1 in 5 teachers hit by a pupil

[MrsMurphyIWish]

AIBU to think it’s a low as that?

The worst encounter I have had is being pushed down the stairs when I was heavily pregnant with DS - luckily I grabbed the railing, however I was still expected to teach the boy. (He didn’t even get a detention). I teach in a different school now but swearing, general contempt (from some pupils), threats are still common. No physical violence though.

I put up with it as I’m in the money trap and waiting for mortgage to be paid off so I can escape but in’s worry if this doesn’t change we’ll have an endless cycle of ECTs who leave after a few years, continued missed recruitment targets, and behaviour will get even worse!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68674568 - * (post edited at OP's request to add link to BBC news site)

This.

I was assaulted by an enormous, physically imposing, 6'2 pupil and when I reported to his head of year she immediately used his 'ND/SEN' to defend him, and I let her know that that's not an appropriate response to a woman who has just been assaulted by a male. Medicalising violent children by labelling them SEN is not helpful.

Sorry to the permissive parents on here, but it's the truth.

@Iamme1980 the media and some politicians have, of late, been doing a great job of blaming all the issues in schools on kids with SEN. It's depressing to see this on this thread too, along with some good old fashioned 'some of them can even learn things you know!'.

My son used to be violent and now isnt.

The support he needed to not be violent was an extensive occupational therapy programme focused on interoception and proprioception, speech and language therapy focussed on social communication, anti anxiety medication, melatonin, iron tablets and a type of therapy called EMDR which is used for ptsd. It took about 2/3 years.

Its not something a parent could do or a mainstream teacher could do. It happened at a special school where half the hours were therapist led and camhs were involved monthly.

I also have another child who headboy/club captain/ volunteers with the scouts, never had a detention etc So i am also a bit fed up with the crap parent comments too.

I fought hard to get my child the support needed to make him into an adult that will cope in the world. Unlike a teacher, who might have my son for 39 weeks, I have to deal with him for the rest of my life. My need to get rid of any violence was significantly greater than theirs. Around 1 in 4 children with SN are violent to their parents. There is huge shame about it and its rarely spoken about.

I think its terrible mainstreams staff are having to teach children like mine without the support they need and my heart goes out to them. It fails everyone.

No, apologies. That’s not the impression I’ve had from your posts.

I note that the teachers who say they haven't been assaulted work in secondary. I'd be interested to hear if there are primary teachers in state primaries who would say they, or others in their school haven't been assaulted.

One of my primary friends said that they'd been told by their HT that they were now in a job where they should expect to be assaulted. It seems to have got much, much worse in recent years. I'm not sure what's going to happen when those kids reach secondary and I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, I think this is the attitude of a lot of parents. They don't want to hear about this and if they do have to hear about this, it better be made clear that it's in no way their fault and all down to the schools and the staff who work there.

Sorry this post brought tears to my eyes. Those poor y10 girls, and looking at the stories coming out about Nottingham grooming gangs, nothing will have changes for the girls coming after them. Would break my heart to be a teacher there.

I lived and worked, sometimes as a teacher, in several different countries over the years. Now I hear what's going on in Britain and elsewhere from friends, children and (directly) from grandchildren. Worldwide, different countries have different problems with schools. Britain has a particular problem, given the structure of its education system.

In Britain recently, the general deterioration in public services has - of course - impacted schools as well as health services and elsewhere. Overall, this is political. Perhaps without realising it (!) a majority of you, my fellow citizens, consistently voted for governments which did this - accentuated the move towards, as J.K. G. said, long ago, private affluence (now in fewer and fewer hands) and public squalor.

(No, as I feel many of you itching to point out, the solution will not just require "throwing money". That will be a necessary part of any solution, though. Tax the rich and listen to Gordon Brown ...)

--But there's a particular difficulty in Britain which, for some reason, often gets less discussion than it demands. This is the unique educational apartheid which pertains here, under which a minority, including most of the wealthy and powerful, arrogate educational resources to themselves while denying them to the majority. (7% ... 93%?)

It's true the education obtained by this minority is itself abysmal. (If you doubt which, look again at products of Eton, Westminster etc., and ask how come their awfulness is so ubiquitous; "by their fruits ..."?) Nevertheless, that these holders of the nation's purse-strings so solicitously keep their children so far from the nation's schools has had all-too-predictable results, including the woes adumbrated in this MN thread.

What to do? Well, Britain remains a democracy. Change is possible. Let us not despair.

Same.

Many years ago, dd and I went to see a play. It was on the GCSE syllabus, so schools were in. The school group sitting near us behaved abominably.

The next day, I had a job interview, HoD in a secondary. I attended assembly with the other candidates. Ooh, who led? The teacher in charge of last night's school group. I listened to her praise them for their excellent behaviour (which didn't happen). I should have run. I didn't.

I got the job and on my 'day in school' I was pushed on the stairs - fortunately I was holding the handrail. But that's how pupils treated staff, even strangers. The year? 1996.

I worked there nearly two decades. It was... as you might expect.

Have you read my experience, in a shortened version and also the more detailed version on the last thread? Maybe read that before you comment on whatever you think my 'attitude' is.

The boy who emptied the bookcase and threw the books at me had a diagnosis of ASD. He also was the one who wrestled me to the ground. The reason he did those things was because something had happened in school that he hadn’t been prepared for. It was one of those ‘oops’ events that we couldn’t have predicted. We had strategies in place for many events

The one who set fire to my department didn’t have a diagnosis, but he was learning impaired. He was excluded as a result of his actions and reinstated by the LA.

The boy who kicked me repeatedly was 5 and in Reception. He went on to complete his primary education in the school. He was NT.

Yep, many serious assaults at the schools that I've worked at.
Staff being left with internal injuries and ptsd.

This. My children have been at three schools. Two with exceptional SLT and behaviour policies – one where it was severely lacking. Their behaviour immediately and dramatically degraded at that school (and only in school), the behaviour as a whole was abysmal, and I removed them after a full year of 'working with the teachers' – no amount of parents working with teachers can fix a broken class/school culture. It requires robust leadership over an extended period of time.

I taught in a secondary school years back that sounds similar to that of a PP where teachers were routinely assaulted. The union actually got around to organising to refuse to teach one pupil who after assaulting a teacher was put back in the same class and assaulted her again. The HT was largely useless.

That school was in an ex-mining community where there were huge amounts of deprivation and no jobs. The kids had nothing and education wasn't the way out.

We know that poverty has risen massively, particularly child poverty and the future looks bleak for a lot of people. Schools are a microcosm of society.

I am pushed most days yesterday teacher got punched in the head when to hospital
Every day personal verbal
One even told me to order two small coffins for my children

The nation as a whole is letting teachers down. Take Batley Grammar School where a gang of Muslim parents wanted to lynch a teacher (now in hiding for 3 years) for teaching a curriculum agreed by the school.

1 - The head threw the teacher under the bus.
2 - The Kahn report into the situation took 3 YEARS to complete.
3 - The government just say "oh dear never mind"
4 - The Police do nothing about the threatening mob outside the school gates.
5 - Other schools are now self censoring their curriculum.
6 - The Muslim parents have never apologised.
7 - There was little in the way of counter protest (and what was was of course labelled hard right)
8 - The teachers unions have done nothing.
9 - The general public just accept such mobs and death threats are part and parcel of multiculturalism.

Meanwhile the teacher is still in hiding with death threats hanging over him.

An extreme case maybe but symptomatic of how everyone that should be supporting teachers doesn't.

We do absolutely everything we can to stop our child's behaviour.
I've had to give up working and life as we knew it.
We back the teachers 100% and will always put the safety of everyone high in our approach.
His paediatrician would love to have a full time psychologist to support children and families but unfortunately there is no funding for this.
Many children who present in the way my son does end up in jail or worse.
We are petrified for him and have been begging for help, took 2 years to see the paediatrician again.
We are on our knees along with a lot of parents and schools.
So while I do get there are parents who just can not be bothered there is just as many who are supportive of the staff in school and are working with a system which is quite clearly failing everyone.

I am sure that part of the reason that there are a growing number of school refusers and teachers leaving the profession is because of the rise in bad behaviour, violence and aggression seen in schools. Teachers and students just don’t want to spend time in that environment. It makes me so angry because even low level disruptive behaviour wastes hours of lesson time and harms the education of so many children. On here you get frequent complaints that school punishments are unfair even when it is obvious that their child is a total menace. Then there is loads of analysis on how the school should have handled it differently because of blah blah blah, but very little reflection on the child’s behaviour which will get them sacked as soon as they walk in (probably late) to any work place.

Teachers should go off sick if they are struck at school. Having to teach the child who struck them is abhorrent.

What do I need to apologise for? Can you point me to a point where I have said behaviour is due to parents (unless you’re confusing me with other posters?). I’ve just made posts about my experiences of dealing with both physical and verbal assaults.

I did make one comment that we shouldn’t use SEND as an excuse because the student who pushed me down the stairs when I was pregnant had no SEND. Of course we should look for root causes of violent behaviour but in the meantime it’s teachers and support staff who have to bear the actually brunt of the behaviour.

I have had a 17 year old with zero background information get in my face shouting obscenities then when a team member happened to pass and get in front of me went and threw a desk and chair. No action taken and I had to walk back in the next week and “teach” the other students who witnessed my vulnerability as if nothing had happened. I am forever grateful to my colleague as I was seconds away from being put on the floor. No support staff.

Whenever I have had pupils and parents square up to me I felt so ashamed - like it’s a sleight on my character for not being able to control a situation. Then you have face the other pupils and all the time thinking as they have seen me at my most vulnerable they too could treat me the same. Even at my Outstanding school a pupil was heard bragging how her father “took me down” at parents evening.

So pregnant women deserve a kicking from a 6ft teenager because you had a shitty teacher?

Nice.

You've misread my words. I was apologising to you because I had not gotten the impression from your posts that you were blaming parents. It was from others.