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Avoiding state school violence by going private

I’m thinking of starting a specialist blog of my own, dedicated to educational issues (“Brian’s Education Blog”?), and the following is the kind of story I have in mind to be featuring, along with things about government education reports and such like. In this case, however, The Times (paper version, yesterday, June 8, news section, page 12) got there ahead of me:

Lorraine Crusham decided to go private after her daughter was assaulted by 20 pupils at the local state school (Glen Own writes).

Nicole, 15, was a few weeks into her first term at Bridgemary Community School, in Gosport, Hampshire, last year when the attack occurred.

“I’d only just dropped her off at school when I received a call saying she had been hurt by a group of boys and girls,” Mrs Crusham said. “She had a massive bruise on her faced and had been kicked up and down her body. Two teachers were also assaulted.

“The school swept it under the carpet, claiming that she had instigated it by insulting someone the day before. But she had been off the previous day. I immediately took her and my 13-year-old son James out of the school.

“James was bullied for having red hair and being Scottish. One teacher suggested he could avoid it by dyeing his hair a different colour. I asked what else they thought I should change – his accent?”

Both children are now boarding at Shebbear College, Devon, where fees cost more than 12,000 GBP a year.

This story illustrates a more general report next to it, headlined “Parents go private as order collapses in state schools.”

On the subject of things Scottish, Freedom and Whisky linked recently to another story about school unpleasantness, and tentatively suggested that it might be something to do with compulsory school attendance laws. I agree, although the young people mentioned in this story were older than the current school leaving age of 16. I believe that almost all seriously nasty and bullying behaviour perpetrated by people who are not career criminals is the result of circumstances that both the perpetrators and their victims can’t (or feel that they can’t) escape from. Nicole Crusham was lucky. She could escape. Millions of others aren’t so lucky.

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