Would you involve the police?

[Moonlight]

What do posters expect the school to do? Give him a lecture? Give him detention? We aren't talking about name calling or snatching your sweets. Call in the Police.

I think posters will expect the school to be supportive of the parents and at least be aware that one of their pupils has acted in this way. At the very least the school can say that this is unacceptable behaviour and the consequence of this is that it is now a police matter. Hopefully enough of a deterrent for anyone else thinking of acting like this.

I agree with Pushy Dad.
This is not the sort of thing a school can tackle effectively.
In any case, as I said in my previous post, it did not happen in school, so why do people expect the school to deal with it?

Maybe the school can't tackle this effectively but if they're not informed then they will not even have the chance of doing something positive. A school is part of the larger community and they can work alongside the police, if nothing else, in supporting parents and pupils.

[scary mum]

DS's school states that they expect their pupils to conduct themselves correctly at all times, not just while at school and take action on problems they are aware of even if they happen outside school. I think it would be good if all schools had this attitude although I know from experience many don't. I hope that however it is handled the boy gets the message that this sort of behaviour is not acceptable, and indeed is illegal.

[Sportsmum]

There are many schools that state that regardless of whether a pupil is in or outside of the school grounds, if they are wearing uniform and are identifiable as their students - poor behaviour, breaking of school rules or more major issues can and will be dealt with by the school. This why some schools suspend pupils found smoking outside of school but still in uniform.

That notwithstanding, assault is assault and really needs to be dealt with by the appropriate authorities....

[Marylou]

Just out of interest...if something like this happens on school grounds, is it any less of a police matter? Surely an assault is just that - regardless of where it happens.

My sympathies to Samlet - it's a terrible shock to find out your child has suffered this kind of experience.

[Sportsmum]

Marylou - from personal experience - many schools hate parents getting the police involved. In our case they seemed to think it undermined them - they tried to brush it off - however - the hospital insisted we contact the police - DC had a suspected fractured jaw and cheek bone. It happened at school.

[Looking for help]

Absolutely shocking, and yes the police should be informed, whether the school does anything or not.

You are right, sportsmum, I don't think schools like parents to involve the police but with behaviour like this, there really is no choice, sadly.

[Samlet]

I've made some progress today. Firstly I consulted a neighbour who is a governor and told me that the school will get involved when incidents happen out of school but in uniform and that if I didn't hear back from the year head, that I should go to the deputy head who deals with discipline (who must be good as the children are very frightened of him).

Well I didn't hear from the year head, so I went to see the Deputy Head who said all the right things - 1. acknowledged it is a criminal assault, 2. child will get an internal exclusion (which is the same punishment as he would have got if it had happened on school premises - I checked the policies, thanks mystery ), 3. the parents will be brought in to talk about it and 4. he was very sympathetic of DS and his concerns about possible retribution as well as why I wanted to be more involved/informed of what was going on.

So if all that happens, I will be satisfied that some good will come out of this nasty incident for my DS.
I would never have wanted to press charges against this child (although my DS said he would ), but I would have wanted the police to impress on him how serious this is. I'm pretty confident that the Deputy Head will be able to do this too (he somehow channels Darth Vader and even I am a bit nervous of him and I probably have ten years on him ).

Only unintended consequence is that I have probably antagonised the head of year now by going over his head - but I didn't have much choice - and he hadn't informed the deputy head, which makes me think that my initial suspicions about his response were correct.

I was a bit premature thinking that DS was over it, I had to drag him along to see the deputy head this evening, and now he is feeling sick and worrying about what others will say, poor thing. But in the end, he was really lucky, he has bruises and his head aches, but it could have been hospital or worse. Sportsmum, really shocked to hear what happened to your DC, hope he got over it quickly.

Mystery I had to laugh at your post as I hadn't given the gran another thought til then! She is a tiny lady with fairly basic English, but I reckon she could probably keep the peace if necessary - she looks steely

[Waiting_For_Godot]

If his head continues to hurt then I would get it checked out.