‘Why did school not tell us about chalk pit incident?’

Lucas’s parents say it “beggars belief” that they were not informed by teachers of the alarming visit to the the chalk pit a month before their son’s death.

While Lucas’s school records were updated, Alison and Colin Webb did not become aware of the incident until five days after he took his own life.

“It was clear that worrying posts were being made over social media, but the school didn’t follow them up and check the record in any way,“said Mrs Webb.

“Had they done that they would have seen that suicide was being openly discussed in that group chat in the 10 days prior to the chalk pit incident.

“But because it wasn’t checked, the whole thing was passed off as a joke, completely missing the seriousness of the safeguarding issue.

“We are very disappointed that the coroner did not think it was appropriate to produce a Regulation 28 order on safeguard procedures at the school.

“We strongly believe that

if something is considered sufficiently serious to have your child’s record updated, then parents should be made aware.

“We had absolutely no idea that this was going on.

“It seemed to come down to the school thinking it was a judgment issue when we believe it should be policy.

“We can’t change that now but I fear that if something like that happens to another child, the parents won’t necessarily find out until it’s too late, and that’s not good enough.”

Lucas was in his first year of A-levels at the grammar school, and was a talented pupil.

Mrs Webb says she and her husband are soon to meet with school governors and want to hear what they have to say as a result of the inquest.

“I still maintain that there are things they have not done that they should write down in school policy and not leave it to judgement,“she said.

“We are not out to give the school a hard time, but this can never happen again to another child.”

Speaking after the inquest concluded, Simon Langton Boys’ head teacher Ken Moffat said: “The school has felt deeply the tragic death of Lucas.

“He was a highly gifted young man with a bright future.

“We had no idea or indication that his thoughts had taken such a dark turn and significant periods of enforced self-isolation kept him away from school during the Autumn and Winter.

“He is missed by the whole school community.”

Simon Langton Boys’ School