But I want to describe what it does, because nobody has ever described it to me and it is the engine of the whole thing.

It means that a parent in my position is in a closed loop.

You report.

You are told it is being handled.

You are told, correctly and lawfully, that you cannot be told how.

And then the only information you ever get about whether anything was done is from your own child, who is fifteen, who wants it to stop, and who will tell you it is fine.

Four incident reports were written about Julian and I was told about none of them, and the school had no obligation to tell me, and so from the outside — from a kitchen — the school’s response to eleven emails and three meetings was indistinguishable from doing nothing at all.