Schools have an obligation to safeguard and promote the welfare of pupils.
Unfortunately this obligation does not include a legal duty to prevent a pupil
from being bullied, as it is not possible for schools to monitor every pupil
every minute of the day. Therefore schools will not guarantee parents that they
can prevent their child from being bullied whilst in school or travelling to or
from school. Due to this there is very little that we can do from an education
law point of view to assist parents.
Are there any other legal remedies?
Usually when a child has been bullied they are
either psychologically or physically harmed. Therefore you might have a claim in
personal injury law. If you wish to pursue this we recommend you contact us and
discuss this with a solicitor who specialises in personal injury law, for advice
as to whether or not your child has a claim.
If your child is being threatened and/ or
physically harmed and the bully is over the age of 10 we recommend you report
any incidents immediately to the police.
Practical Steps
- Encourage your child to discuss the incidents of bullying with a teacher,
when they occur. In order to encourage your child to trust a teacher
sufficiently to do this you could ask the school if a one teacher can be
designated as the teacher your child can discuss incidents with.
- Make a log of all the incidents of bullying, including names, dates and what
happened. This could be useful or discussing bullying with the school and might
help if you are pursuing a personal injury claim or aid any Police
investigations.
- If your child is being bullied via texts or through social networking sites
such as Bebo, MSN and Facebook, we recommend you contact the phone company/
websites to report the incidents and see if the contact can be blocked.
- If the bully is in the same class and there is more than one class in the
year group you could ask to have your child moved to a different class. Although
it is not fair for your child to move, it is unlikely a school will agree to
move the bully unless their parents request the move.
- Ask the school for a copy of the schools bullying and behaviour policy - If
you do not think the school is implementing this correctly then you should
discuss your concerns with the school. If this does not help, the school will
have a complaints procedure that you can pursue. A copy of the procedure should
be made available to you upon request from the school. However you should be
aware that pursuing this could affect your relationship with the
school.
- You must ensure that your child attends school even if they do not want to.
If your child misses a day and does not have a medical note to cover their
absence you could be liable for non-attendance proceedings. For further
information see Non-attendance proceedings.
- We understand you will not want to send your child to school if the bullying
continues. Therefore you might want to consider moving your child to a different
school. Although it might feel like giving in to the bully this could be
beneficial to your child's wellbeing. For advice on school admissions please see
School Admission
For more information please contact our Education Law Solicitor Samantha Hale
on Colchester (01206) 835230 or email Education@fjg.co.uk