3 stages to the complaint process. Initially you will get written responses from school or maybe a meeting. Hopefully these will resolve the issue adequately once they realise you are serious. The third takes it to governors. Then you take to OFSted. (Ofsted will just throw it back to school if you cannot show you have followed the schools complaint process).

(Apologies I have cut and pasted this from another post I wrote a couple of weeks ago to get it up quickly so if I've messed it up somewhere you hopefully get the guist)

As you say your niece is a looked after child - I'm assuming this is a formal guardianship and a social worker was involved? If so it might be worth getting them involved also as Looked After kids do get additional support in school.

I’m a school governor. every single exclusion is reviewed by a panel
of governors, and we have strict guidelines to follow when reviewing exclusions.

i am not defending the school, but even when the school would like to exclude, it can be incredibly difficult to provide the level of evidence required to meet the legal threshold for permanent exclusion.

it may be that they are trying to build evidence for an exclusion, but won’t be allowed to discuss that with you.

you can’t demand another pupil is permanently excluded but you can and you should absolutely make a formal complaint about their failure to safeguard your child.

do you have paperwork from A&E? If not, see if they can print something off for you, or check with your GP as A&E may have sent a summary to your practice.

your school website should have published policies on:

• safeguarding (including peer on peer abuse)
• behaviour / exclusions
• complaints

is your school LA maintained, or part of an academy? I only ask as if they are part of an academy then you can also email your complaint to the academy trust.

and yes, I would also be reporting this to the police, and including that paperwork in your complaint.

So if someone came up to you in the office after threatening you and beat you up that would be OK because it's just a fight and you'd be happy to work alongside this person afterwards? If your answer to that isn't yes you are a giant hypocrite as well as having a disgusting attitude about child on child violence. Children shouldn't have to cope with things no adult would put up with. The bully is old enough to be held criminally responsible for her actions, she is old enough that this can be considered and charged as an assault. The standard of behaviour we walk past is the one we accept and the standard of behaviour you and this school are willing to accept is appaling. There is no valid excuse for the school to do fuck all about this. Whether it would work or not to stem the violence at the school doesn't excuse just letting this go as if it's ok for kids to beat other kids up.

Some great advice here. Keep focused on your niece what are they doing to help her be safe and to feel safe. There are things schools can do if they want to, unfortunately it sounds like your neices school would like to sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn't happened. As if a 2 day suspension solves the issue. Follow their complaints procedures. I would personally also go to the police. I would also seriously consider if their's some way to move your neice to a different school. The victim shouldn't have to move, but given the school's attitude it might be your best option.

Disgusting of the school to say "fights happen all the time." It wasn't a fight it was an assault. Clearly things haven't changed much and it shows the school can't be bothered with the hassle.

I have personal experience of this happening to me when I was 13, in the 90s with a gang of girls on the local beach near where I lived.
I was just minding my own business out for a walk and they set upon me. It was horrific and I wouldn't go out of the house for months afterwards, not even to the shop.

I really feel for your poor niece. She needs a bit of pampering to make her feel better and yes DO call the police. An assault is still an assault wherever it happens.
This makes me so angry to see how this is being dealt with. My mum also signed me up to self defence lessons after this and it did give me more confidence.

I have got my son learning karate as I want him to be able to defend himself when he's older, if he needs to.

@EliflurtleAndTheInfiniteMadness I think velmy's point is that she can defend herself so would be confident it would not happen.

I actually agree martial arts training might be a good idea, though I also think the school's attitude is appalling (what are safeguarding staff for if they can't keep an eye out for a known recent threat) and if they really don't have the tools to deal with it better than that, it's also appalling!

Police.
And prosecute to the full extent of the law.