My emphasis will be, that, schools are NOT acting according to the law, they consider that they are a law unto themselves. This could be a factor in why there is a proliferation of bullying in schools. Schools, and clearly coming from directives above, from the Department of Education itself, are dealing with incidents internally that policy requires them to report to police, and incidents which, according to law, are criminal in nature. They do NOT have the right to determine what is considered a criminal offence, that is for the police to investigate and decide. I will be pushing that angle with the Ombudsman, the school is not the judge and jury in such cases, any child over the age of 10 is criminally liable for perpetrating bullying. And the school owes a DUTY OF CARE to students, it is their responsibility to act on behalf of the bullied student where policy provides a provision to ACT. It should never be a parents responsibilty to pursue legal action against a bully, incidents which occur on school grounds. The school is responsible for doing that. In my sons case, the school did not even alert me to the incident, as they are meant to do under policy. It was weeks later that I stumbled upon what happened to my son, he was too embarrassed to tell me. How many more incidents do they not tell parents of, and, as they deal with these incidents ' internally', these incidents are essentially swept under the carpet. If I had not discovered what had happened to my son, I would never have known and he would have continued to suffer in silence. This is unconscionable. I will also be pushing that my sons former school be audited, and its records sifted through for incidents they deemed acceptable to deal with internally, which really is a euphemism for ' sweeping it under the rug'.
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