To think teachers should wear body cams

[Ffs555]

Rail staff are wearing them, Wetherspoons staff had them on when I went in, it's becoming more common luckily.
I know it isn't a foolproof solution but I think it would stop so many behavioural incidents.
There are signs up in many public facing workplaces saying abuse won't be tolerated, yet it seems teachers/support staff are expected to put up with it 'because they're just kids'.
I used to be a teacher, was threatened by a pupil, he got half a day in internal exclusion and that was it. I had a year 11 pupil make death threats about another teacher in front of me.
I've had another year 11 male pupil walk up to me and grab the mouse out of my hand when I was on the pc.
However have got off lightly compared to many teachers. Still, we're sworn at constantly and verbally abused.
I have left teaching unfortunately due to the behaviour, my new role is much less stressful.
You practically have to bring a weapon into a school to get permanently excluded, schools don't like to permanently exclude due to costs and reputation.
We used to have a very difficult pupil who brought in a fake weapon one day. The headteacher himself said unfortunately it wasn't a real one, otherwise we could have excluded him permanently.
Anyway, I don't know what the solution is, all this restorative conversation stuff doesn't work. Kids don't care about a detention or even a day's exclusion in a lot of cases.

Could you imagine how it would end up being used? And the expense of it? I feel something needs to be done but I'm not sure what the answer is. I think funding is the biggest issue - we need more specialist units that can deal with children who have behavioural issues. I also wonder how many of the families get the support they need when they need it.

Early intervention is the key to success but I'm watching kids go through the school system who clearly have emotional issues and teachers either don't refer them or feel uncomfortable discussing it.

What's the point of CCTV when you have 30 witnesses? What would you actually do with the evidence. Most bad behaviour isnt criminal and you don't need CCTV evidence to exclude a kid or put them in detention.

And that's the problem, the breeders whose sprogs are stopping the majority learning are precisely the type who wouldn't give a damn about anything except maybe topping up their benefits by selling their sad faces to the press.

Don’t believe it to be true or don’t want it to be true?
You know - yes it is a sweeping statement because this is how society operates, we talk about “in general”.
Everyone can think of a great single mum of course but
children of single mothers have poor outcomes statistically. More likely to end up in prison. Girls without fathers are more likely to be promiscuous.

There’s a reason why “wait til your father gets home” is a thing. Not enough male teachers either so those men who are teachers can pick better schools to teach in. Men are just more physically scary and have deeper voices and are simply better at discipline in general so we need to encourage male teachers as they’re underrepresented.

The problem isn’t the proof of what is happening, it’s the lack of meaningful sanctions.

A pupil who assaults a teacher because they only get a couple of days in isolation isn’t going to not assault the teacher because they get filmed doing so and then still only get a couple of days in isolation.

Why doesn't anyone tell parents? I don't mean the parents of the troublemakers, I mean the rest? Is it schools trying to protect their reputations? If so, why don't teachers themselves get together, they have unions, and start telling the general public how it is?

God no. I worked in prisons for 4 years and didn't require one. If prison nurses don't require one why would teachers? I very much doubt schools are more violent than prisons, but the Pearl clutchers on here would have you thinking otherwise...

There are behavioural genetic confounds at work in those correlations.

CCTV helps, because it's not easy to exclude a child, several teachers have said it does. Not all incidents will have 30 witnesses.

Only if kids can wear them too.

They do - a lot! - on here. And get told they’re exaggerating or “my kids’ school isn’t like that”.

A lot of people would only believe it if they saw it firsthand.

This place has limited reach though. Why aren't the teacher's unions doing a public awareness campaign or something?

Yes, this confuses me. Most parents and primary school teachers I ask about violence in secondary schools look at me as if I'm odd and overanxious and explain to me that at worst there's an occasional fight among pupils, but that's quickly broken up.

The secondary schools all have quiet, orderly classes full of smiling, polite, helpful teenagers when we go on open mornings.

Then on Mumsnet I read these horror stories.

No to bodycams - would end up being used against the teachers and those responsible for the worst behaviour wouldn’t care about being filmed.

I don’t know what the answer is. I can’t imagine teaching in the UK. It sounds horrific.

Why aren't they warning us that it's dangerous to send our children to school?

Many schools already have CCTV, as do many childcare places, so how it's to be used is well worked out. Bodycams are really cheap now, don't you know cyclists get them for their helmets? And many people have dashcams. The constant increase in behavioural problems is unsustainable. No country can fund that.

I've been told before that it's basically that school management want to protect their reputation so they force teachers into silence/playing down the problems. Teacher's unions I've been told are only permitted to strike about pay. I have no idea why they've accepted that, or why that should prevent them campaigning about conditions, e.g. the increase in violent children.

The same thing should happen with CCTV in theory, but it doesn't, because the overwhelming majority of bad behaviour is by pupils not teachers. Yes they don't care about being filmed, but the evidence does help get some excluded.

Sorry to ask a really stupid question but basically why can't children who are violent, or behave badly be excluded?

I know that seems really naive to ask; but I remember one girl, who was certainly difficult, call the librarian a fucking bitch. She was expelled. This is now thirty odd years ago, but I don't know now what it takes to be excluded. I assume a lot more than that from this thread.

How long ago did you stop working in prisons?

Lots of healthcare wear bodycams now, even in Cat C.

Because children who behave like that have overwhelmingly experienced trauma in their life and that’s why they behave like that. When a child is permanently excluded and have to go to a PRU then their life chances are massively impacted - homelessness/ addiction/ suicide etc.

It's an ideological shift towards prioritizing the alleged importance of keeping badly behaved children in school, above the rights of teachers or other students to be safe or to teach/learn. The pretence is that various nicey nice methods/'support'/ resources will reform the violent ones. It's the same ideology that allows people with endless convictions to avoid jail because they're victims of their childhoods.

It doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent sadly.

There are very strict rules around who can see the cctv footage and for what reasons.

"How long ago did you stop working in prisons?

Lots of healthcare wear bodycams now, even in Cat C."

October 2020. They were available when I worked in prison, but not many people bothered.

Ah, the poster above demonstrated how it works. It's essentially a kind of dogmatic environmentalism on the one hand, and a prioritization of the rights of perpetrators above those of victims on the other. Always dressed up in the language of compassion.