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.

The issue with children not being expelled is that heads either can't or don't want to expel them, it is isn't because there is not enough evidence.

Some parents will try and deal with behaviour but they may not be able to as many of the kids are acting out because they have special needs that aren't being met or mental health/emotional issues.

Why can't or don't want heads to expel them?

Where would a body cam be worn by a teacher? The police have uniforms and cyclists have the helmet. Unfortunately I can predict a few pupils deliberately looking or leering down the camera to or assault to get it off the teacher.

Also you would have some parents maliciously wanting all the footage of their child.

However ?more reasonably some parents of children with SEN wanting footage to try to prove how bad things are/how distressed their child gets to get the provision or an EHCP from a Council that the child really does need and school supports that they need (or at tribunal if allowed to be admitted as evidence). I’m not sure how that works though with other children who will also be on.

@Pollyputhekettleon I don't work in secondary but I think there are big disincentives for expelling children. It's also a bit pointless as they have to go to school somewhere, and in many cases they are likely to have more problems in a new school as they will have to make a big transition to a place where they don't know anyone etc. It makes more sense to deal with the behaviour in the original school. (Granted in some cases moving might get them away from bullying or bad influence friends etc).

No I don’t agree with body cameras but more CCTV would be good. It is definitely becoming more common to have CCTV in school now. One mum in my kids school had a massive kick off because her kid was caught on CCTV beating up another kid. Instead of accepting her kid was in the wrong she went mad at the school and tried to whip up the parents saying there wasn’t enough signage to say there was CCTV. No one cared though, in fact I think most parents were relieved there was CCTV because her child was frequently attacking others and so in the end she moved him schools.

I don't think the bodycam thing is impossible to do. I wonder if it is proportionate but I don't know about the scale of the problems that might justify their use. You would need some strict guidance that it could only be used for disciplinary matters where there was violent/sexualised conduct involved. It's not impossible to do this.

It's clearly a different world to mine - if you were trouble at school you were effectively isolated and had lessons separately. Any abuse to the staff and your parents were sent for; if agreement couldn't be reached about what had to happen then you were asked to leave. Something happened to change all that clearly.

Who puts these disincentives in place? And why are other schools forced to accept children excluded from another school? I presume the bottom line is this is British government policy?

Because if schools exclude too many children then ofsted don't like it. Children swearing at staff is a regular occurrence. It would take much more than that to get excluded. Exclusions do happen but only in extreme/persistent cases.

Well, what would happen if large numbers of children were expelled and not allowed to go to another school? They would be at risk from exploitation, county lines, violence at home etc. The outcomes for them would be v bad and would impact on society too.

I've heard that if a school excluded 5 pupils it's then expected to take 5 excluded from other local schools. I don't know if this is just in my area/academy chain or if it's a general policy. But expelling one kid is less attractive if you know they will be replaced by another .

And unfortunately, schools just don't have the resources to give all the support needed. Children's mental health services range from patchy, through useless, to non existent. Gatekeepers and waiting lists leave many SEN children jndiagnosed and unsupported. Social services are so stretched that the bar for removing children from horrific neglect is far too high. And the list goes on. And schools are trying to pick up the pieces.

@Iscreamtea completely agree, for a long time people were happy to strip money out of all these supporting services because it doesn't affect them. But now it's affecting everyone, because even if your kid doesn't have SEN/mental health issues, it's guaranteed that there's a number of kids in their class who does and they are probably affecting the learning of all the rest.

I’ve been punched, bitten, spat on and no longer see swearing, yelling or threats as a big deal. I work in a hospital.

I don’t want to wear a body cam all day. It wouldn’t help de-escalate the stress that is causing patients and relatives to behave like this, it would ramp it up. I also don’t choose to have no moment of privacy during my day.

I’m astonished you think this is the solution.

I think it would be a good idea.

I’m in the same boat as you, ex-teacher (or soon to be ex-teacher anyway). I think it’s gone way beyond bodycams but anything like that would be better than nothing at this point. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been assaulted. My legs have been black and blue with bruises at times. The head teacher at my last school had a black eye (punched by a pupil) but was in denial that behaviour was a problem so tried to walk about like her eye was completely normal (while people practically gasped) 🙈 I think anyone who has been in the situation of being in a classroom alone, with little to no support from management, and having one or more violent children would 100% support this idea. The job is impossible now and it’s not worth even trying anymore unfortunately for many of us 😞

Yep, violent nasty little boy bullies my kid, disrupts the class and acts generally awful. He's "had a hard time" of course, so it's fine for my child to get beaten up by him while having to cope with me having cancer.

I am going to ask another stupid question; why is it that if children are disruptive or walk out of lessons that they are allowed back in? When I was at school they were taught and managed separately. Why isn't that possible now?

It is incredibly difficult to expel at student. You are relying on every teacher to take every single proper measure every time the child does something wrong (without a paper trail nothing can happen, and some teachers just will not sign their name to anything or write a report of it, so there is nothing management can do, speaking from experience there!).

We had one child who was very violent, one example is he threw furniture at a teacher in a classroom he was not supposed to be in where 30 other students sat watching... Eventually he got expelled and the parents attempted legal action on the school for unfair dismissal type of thing. The evidence was all in his file but the management were still put under the microscope to see if they made the right decision. A few videos of what he had done would have made little difference to be honest.

And just to @Siameasy NO I do not believe that generally speaking, no father = more violent. In the worst of cases I have seen, the students have two parents, still together as a family unit. Unfortunately where I'm from either undiagnosed special needs or else dabbling in drugs (the student, not the parents or family!!) seems to be the main driving force behind violent behaviour.

Yep
Had a parent say “there is no way my son did this. I’ve spoken to him and I know when he’s lying”
Showed them the cctv footage where you could see him do it clear as day ….. parent didn’t even miss a beat ….”that’s not him”

Different day …. same shit… “he didn’t do it” Showed the cctv “he only did it cuz he’s been bullied”

The only answer is to move to an online school model. Teachers and children are protected from the utterly awful human beings they are out there (just delete/mute them but they are likely to not turn up anyway) and put all the money saved into in-person special schools for children whose disability/ SEN means they can’t do online

That sounds impossible. But surely it's not up to the parent.

What would help teachers in these situations where you have a useless parent and a disruptive violent student?

Why would it be a safeguarding issue?
If a child makes a disclosure, the adult has to say that depending on what you say I may have to tell someone else. So what safeguarding issue is there? If every moment is recorded, then surely it safeguards the child too?

I work in a secondary school there was a member of leadership that used to where a bodycam a few years ago. Most the staff found it odd to be honest. We have cameras watching the playground, front entrance, corridors and field. That is where trouble starts if we have any. It is all we need. I suppose if you worked in a school where kids were more likely to physically abuse staff it may be necessary to wear a bobycam.

We do often have parents that refuse to believe their child hit another kid or broke something. So at those times it is useful to show the parent any footage we have. Why they think the school would lie about their child is a mystery. I mean we tell them two members of staff saw the child do send thing. That we have footage of the incident. However they won't believe until they see the footage.

But honestly would that not be a good thing? IME teachers are endlessly patient and take inordinate amounts of shit from children. It would be very rare that I would have any concerns showing a parent the footage because 99.9% of time the teacher had been amazing and acted correctly. In the 0.1% whee they haven’t, well school leaders need to know they have that teacher to deal with too

Parent claims “unmet SEND need” no proof of this required whatsoever (& an ADHD/ASD can be bought for a few hundred pounds -see recently panorama or ask any current SENDCo) … school is then deemed at fault. Exclusion then goes to review panel which is a shit ton of work for schools although we almost always win BUT then fail Ofsted as we are always at fault for exclusions

Hm. I wish I'd had fly on the wall footage today after a pupil threw a chair, turned over book corner furniture and kicked a door and then argued adamantly that he had not done so.
I think it might deter some pupils initially (I'm primary), but the novelty would soon wear off, and teachers would be made vulnerable to criticism. Nothing new there, of course.

Bodycams can only capture evidence, they can't force the school to punish wrongdoers properly.