Teacher questioned over attempted murder of pupil

[Frasersmum123]

This happened near to me

Sadly myredcardigan - assault on teachers, be it verbal or physical, is NOT rare. It is happening every day to some extent. The statistics are quite scary.

Schools need to start supporting teachers in taking pupils to court and pressing charges on children who assault. But they don't. It is all hushed up and kept in house. And if you, as the victim, consider taking it further you are strongly advised not to.

One of male friend gave up teaching after just two years after one of this female colleagues was sexually assaulted in the classroom.

Another one of my male friends gave up after a year after female students kept trying to brush up against him. He left because he was scared of being falsely accused of sexual abuse.

Teachers need support, they need authority that will be supported by the school, LEA and parents and there needs to be effective sanctions for unruly pupils as well as understanding by pupils that there are consequences to their actions. Some schools have no male teachers and I am not surprised.

I feel sorry for the teacher in this situation as I do for the injured child

Oh I know it's happening too frequently but I meant rare in the sense that the overwhelming majority of pupils do not assault their teachers.

I too was pushed over whilst pregnant, called a fat bitch and a whore by a Y5 pupil. I've been asked by a Y6 boy if I take it up the arse and told on more than one occasion that someone would 'come get me in the night'. But I've been teaching for 15yrs and the vast majority of kids, including those badly behaved, do not assault me.

This thread is not about an assault on a teacher though, it's about allegations of attempted murder by a teacher. Think it's pretty disrespectful to the poor boy to keep turning it round.

Every time someone posts, ooh, I knew a teacher who was hit/kicked/pushed/whatever, there's an implication that it has some relevance to this case. Which it hasn't.

edam - initial reports did suggest that the boy had provoked the teacher ins ome way and did suggest towards very naty taunts at the very least towards the teacher from the child involved. I think that is why people initially were discussing other assaults experienced by teachers.

And now I guess, the thrad has just taken a turn a little.

It doesn't mean peope don't hope the boy makes afull recovery.

Completely, totally and utterly agree, edam. It is very unjust indeed to the boy concerned. There is no evidence at all that he said or did anything to the teacher and we are not privy to any of the key facts of the case except 1) the child is seriously injured and 2) the teacher has been charged with attempted murder. I am really shocked at some of the posts on here.

The fact that some mumsnetters work/have worked in difficult schools and have had horrible experiences with challenging children, while nasty for them and completely fit fodder for another thread, is completely irrelevant to what we know of this terrible incident. I find it really distasteful and sad that the two are being conflated, tbh.

This thread is very depressing.

I agree with the post By HerBeatitudeLittleBel... Sat 11-Jul-09 19:25:36 and think it dreadful that teachers have to put up with these conditions and am not surprised that some people prefer not to send their children into such situations.

Hopefully, the boy will recover.

ScummyMummy - as I said before, the stories are not irrelevent when you look at the initial reports that followed this story breaking.

I have been a teacher for 12 years, which is not as long as this teacher, but teachers don't just snap. The job is as it is - some teachers have to put up with daily crap but they don't respond like this (thank goodness that this is so very unusual). There is no justification for hitting a child so hard that they end up in hospital. In this case I feel no sympathy for the teacher.

edam I agree

I don't think any reputable sources have suggested possible explanations, hula. If you look down at the beginning of the thread here you will see how your own response (among many others) changed in tone after morningpaper posted speculation from, I quote, "some dodgy internet source". At that point teachers and others began posting about depressing experiences with challenging children in the classroom. Yet even this "dodgy" source did not implicate the child concerned per se, as far as I know. Cue everyone jumping in to defend the teacher on the grounds that they themselves have had bad experiences and, by implication at least, attaching some blame to the boy for making the teacher snap. I'm sorry, but I think the speculation is extremely unhelpful and unfair to all concerned.

But no one has ever said that the child deserved it, or tahat they don't hope the child makes aful recovery.

But it is human nature to think of the what ifs and whys, which is what I believe people have done here.

I think I have said all along that there is never a good excuse for assaulting a child.

But I also feel it is, in line with the change if course the thread took (as most MN threads do turn direction as they go on to discuss the stresses some teachers find themselves under and how such stresses could lead to teacher's snapping, esp if they are already ill. Now fortunately this is a very rare scenario, much more rare tha pupils assaulting teachers - infact it is because it is so rare why it is being discussed so much. Human nature always looks for reasons.

This child did not deserve to be hurt. I have stated that from the start. And the teacher does deserve to suffer consequences to his actions. However unles the full story is known we don't know what extent they shoudl take.

Is it definitely attempted murder now? Think DH said the teacher had been remanded and not bailed. Has he been charged?

DH also was saying that attempted murder has the defence of diminished responsibility if the teacher does have some mental health issues. However GBH, etc. do not have this option. In these the crime stands but the sentence can be affected by mitigating circumstances, such as mental health.

I haven't seen anyone defend the teacher's actions.
Naturally, the reporting so far has led to wider discussion about the pressures and working conditions of teachers.
Of course, it's quite possible that the teacher, without any provocation, decided to pick up a weight and batter someone around the head with it. However, this seems highly unlikely, especially considering factors such as the age and experience of the teacher, his reputation (many pupils describing him as excellent and committed), and the fact that quite a specific form of taunting (singing an abusive song) has been reported.
This does not, of course, mean that the teacher is blameless. If the boy concerned, or indeed other pupils, were abusing the teacher, then they bear responsibility for being abusers. Let's be honest about it and tell it like it is. I have never been physically assaulted in my years of teaching, but I have been verbally abused, and I call it exactly that - abuse. I have told the pupils concerned, in front of their parents, that they are abusers. If I were physically assaulted, I would want to press charges - definitely. I wish more teachers and schools did. I see it as a major part of the solution to prevention of abusive behaviour.

However, I don't believe anyone on here is justifying what happened.

If you can't see it, you can't see it. Let's agree to disagree.

The teacher has been charged with attempted murder according to the BBC.

"If the boy concerned, or indeed other pupils, were abusing the teacher, then they bear responsibility for being abusers."
I completely disagree. These are children. If my daughter grows into a horrible teen screaming that she hates me and I hospitalise her then she is not responsible for my behaviour. There are issues with pupil behaviour, of course, but if it is damaging a teacher then they have the ability to leave and do something else - blaming the children in any part is not acceptable.

Hurrah for clemette, the teacherly voice of reason at last.

clemette - lets not forget the age for criminal responsibility in this country is 10yrs old.....

A small minority of 14(ish)yr olds are arrested for murder and god knows what else in this country everyone.

Lets not make out that a "child" of that age doesn't have some responsibilities, or shouldn't know the boundaries by then.

I am NOT saying that the boy who was attacked did anything wrong - just that if children of that age don't know what the limits of acceptable behaviour are then something has gone wrong somewhere. (and yes I still remember being a teenager - and my goodness I knew were the limits were).

Well I disagree that pupils have the right to damage teachers clemette. It is pointless to compare a parent/child relationship. Some teenagers can be verbally and physically abusive to their parent, and the parent will either accept it, or in some cases, involve the police. Their call.
A teacher has the right to go to work without being verbally and physically abused. Just like a doctor, lawyer, shop keeper, whatever. Why should a good teacher feel that they have to leave a job because a pupil is abusive? It should be the child who pupil who changes their behaviour, not the teacher changing their job!

I think the stories do have a relevance, in that they give a picture of the atmosphere in some schools where this sort of violence thrives.

This teacher's "snapping" did not come out of nowhere. How come there was so little discipline in the school, that these children were taunting him in the first place? Why are our schools places where pupils feel able to taunt teachers in this way? If I had participated in this sort of behaviour when I was at school, I would have been suspended at the very least - so it just didn't happen.

That's not to blame the boy or to justify what the teacher did - apart from anything else, he hit the child twice - the first effect of his action didn't horrify and shock him enough to stop him going on to injure the boy even more badly than he had already done, his behaviour was terrifying and vengeful IMO - but I don't think that the anecdotes are entirely irrelevant, in that they build a picture of the sort of behaviour that most people would find totally unacceptable and yet seems to be totally accepted in our schools. And if you put human beings in that environment every day for years on end, you are creating the conditions for this sort of dreadful incident to happen.

Extreme behaviour (including physical/sexual assault, repeatedly personal attacks etc) should be dealt with by the school's behaviour policy and in this school (it's in my LEA and I have a colleague there) it is dealt with. Therefore this child is not of that "ilk". He is of the "type" that can give teachers a bit of a hard time on occasion, the type that are just a part of the job. I don't agree that they are abusers.

EH? Sexual abuse should be dealt with by the school?

No, sexual abuse should be dealt with by the criminal justice system.

HerBeatitude "they build a picture of the sort of behaviour that most people would find totally unacceptable and yet seems to be totally accepted in our schools. And if you put human beings in that environment every day for years on end, you are creating the conditions for this sort of dreadful incident to happen."

The thing is it is not happening every day and taunting/physical/sexual assault is NOT accepted in schools. In the past three years we have had one child try to hit a teacher. He was permanently excluded immediately. I work in a bog-standard comprehensive with a very mixed intake.
The stories here do not reflect the "norm" of teaching - yes, the low level disruption and occasional flare-ups can be demoralising but I ouldn't want people to think that schools were havens for teacher abuse!!

I am sickened by the way people insist on defending a grown man attacking a child
because he is just a child, none of you(or I) know the facts, yet you feel the nned to blacken a seriously ill childs charator, rather than admit that this man attacked a defencelense child and caused him a serious injury. IMO there is no excuse for this.

Abusive behaviour is abusive behaviour. Sooner it's called what it is, rather than swept under the carpet, the sooner we may start to see a difference in schools where such behaviour by pupils is commonplace.

Fair point in the sexual assault - to clarify I meant that as soon as such an event is reported the school's behaviour policy (including involving the police) should kick in...