This is normally a very personal matter but considering this is THE place where you can ask questions about just about anything it can't hurt.....

My 10yr old son was assaulted in school last Friday..
Let me clarify a little... In the cloakroom, he was grabbed by the hair by someone I'll call 'DP', dragged to the floor and punched 3 or 4 times in the abdomem. An ex-school helper witnessed the event and broke it up promptly. Ok, it might sound a little strong to use the term 'assault' but if it were you or I then as adults I presume we'd describe it in that way to a police officer. Other than that no 'real' harm was done and no injuries sustained.

Reason: Apparently my son was trying to explain to DP that a particular child had grazed his knee in the playground and asked DP to be careful as he was about to barge into him in the cloakroom (DP's normal clumsy behaviour) and DP blew his top as a result.

As an anecdotal backgrounder, DP is a 'problem' child with behavioural difficulties enjoying life in a 'normal' school. We both sympathise with parents of 'problem' children, in fact we know a few parents ourselves with 'special needs' children but we will not accept that the the excessive unruly, voilent and disruptive behaviour of so few should affect or dilute our child's education (and that of his peers for that matter). Ok, I expect that special needs schools are a conundrum of (potentially) unsavoury children with difficulties and are to be avoided at all costs (to the parent) but for the sake of one why should my (or anyone else's for that matter) child's education and safety be compromised? Just to keep things in perspective about this child, after the cloakroom assault, he (DP) really had to think hard to come up with a reason as to why he'd behaved that way - it's nothing personal towards my son or any other child, it's just the way he is.

Then today, Tuesday, after morning break the class returned to the classroom to sit on the the floor mats. My son 'accidentally' (I mean accidentally. He, like others in his class, try to give DP a wide berth as much as possible) sat where DP prefers to sit. The exact details are sketchy (I do not want to raise the profile of this 'incident' with my son for his sake) but DP threatened my son by raising a pair of scissors (sharp scissors brought from home and not the usual primary school rounded ones) above his chest and threatening to strike mid-abdominally, fortunately nothing happened.

Now, my son is not being victimised by this individual as such. It's purely a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another child had a chair thrown at her by DP along with numerous class disruptions and so on and so forth.

I would be very interested and grateful to hear from other people with experience of the UK educational system on this subject (and other geographies but those experiences may prove to be purely anecdotal [such as mine I fear]).

IMO, DP should be excluded from my son's school for his behaviour because the needs of the one are being put before the needs of the many while he is allowed to continue his bad behaviour and disruptions to the class as a whole (I haven't really described all of the 'normal' class-wide disruptions DP causes BTW).

We don't fully understand the hierarchy involved with UK schools but as I understand it it goes something like this: School (headmaster) -> Board of Governors -> Local Council Authority: It might help us to understand this better.

In the past we have learned that the school staff close ranks on matters of this nature so we're not expecting our expectations to be met entirely but we want some 'real' action taken this time. To worsen matters, we believe DP's father is on the board of governors (I wonder why!).

Anecdotally, we know that various other incidents have not been reported and considering the parents concerned that comes as no surprise (unfortunately). The ex-class helper will possibly stand up to be counted but that's about it. Ok, it's a confidential matter between the parent/pupil(DP)/headmaster so we don't expect to be told everything that's gone on with DP.

To sum up, we need advice on how to progress this matter with the school (etc) and get results. It's probably only a matter of time before someone's child receives a serious 'accidental' injury.

We have a meeting planned with the headmaster next Monday and we know he will try to fob us off with some BS. Ok, it's up to us to let him (or not) get away with that and that's the whole point to this post really, what's our best ammunition and/or approach to achieve our goal etc.?

Thanks,
Andrew