Teacher killed, Leeds

[bleedingheart]

Just heard on the news that a female teacher has been stabbed to death by a 15 yr old student. This has made me go so cold. That poor woman.

[Breezy1985]

Heartbreaking. Poor woman. R.I.P

[MarcusAurelius]

Well said NearTheWindyMill There are plenty of children who shouldn't be in mainstream education at all due to their dangerous behaviour.

[Feenie]

Its a secondary school which was deemed as inadequate by ofsted due to behavioural issues.

No it wasn't - it was deemed good with outstanding features

[Feenie]

Nearthewindymill - whilst I recognise your initial tribute to this poor lady, I am shocked that you've decided to wade in immediately with your own agenda. You have no idea of the facts of this case and now is most certainly not the time or the place. Please stop.

[ShellyF]

Really feel sad for both families. Their lives will never be the same again .

[EvilTwins]

I would imagine the school carried on "as normal" because of the logistics of getting all the students picked up with no notice. The process of calling all parents and then supervising children as they left would probably have taken the rest of the day.

Terrible though. I heard about it on the radio as I was sitting in my classroom marking after school.

[Itsfab]

Why is the fact she taught Spanish and RE relevant? .

RIP .

[Helpys]

I think the poster meant that they're wouldn't be knives in the classroom- it wasn't a CDT or food technology room, so the act was premeditated.

[threepiecesuite]

I am shocked and saddened but not surprised.
I teach in a tough school where pupils regularly lose their temper to the extent that they get so angry, they cannot control their actions.
RIP to this teacher. I hope the children who witnessed this receive adequate support.

[Roseformeplease]

Not sure why this has been used up thread as a way of justifying HE. You are far more likely to be stabbed on the street than in a classroom.

Terrible, terrible news.

[Hulababy]

Awful news.

Teachers being assaulted and hurt is being more sadly, but this is just something else - and fortunately still a very very rare thing here.

But how dreadful. You can't comprehend it really: go to work in the morning, and then not come home.

And for those children who witnessed the incident in their classroom - how do they ever come to terms with this :(

I have no idea how those teachers - friends and colleagues - managed to keep going this afternoon. Must have been one of the hardest things they have had to do, and to have to tell their students also.

There are children in mainstream schooling who should not be there. They are known risks to themselves, other children and to staff. I know we don't know if this is the case in this incident, but it is a reality.

Clamping down and doing something proper about assaults in school would at least be a a start.

[lemonmuffin1]

Dreadful news, that poor woman.

I live in the same city as that school and would never even drive through the area, let alone send my child to a school there.

I am in awe of teachers who are prepared to work there.

[frumpet]

That poor woman , my heart goes out to her family at this time . And of course to her colleagues and the children who witnessed this horrific event .

[MrsDavidBowie]

Well some people have to live there lemonmuffin.
I was brought up a couple of miles away.

[marne2]

You can always rely on MN to jump in with judgemental comments .

Who knows what was going through the boys head and who knows if he had additional needs. Yes there are children in ms school that really should not be there but sadly there are a lack of other options, trying to get a child into a specialist school is almost impossible , there's is a chance that this child has no additional needs but for some reason snapped ( who knows?).

My thoughts are with the woman's family and anyone who had to witness what happened, teaching has to be one of the hardest jobs and I admire anyone who teaches ( not a job I would want to do ), more needs to be done to protect teachers and staff and prevent things like this happening.

[LittleBrassPig]

Nice lemmonmuffin1 so you wouldn't drive up Selby Road towards Temple Newsam? Corpus Christi school is closer to Selby Road than most of the social housing nearby that you find so distasteful. And fairly close to Halton, Whitkirk and the Temple Newsam private estates where naice people live, like me. And quite what the location of the school has to do with this I do not know. Where did the clearly ill boy who did this live? As a Catholic school CC has a huge catchment area and is thought of highly, which is matched by it's OFSTED rating.

And I met one if Mrs McGuire's friends in a local shop this evening. Very distressed. What a brave lady she must have been to have taught in a school that you are too scared to drive past.

[LittleBrassPig]

And I might add my family and I have driven past CC and through the Halton Moor estate thousands of times in my 46 years. Nothing has ever happened to us. What exactly are you expecting to happen and why?

[ColdTeaAgain]

Latest on BBC website says she was stabbed a number of times

I very much doubt anything could of been done to prevent this, it's just so desperately tragic for all involved. The family of the boy involved must be devastated, how on earth do you deal with something like that?

It sounds as though she was very much loved by her pupils. I can't imagine how heartbroken her family must be for her to of been taken from them like this.

[HillyHolbrook]

I have friends who were taught by Mrs McGuire. They are all heartbroken as she was such a wonderful teacher and friend. A few drove out from their new towns to go pay tribute.

It's so sad, and so worrying that the student even thought to attack her. Everyone's said they have no idea why she would be the target as she was so darling and believed in the pupils, even those with behavioural issues who everyone else had given up on. I hope the other children who witnessed this get all the help they need, and my heart goes out to Mrs M's family

[ReallyTired]

"I very much doubt anything could of been done to prevent this, it's just so desperately tragic for all involved. The family of the boy involved must be devastated, how on earth do you deal with something like that?"

We know nothing about the boy or his parents. He might be a victim of abuse himself. Children are not born evil.

This tradgy shows the stupidity of closing severe EBD schools/ units. If the child had the help that he no clearly needed at an earlier age then this murder might not have happened.

[EvilTwins]

ReallyTired - as YOU said, we know nothing about the boy who did this. No idea whether he had SEN or whether an EBD would have made a difference.

[ColdTeaAgain]

ReallyTired I'm not really sure what you think I meant by that comment?

It is sounding very likely that this was a premeditated attack, therefore whatever security is place at the school, if the boy had decided he was going to do this, he would find a way of concealing a weapon or finding one within the school. I did NOT mean that the boy in question was born a murderer

[Clint88]

lemonmuffin1 are you serious??? Your options for travel must be severely limited if Halton Moor is too scary for you. Maybe you should move to Harrogate?

I was surprised this happened at Corpus. I know people who have kids there and (if I lived in that part of town & was practising RC) would happily let mine attend when they are older.

Agree with Hilary Benn that it's not representative of the school or the area. So sad for all concerned, Mrs Maguire seems to have been genuinely loved by the children.

[ReallyTired]

ColdTeaAgain
There are levels of premediation and planning. We don't know what subject the boy had before spanish. For example if he had had food tech before spanish then it would be quite easy for him to get hold of a knife and murder his teacher ten minutes later. Sometimes what happens in one lesson can affect behaviour of a child in the next lesson. Maybe the child was angry with his tech teacher and took it out on his poor spanish teacher. Children with red mist are not logical.

What turns a person into a murderer? Children aren't born evil. There is often a build up of behaviours. I would be really surprised if the boy who carried out this appauling murder had never misbehaved at school before. I think its prefectly reasonable to ask the boy why he murdered his teacher and see if any lessons can be learned.

Mainstream schools cannot give children with extreme behavioural problems the emotional support they so desperately need. I worked in a special school with children who had major behavioural problems. The children spent a lot of their time working on basic social skills and had help to in learnng to think through their actions.

Mainstream secondary schools are big places and the sheer number of children in one place can be difficult for vunerable children to cope with. (Ie. noise, other children's behaviour, level of independence needed.) There is less of a herd affect when a child is in a class of 10 with a teacher and TA. The calmer enviornment of a class of ten and fewer children in the school improves behaviour. Unfortunately good EBD provision is expensive.

A child with oppositional defiance issues and anger management can really benefit from counselling and anger management techniques. It can prevent them from turning into a violent criminal later in life.

[catsrus]

I have family at the school so got a text early on to reassure me they were OK. As Clint says, totally not representative of the school - it seems to have been a deeply disturbed young man who had shown no signs of aggression prior to this. A similar profile to some of the young men involved in the mass gun murders in American schools - thank god we don't have easy access to guns here.