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).

I absolutely agree with your view that this should have been prevented. She should have been kept in after the threat- but they can’t keep the 100 children a week in that threaten others…..
Ultimately, school's job is to educate young people and the police’s job is to procedure criminals- so support DN to press chargers.

A local authority is trying to bring in fines of £21k for schools excluding pupils. How many schools can afford that!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjdneg0m59yo.amp

It's just a fight, nobody got seriously hurt.
My point was that excusing it as just a fight is a disgusting attitude and no adult would put up with this situaiton so why do we expect children to? The child didn't just get physically beaten up she's mentally traumatised and scared. Velmy wants to pretend nobody got seriously hurt when somebody did. Not all harms are physical. No adult would go to work with someone who beat them up, but Velmy thinks nobody got seriously hurt and is minimising what happened as just a fight, not systemic bullying leading to a physical attack and overwhelming fear and anxiety. An adult would not be expected to just accept this, to just get over this. Why should a child?

The bully is not remorseful if she's still carrying on. Take it further with the police. Whether she's in care or not, she knows right from wrong. She's making her choices here and deserves what she gets - I was in care and all but one the girls I lived and grew up with who were violent never changed. I doubt she's the one who will change. Your dd has suffered physically emotionally and through embarrassment of the situation - the bully deserves to be treated like a criminal.

I'm so sorry to hear about your niece. No one should be made to feel unsafe at school.

My 13 year old was physically assaulted during school by a peer who had earlier threatened to kill them. The assault was planned in advance and was witnessed by a number of other students in the class, some of whom egged on the culprit, it was filmed by another. As a result of the school not following its own behaviour policy when dealing with those involved, I ended up submitting a formal complaint to the headteacher and chair of governors.

By this stage I had already reported the assault to the police (something I'd wanted to avoid doing but felt my hands were tied because the school hadn't followed its policy and had missed the opportunity to implement other things). I made sure my letter of complaint provided detail of the attack as told by my DC as well as details of the threats and of the aftermath. Each point was then related to the school's behaviour policy e.g. during history, X threatened DC by saying they would kill them and described how they would do this. This conversation was heard by students A and B as well as by Ms C who intervened. Was this recorded on the safeguarding platform or passed on to a member of the SLT as per the behaviour policy 3.1.2? The next lesson, origami, was covered by a supply teacher named Mr Useless. Students did not complete the cover work set and were told they could do what they wanted. At the end of the lesson there was no supervision on the stairs. Behaviour policy 3.1.7a says there will be members of staff on staircases at lesson changeover time. Why did this not happen?
My DC was ambushed, beaten up and filmed. They did not attempt to fight back. Other students filmed the attack. When Ms Supportive and Mr NQT came to hear what the commotion was, why were the students who were witnesses allowed to leave without being asked to write down what happened (behaviour policy 4.6.3a)?

... you probably get the idea!

As factually as possible, I provided an account of the run-up, the attack and of the fall-out. I explained I was only submitting the formal complaint because the handling of the assault had been inadequate and resulted in my DC feeling unsafe at school in ways - had their own policies been followed - that were unnecessary. The sanction, the handling of my DC, the lack of sanctions for the student who videoed and circulated the footage, the perpetrator being able to use a class whatsapp group to broadcast their intention when they returned from the AP and numerous other things were addressed. The school-based police officers were useless and broke a number of rules of good practice as well as flouting a number of the school's policies.

My complaint was handled well. The headteacher hadn't been told of the attack which was why it hadn't been dealt with at the extreme end of the behaviour policy. She offered to meet me to go through everything and to find out what I wanted the outcome to be. What I wanted was for the school to follow its policies so any student or parent/carer could look at the policy and gain a reasonably accurate idea of the likely consequences of behaviour choices. I also wanted some of the safeguarding procedures to be tightened up e.g. if a student with a history of violence against their peers threatens to kill another, that information is passed on in a way that means the SLT is aware of it immediately and so has a chance to mitigate risk.

The outcome for my DC was that they made a formal statement to the police (conducted at school) and the perpetrator was interviewed at the police station (Caution +3). The perpetrator had already had a ten day FTE which was spent at an AP* but in the police interview admitted the offence and agreed to write a letter of apology to my DC. My DC had no interest in receiving or reading the letter and so it's on file somewhere at school. The perpetrator was moved out of DC's classes and for a time did not have free movement around the school site as they had to be accompanied. They were told not to write about the incident or sanctions on social media and were not put in any of my DC's subject classes in subsequent years. The student who filmed the assault thought they'd got away with it by lying but an older student provided the footage to the school who passed it onto the police. They received a 10 day FTE*.

Being as dispassionate as possible in the making of the formal complaint made it easy for the school to see it wasn't an angry/hot-headed complaint but a very considered one that wasn't going to be resolved by offering platitudes. It was a truly horrible time with some long-lasting consequences but reporting it to the police was the right thing to do; as the school had screwed up following its own policies, there weren't many options for the school to pursue. Thankfully, the shock of the police interview at the station seems to have hit home for the perpetrator who appears to have taken heed of the warning and kept their hands to themselves since.

*boasted about on social media which is why I know.
** student told everyone they'd been excluded but not why.

Speaking as a teacher, this is absolutely the right way to do things.

You need to prove that the behaviour policy was not followed, as you did.

Where things get tricky is it the behaviour policy WAS followed. At that stage you're really appealing to the Board of Governors that the policy is ineffective.

However, in the case of an assault (not a fight), definitely get the police involved too.

I used to be a school governor. There has to be a serious or persistent breach of the school behaviour policy to permanently exclude a child. This sounds like it could count as a serious breach since police are involved. Yes there are fights all the time in schools but not usually with police involvement.

If this had happened out on the streets there would be no question about prosecuting. Speak to the police. It won’t stop otherwise. So sorry for your niece.

Schools are and always have been absolutely awful with bullying. It's is always easier to effectively terrify the child being bullied until they can't stand attending anymore and end up moving schools.

I'm afraid I don't have any advice as to next steps but I'm very sorry for your niece. It is awful and shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Schools can increase the punishments the kids get and perhaps ensure that they actually keep a child safe.

It is so tedious seeing teachers and schools constantly say they can't do anything. It has been happening for years. If somebody at my work place was attacked by a colleague, they'd be out. They wouldn't be free to keep harassing somebody.

I assume all the indifferent posts suggesting there's nothing the school can do and it's no big deal are teachers.

This isn't just a one off fight though, it's sustained bullying. Schools need to deal with bullying on school grounds fgs.

So why isn't someone contacting the police again if they said they can press charges

If the attack was bad enough to have the girl expelled, what aren't or haven't you pressed charges?

Words and actions need to match z

@kirinm many teachers are assaulted by pupils. Many of those pupils are still in the schools. If teachers/schools had the power to remove these children do you not think they would?

You clearly have no idea how hard to is to expel a child from school no matter what they do. It should be possible but its mostly not
The schools response does sound a bit crap though.
I would certainly involve The Police

I am a Governor who sits on exclusion panels.
I see the same kids repeatedly and we are trying to PX but it can take literally years

@Hoppinggreen can you explain why it's so hard? Is there no internal exclusion process? What goes on in the head of the school when this happens because a lot of the posts on this thread suggest its defensiveness rather than any empathy.

I think everyone on this thread who has posted in any sort of school capacity has said that the OP should be pressing ahead with police charges, not playing down what happened.

@noblegiraffe there's been an awful lot of 'what is the school meant to do about it'.

You can’t ’press charges’ in England. The police will either decide to continue with the case or not, and sometimes they do even if the victim doesn’t support it. The state takes the perpetrator to court, not the victim.

I imagine the lack of empathy is largely from people who understand the process and know how it actually works as oppposed to how it should
Of course there is an internal exclusion process, its part of the problem. Parents, Social workers and other agencies will fight like hell to stop a child being PX'd. They are only focussed on that one child and many of them know exactly how to work the system. At our last pre exclusion panel of 6 children we were reviewing 3 turned up and 2 only because they were at school and a teacher brought them there. 1 had a parent who pretended they needed a translator (they didn't) and then claimed the whole thing was racist. Another had other had a Social Worker who postponed in order to gather more info . We could only proceed on 1 of those.
No school wants violent childen there but its really hard to remove them.

Police definitely. Prosecute the vile girl. She needs to learn her lesson before she does something catastrophic that will ruin her own life as well as someone else's.

My grandson had been experiencing bullying. I picked him up one day. I saw the bully having a good look round and when he assured himself his mother and GSs mother weren't around he punched him, he didn't know me so didn't realise I was watching. I went up to the Head and told him what I'd witnessed. He turned to GS and said, "were you annoying him?". I was really angry and said no one had a right to put a hand on him even if he was being annoying, he hadn't done anything but that wasn't the point. Lots of schools seem useless at dealing with bullying.

@kirinm but that is because it is difficult for schools. I like another poster sit on exclusion panels. I have had to overturn a few permanent exclusions. I also review suspensions.

For both you will be given a pack of paperwork, sometimes running to hundreds of pages detailing what interventions etc have been tried. We look at whether the school has done everything it can. Funding is limited so probably a school has not been able to put in all interventions it can or an intervention could have been missed which caused the pupil to act like they did and that can be cause for suspension/exclusion to be overturned

And it can feel awful overturning a decision knowing that pupil will be back in school with the pupils/staff they have hurt.