to be shocked about the amount of suppo rt a teacher gets when they nearly kill a pupil

[2shoes]

now I know it sounds like the boy was not a good kid, but he was 14, the teacher nearly killed him, yet on here and in the media the teacher has been getting so much support.
yet a boy was nearly killed...........
(prepares to be flamed)

Good science teachers which this poor man apparently was are hard to find hence probably the school's reluctance to remove him.

It's a sad,sad state of affairs when being good at crowd control means more than being a good teacher.Being able to excite young people into a love of the subject you teach is a true and very rare gift. I fear if we're not careful teachers are going to be employed on their ability to keep kids in seats and not how they actually teach.

So sad that other children were being subjected to an obnoxious few spoiling their lessons and are now going to have to do without this teacher. Apparently he'd be in at 6.30 to set up science experiments and was well respected by other pupils and staff. Ex pupils visited him in prison with 1 being inspired by him to be a science teacher herself. Said pupils acted as character witnesses.

I haven't been mentally ill but surely if you're that ill you're not going to have the ability to simply walk away.

This teacher had just returned after having time off due to his illness.These pupils plotted to goad him on his return and then record it as they knew he was an easy target. It's just simply sickening that somebody should want to do that to somebody so fragile. I'd be deeply,deeply ashamed as a parent if I raised a child that did that. To be honest yes I'd be out of my mind if my child ended up in hospital but I would except responsibility.

This teacher,the obnoxious few and the other poor kids just trying to get an education have all been let down by these parents and they should be deeply ashamed.

"NO ONE, regardless of their job, should have to deal with this level of poor behaviour on a daily basis.!"

Well exactly. As i said earlier, regardless of the rights and wrong of this case, the issue is NOT teachers' ability or otherwise to control their pupils or their reactions to bad behaviour. The issue is quite simply that a classroom is not a place where teachers or pupils should feel frightened and baited beyond endurance. It benefits no-one.

Too right, PeedOff!

"NO ONE, regardless of their job, should have to deal with this level of poor behaviour on a daily basis.!"

Umm... that sort of is my job, Hulababy - The difference being, I knew that that was the nature of the job when I signed up for it.

Just out of interest, what do you think we should do with children who tell teachers to fuck off once they have been excluded? Genuine question to anyone who wants to reply...

But that is simply too pragmatic tethers. Yes the problem exists and yes it needs to be dealt with but to assume that teachers simply have to be able to handle crowd control as well as teaching is looking at it the wrong way round.

thersend - as you say - that is the nature of your job and what you signed up for.

however general teaching should NOT be about classroom management. It should be about education, teaching ad learning.

"Just out of interest, what do you think we should do with children who tell teachers to fuck off once they have been excluded?"

It needs to start way lower down schools than before they get to 14y. They need to be working on children - and their parents - in infant schools.

Dh and friend just back in house, so can't give full attention at mom, be back later.

Don't they have those 'alternative' learning schools here, which are basically where all the expelled kids have to go?

The council buses them from around town and the school looks like a fortress because, well, some of the pupils are convicted criminals.

My sister is a secondary school teacher in Texas and they actually have police at the school - that's their beat.

Difference is, they do have to exclude some pupils for good. Most of the time, it's pupil on pupil violence that causes this, as there are active gang members.

Some have even had to be incarcerated/serve custodial sentences (violent crimes committed off campus).

But the premise there is, well, a school is public property.

If you assault someone on a public footpath, you ge arrested. But here it seems, if it happens in school, it's covered up or the people aren't prosecuted.

Erm, I'm not talking about that, Fio. I'm talking about an actual school and that's all it is. It's not a home or a residence.

It's one particular school where all the expelled kids have to go because they can't behave in normal school.

So when tethersend asked, what do you think should be done with the excluded pupils, well, they can go to excluded kids school for all the little thugs who can't behave in regular school.

DS#1's secondary school have a 'sin bin' and yes they do call it that! The children are put in there after causing major disruption in the class room - they are taught as normal but segregated from other pupils until they are allowed out. When we were looking round the school the head took us in there. I made some comment about how embarrassing it must be for the pupils in there to be stared at by us and she came back with a very straight-forward response - it's up to the children involved not to get in there in the first place and when they are there to get out asap. They have to take ownership of their behaviour and take steps to fix it - it's no-one else's problem but theirs.

It seems to work. Was a dive a few years ago. Now it's got an outstanding Ofsted and rapidly improving results.

I think this is a very complex subject and it is many years of deprivation that has lead to kids in schools behaving in such a disturbing way. Camilla Batmanghelidjh has written a very good book trying to explain why some children behave in such a distubing way - 'Shattered Lives'

I work in two schools with kids at serious risk of exclusion etc. due to their behaviour. It takes ages to get them to engage with me and some stories are quite desperate. Teachers have a rough time coping with their behaviour and many of the ones I know try really hard to support the kids. In one school the teachers are well supported and the system works well, in the other it feels a bit of a hell hole with demoralised unsupported staff who can end up shouting and being abusive to students (in my view although I can see how it happens).

We can lock everyone up and punish to the cows come home but in my view we need to look at the family and work from there, give support, consistency and boundaries. But there are no short term solutions. School becomes a place to act out anger and hurt through awful behaviour. Sadly however there are some kids so emotionally damaged they will never function healthily.

The majority of the kids I work with are tough, hard and appear to lack empathy on the outside but inside everyone I have worked with there is someone who is hurting and vulnerable, although it can take sometime to see it.

I do think any pupil who habitually disrupts a class or abuses the teacher should be removed and put in a special class for those kids, with teachers and security staff trained to deal with them, and lessons on how to behave and why, as well as the other lessons. It shouldn't be a nasty, punishment-type scenario, but a serious programme for kids who ruin school for others. When they improved they could return to normal classes, but any repeat and they're back out. This would mean teacher-baiting and class-disrupting would not get them much entertainment. It would also be great for the quiet kids who want to learn and show them that their needs are respected.

Also how about CCTV for all classrooms - it's everywhere else anyway, and it would allow abusive behaviour to be kept on record.

Ooh x-posted with Orm. It sounds effective.

i'd like to know if these kids have been charged with anything? they are over ten, so over the age of criminal responsibility. surely they can be charged with something. it cant be legal in this country to plot this sort of thing, and carry it out/

There is also a school for children with behavioural problems next door - a lot of facilities are shared and some lessons are given together. DH works there with yr 11s.

Agree farmer, surely a lot of these physical attacks are assault so can't a teacher just call the police when they happen?

I also think that it's naive to talk about the children's parents being 'ashamed'/'poor parenting'. It simplifies the situation: as if a bit of 'Toddler Taming' in the early years would have altered the outcome.

As HarlotOTara says, deprivation is cyclic in the long-term. This isn't about 'manners', it's about deep-seated alienation and disenfranchisement.

I have assessed kids who have been referred to our service from Child and Adolescent Mental Health services and the Youth Offending teams who I would probably be terrified of if I met them with a group of their friends on the street or anywhere else they could engage in gang or pack behaviour. Yet 1:1, when you talk to them with any degree of respect whatsoever, it's often not long before you meet a scared little kid, often - as dinosaur says - with borderline learning difficulties or other SEN who doesn't really understand a lot of what they're saying. Of course there are exceptions: bright, hard cruel kids who our psychologists will tell us may eventually be diagnosed with a personality disorder, but these are rare.

A very complex subject.

Orm's idea sounded very good.

I think consistently when looking at these problem children and their rights,needs,experiences etc the"other" children get forgotten and as they are the majority I don't think this is good enough.

I was one of those children. We moved a lot so I attended a mixture of schools.I remember having to endure lessons ruined by kids such as these,terrified their attention would turn on me,mortified for the teacher and frustrated that I just couldn't get on and learn.

I thankfully was able to battle through it, had supportive parents and we moved on. What if you're one of these kids,can't move on and your parents can't make up for it at home? 25 other kids have their education wrecked because of 5-how is this right?

MI - yes, a teacher can call the police. However, normally a member of SMT will see you and talk to you, and IME, play everything down, make you feel like you were the one not in control, that somehow you lead to it, and that it should be a school matter. Sometimes it feels easier to letit go.