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Case ref:201802160
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Date:January 2019
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Body:North Lanarkshire Council
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Sector:Local Government
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Outcome:Upheld, no recommendations
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Subject:primary school
Summary
Mr C complained that the council failed to reasonably record and investigate concerns about bullying in line with their obligations. Mr C said that staff at his child's (Child A) primary school failed to apply their anti-bullying policy and guidelines, specifically that they failed to identify bullying behaviour.
The council confirmed there was evidence of bullying behaviour. They advised each allegation of bullying was investigated and the head teacher fed back findings to Mr C. The council also outlined other steps they had taken to support Child A. The council acknowledged that not all incidents of bullying had been updated on their system. They apologised to Mr C for this and advised that this matter had been addressed with all head teacher's within the local area to ensure all allegations of bullying are formally recorded regardless of the outcome of the investigation.
We found that the council's policy does not require the school to take specific actions. It requires them to take some action based on the individual circumstances of the incident(s). We considered that the school had been responsive to Mr C's concerns and explored a number of options available to them to address the bullying behaviours reported and support Child A. However, while the investigation by the school was reasonable, the recording of information was not. Therefore, we upheld Mr C's complaint but did not make any recommendations due to the action already taken by the council.