A devastated mum has hit out at school bullies who she says have made her young son feel suicidal.
Sophie Fleming (29) told the PA 10-year-old Mackenzie Crawford has been bullied non-stop for two years.
She says the primary six pupil at Kinross Primary School has even written in his diary that he wants to die – and the only present he asked Santa for at Christmas was to make the bullies go away.
The desperate mum says she has tried to speak to the school but they do not seem to care. She has even gone to the police and the education service at Perth and Kinross Council to get to the bottom of it.
Mum Sophie says: “My son has been bullied for over two years and is getting attacked and name called. I am not getting anywhere with it, no one is helping me. They started to call him names in primary five. He is really small for his age and all the other boys are quite tall, so they call him ‘midget boy’.
“He gets attacked most days – he got attacked last Thursday when he was pushed to the ground.
“He wrote in his diary that he wished he was dead. If I was a teacher and I read that my heart would break. It is heartbreaking to see him writing that and to know your son doesn’t want to be alive.
“A lot of kids are taking their own lives now and I don’t want that to happen to my son. The only present he asked for from Santa at Christmas was for the boys to stop bullying him.
“It all comes down to jealousy. The other boys don’t always have the best of stuff, and I am always there to pick my son up from school and their parents are not.”
She said she often speaks to the school about her Mackenzie’s’s bullying, but doesn’t think this is helping.
Sophie continued: “The school has been quite dismissive, they just think I am a daft young mum.
“We are not the only family going through this at Kinross, and I worry about him going to Kinross High School in a couple of years. No one is listening to me, they keep saying there is no bullying at the school, but there is.”
Mackenzie is now kept indoors at intervals to make sure he is kept away from the other boys in the school.
But Sophie said: “The other boys are also now thinking he is getting special treatment by getting to stay inside, so that doesn’t help.”
A Perth and Kinross Council spokesperson said they are taking the matter “extremely seriously” and there was an anti-bullying strategy in place.
They added: “Our schools all actively work to reduce bullying, and school staff and other education officers will always give appropriate attention to concerns raised with them.
“We are however unable to comment on individual pupils’ circumstances.
“If parents/carers are unhappy with how any issue has been dealt with, we would ask them to contact the council’s education and children’s services so that we can arrange to discuss things further with them.”
Mackenzie’s story comes after a video emerged of a Perth Academy pupil being bullied.
