Teacher questioned over attempted murder of pupil

[Frasersmum123]

This happened near to me

abraid but both are still children

It is so interesting that general support seems to be for the teacher and yet more and more teenagers/young adults are behaving like this. A lady I know has a 13 year old son who at 7 attacked her with a piece of wood and started not going to school. Gradually it got worse and he has not attended school for two years. He has now progressed to attacking her with other things once including a knife. He has been invited to attend the after school club to be with his friends and to encourage him to go to school but is not made to attend class. The lady admits herself that at home he spends all his time in his room watching TV and playing games until the early hours, and then cant get up in the morning. He doesnt eat with her or her new partner, or talk to them. Nobody is looking at his home environment or stopping him becoming a problem adult (although various agencies are involved including prosecuting her for his truancy). Speaking to one of the teachers at his school, he is not alone and in fact a lot of the children have similar problems and backgrounds. We all seem to be horrified that this kind of situation and behaviour is becoming more common. But what has gone wrong and what is the solution.

I agree dumbledoresgirlthis is the reason I have sympathy for both. the education system relies on mutual respect for it to work. Sadly some teenagers think that is not the case and they can behave how they like. Swearing at a teacher is not acceptable.(doesnt deserve an itu admission either mind). By that age they should be able to restrain themselves and I am shocked by the amount of people who think that "kids" can act as they please towards people and be excused for it. If the parents think this way no wonder some teenagers think they can act as they like.

but shouldn't an adult be able to restarain themselves and not beat a child ?

Frogwatcher - fascinating to hear your description of that situation. It reads as though the mother feels she has absolutely no influence or control over her son. As if her parenting had nothing to do with shaping him to be who he is. Did she ever feel she did? A child who attacks a mother at 7 and refuses to go to school needs professional help. It sounds as though what was offered was inadequate. I wonder what support she was offered with her parenting skills.

I think part of the general problem is the demonizing of young people that is currently in vogue in our society and live and well in a few posts on this thread. It is the direct opposite of the view 'it takes a village to raise a child'. People often seem to feel their children and their parenting is fine but something has gone wrong with youth in general.
From my own experience around young people in teaching I feel something has gone wrong with our view of what constitutes 'success' in the long-term. Celebrity has gained a massive prominence in the last couple of decades. Young people are sexualized very early on and are bloody confused about what is important. They have a vague notion that they want to aim for the long-term goal of 'being famous' but also know that is unrealistic. When careers were discussed the focus was on the quick money and the desire for a vocation and the expectation that adult life involved hard work was rare.

As adults what are we modelling? Ultimately the fault lies with us, surely? Fault with our parenting, our values and what we show to be important.

And I know I sound like a Daily Mail reader with this last comment but I also feel that the amount of violent computer games and socially isolated activities that young people indulge in also has a part to play. We can't expect little people to turn into well-rounded big people when they pretend to shoot people all evening and then sit infront of a computer, eat alone and go back to the computer. It's just not realistic.

i couldn't be a teacher in some schools...i don't know how they handle some of these kids..must be an awful job sometimes.

under normal circumstances yes an adult should be able to restrain them selves. I dont think that going into work to face a torrent of abuse most days is normal.
At 14 yo should be able to restrain themselves to some extent. If they have problems with this then specialist help is in order. At 16 (2 years down the line) they will be expected to show a lot more respect as no-one has to educate them or employ them. This process of maturity doesn't happen on the eve of their 16th birthday

Prehaps this is a case of inclusion gone wrong. I am in favour of children with behaviour or learning difficulties attending mainstream schools but the pupil teacher ratio needs to be much smaller.

It is much easier to deal with behaviour problems when a class only has 10 children and an LSA. However the bottom set in a comprehensive often has 20 kids main of whom would have been at an EBD/ MLD Special school thirty years ago.

The situation in secondary schools atm is horrendous. I was a Learning Support Asst and the school I was in had a top OFSTED report, but it was all lies. The pupils ruled that school, they came and went as they felt like it, they walked out of lessons, they fought in the middle of the classroom, they threw chairs at each other, would swear constantly, text their mates, swap pornography etc etc. The teachers were at their wits end and frequently in tears. I was threatened, my children were threatened, but when I complained about the lack of support I was hauled up for it and reprimanded in no uncertain terms. I was told that I had given the impression I had more experience with behavioural probs than I did, that I wasn't doing my job properly and that my critisms were out of order.

LSAs had been attacked, their cars attacked and property stolen. I remember once, giving a detention to a pupil who had sworn and answered back in a lesson. She stormed out. When we all left she was waiting for me, she spat at me and launched into the most vicious tirade I'd heard. I walked away with her insults ringing in my ears. I went to report it, it was noted but nothing done and no-one asked how I was. There was zero support.

When OFSTED inspectors came round, they gathered all the staff to be present in 'troublesome' classes, pupils were bribed to be good and staff told to lie about the support offered to needy pupils.

I'm not condoning what this man did, but I'm not surprised. Working in that environment, day in and day out is going to ruin you. The schools only care about OFSTED, they don't give a crap about individual staff members. It was bound to happen, I'm just sad it had to happen like this.

I still think I should report the school I worked in, perhaps now is the time to do just that.

And 2shoes, they may just be children but when their faces are an inch from yours, and they are swearing at you, threatening you, they cease to become children in your eyes.

One of them told me that he would shag my dd - she was 7! The school put him on report and then reprimanded me, because it was obv my fault for allowing them to know I had kids!

Tambajam - the mother is actually quite nice and reasonably approachable (or at least was when I was chatting to her). She did say that she disagreed with him being able to go to the afterschool club to be with his mates, and yet wasnt being made to go to school, as she pointed out - his mates will probably copy his behaviour if rewarded in that way! So in that way she seemed quite on board and sensible. However, I pointed out (as nicely as possible as she is quite a tough character) that maybe if he is watching tv past the watershed until early hours and not being made to communicate with the family then he is probably too tired to cope with getting up and being exposed to violence on tv and yet she didnt seem to get that at all. Personally I think he is too old and big now for her to cope. She really needed help when he was 7 and yet says she got very little then apart from a threat from LEA re truancy. Now there are several agencies involved, but none that I could work out looking at parenting. He has a support worker who has coffee with him, takes him out etc in an attempt to help him. But no time is spent at his home. But I have to confess that although i spent hours talking to her, I have not seen her since to find out how it is all going.

i ahven't seen mujch of this case, only what i heard on the news yesterday evening. but they had some past studenst of thsi teacher, all of whom said he was a lovely man and a good teacher. my first instinct was that the children had riled him until he snapped.

wrong of course, but sometimes a 14 year old can be just as big and strong as an adult. its not too much to think that he could have been threatened.

agree with Rhubarb, teachers need a lot more support with difficult children

I'm a very very calm person, but those kids drove me close to breaking point. When they say those things about your kids, every fucking day, what do you do? You report it, they get put on report which is laughable, no-one asks how you are, no-one gives a shit. What do you do?

He shouldn't have done it, no way, but neither should it have gotten to that point. There was no TA in there with him, he'd been off with stress and they didn't think to give the guy extra support.

It isn't just secondary-age children who know all about their rights and not responsibilities. In my last job I had an incident at (indoor) playtime where a Yr 6 but tiny pupil was kicking off. I was the only member of staff in sight and as soon as he saw me he started brandishing a chair and charging. He knew full well that the chair gave him leverage to intimidate an adult and negate their force of personality.

In my younger more idealistic days I may have tried to "diffuse" the situation with no training at all or awareness of guidelines and would probably have come to physical harm and been suspended pending an investigation for my trouble. As it was I was a LP and thought, "the other children aren't in danger atm and my DD has no-one else " so off I ran to the staffroom to get the gigantic bloke from S.A who had difficulty restraining him. Luckily questions weren't asked about why I had done such a thing

It seems entirely possible that the poor boy who is in intensive care was an innocent victim - that he is a good kid who was just there in the wrong place. When someone 'snaps' sometimes they lash out at the nearest person, not necessarily the one who is the chief culprit for whatever was going on.

Horrible that so many people have been so quick to assume this poor 14yo who is in intensive care for heaven's sake must be a horrid little yob who got what he deserved.

You don't need to demonise the child in order to express sympathy/some level of understanding for a teacher who may have been under intolerable strain.

(And even if the child victim had been badly behaved, that still doesn't justify a life-threatening assault, for heaven's sake!)

no its not about demonising the poor boy in itu. its working out how this situation arose in a school which is supposed to be a place of safety for chidren. The teaching staff also deserve to feel safe at work - if they dont it surely impacts on their ability to teach and keep our children safe.

lets put this in perspective the teacher has been charged with attempted murder in other words the police and the cps have agreed this man is it and well and obviously knew what he was doing.Let our sympathys be with all the children and their families who have been horribly demonised by this schools betrayal of them.

strange how people seem to be judging this child by their own bad expierences with children of this age.
no one on here knows this chiold, yet you have decided he must be a yob.
I do wonder how many of you who judge him so harshly have teens yoursel, they are not aliens you know.
teachers are not all perfect either, and what this one did was inexcusible, the people who are make excuses for this attacker, would you defend him if he was a manual worker?

Quite, 2shoes.

well they had run out of time (without asking for an extension) - of course medical evidence will still need to be collected before it gets to trial. I doubt very much that in the space of 48hrs they've got expert medical opinions on his full health status.

I see there's no news on how the lad is doing - hopefully he's continuing to improve.

2shoes - I'm not making excuses for anyone.

And yes given his apparent recent medical history I wouldn't be on the mud slinging wagon just yet regardless of what job (or not) he has.

There's already enough people with mental health issues and medical problems locked up because the root of their problems haven't been dealt with properly.

Despite the charge now brought against him I still refuse to pass judgement.

The local news in the East Midlands say's the lad's stable. Poor thing, that teacher must have serious problems. I can't see how it's attempted murder though, this is only if it's premeditated.

FAQ - there are several different things getting confused here. Sympathy for the victim doesn't mean one lacks understanding that the offender may be mentally ill or otherwise lack capacity in some way.

But some of the posts expressing sympathy for the offender DID contain attacks on the character of the poor child in ITU ('was he blackmailing the teacher' among others, FFS). There were plenty of posters assuming that the child must have provoked the attack in some way.