Teacher speaks about lack of classroom support and abuse in schools

[HettyMeg]

Teacher from Inverurie talking about lack of support assistants. She's visibly upset and talks about the violence and abuse she's experienced. This is not acceptable!

Is this becoming more widespread? My child is nursery age at the moment so I am not personally knowledgeable about primaries but I have heard a few stories like this, very concerning.

www.facebook.com/share/r/1GMgQEDnpG/

Pupil referral units need a different environment to mainstream schools, with skilled specialist staff. They are expensive but not as expensive as these children failing. The idea that these children cease to be an issue if simply expelled from school is clearly wrong. They don’t disappear.

It's both, but the footage of one pupil beating up another which was featured on STV news came from The Waid.

Until fairly recently, Bell Baxter has had more problems than The Waid, purely because it's so much bigger. At one point, Bell Baxter had the additional issue of a split site campus. Currently, I'd say that it's simply facing the issues of every other Fife high school.

You've possibly seen some of the news reports about another large Fife school, where parents were complaining that not enough was being done to stop bullying.

I once supported a friend who was trying to get her younger child into a high school in the next county. I was astounded at the number of Fife parents in the waiting room, all there for the same reason.

One of the parents should have had a child at Bell Baxter, but had managed to get them into one of the Dunfermline schools. Nevertheless, they wanted to find a place for them over the county line. So far as I'm aware, none of the Fife parents were successful.

From what I've heard, however, the schools in the next county really are not that much better.

Well somethings going very wrong with children isn’t it? This thread is beyond awful. Why the hell are so many of them so violent now? This isn’t ’SEN’, this is more like the rage virus.

I agree with all of this. Unfortunately, the only part of this post that the powers that be seem to agree with is that pupils should not be expelled.

As I think I might have indicated in a previous post, the most that happens these days is that an exceptionally disruptive [violent] pupil will be offered a whole-school transfer. I haven't heard of a permanent exclusion happening in all the 40+ yrs that I taught - and temporary exclusions are vanishingly rare and very short.

The reality of the situation is that the pupils who are suffering most are those who are quiet and who wish to learn in peace.

The problems are being exacerbated by Scottish councils seeking to save money by constructing super campuses.

So far as the teaching and pupil support staff are concerned, I would not advise any young woman to seek employment in a school in the central belt these days. If things continue the way they are, schools will probably continue to attract new teachers, but won't keep them for long.

Fife council has a policy brought in a few years ago that they weren’t even going to do restorative conversations anymore because they were useless so just do utterly nothing about bullying. There was uproar and after 3 years of complains they finally brought back restorative conversations. Which still don’t work but hey at least there now pretending to do something again.

https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/23907535.fife-council-agree-policy-wont-punish-school-bullies/

www.fifetoday.co.uk/education/fifes-new-blueprint-to-tackling-bullying-and-managing-school-behaviour-5470212

These children haven't come from nowhere. Twenty years ago, classes weren't packed with out-of-control SEN children.

i can think of four specialist schools (including a ‘sin bin’), plus a few extra units, that existed in our area twenty years ago that have long been closed.

There were two residential schools in our village when I grew up 20 years ago. One for autistic children and a residential school for persistently violent pupils. Both now shut.

Honestly? I think it's because they know that they can get off with it in Scotland, provided they're below the age of 16.

The one time that I was badly hurt was 20 years ago. My assailant has, apparently, grown up to be an upstanding member of society - but that didn't stop him from boasting about punching me in the stomach to my then current pupils when he would have been in his 20s. (A couple of third year girls gleefully asked me whether it was true that X had punched me in the stomach. I found it interesting that he didn't mention that he'd also punched a couple of male teachers.)

I think I said above that the last time that I did a supply stint, I was hurt protecting a first year boy. After it was all over, a girl came up to me and thanked me for 'saving [her] friend'. (Seriously.)

According to her, her friend had been targeted by the other boy and the school was aware of the bullying but had done nothing about the situation.

Given what I saw happening in the school corridors, I believed her. Yes, I reported it all. No, it made no difference.

I stand corrected: the Waid assault was more than three years ago.

https://news.stv.tv/east-central/horrific-video-of-schoolgirl-attack-at-waid-academy-in-fife-raises-demands-for-action-on-classroom-violence

Why are we allowing councils / the government to put our kids in such terrifying situations?

Nothing is going to be done until the parents speak up...but even then most politicians try to ignore the problems. The teachers have been speaking up for years and there's currently yet another EIS campaign about this.

Having said that, on a local FB group, the former head of Fife Council chastised someone for daring to suggest that Levenmouth Academy might not be an excellent facility.

The commenter clarified that they were talking about the size of the school being problematic and David Alexander merely retorted that there were bigger schools.

He must have forgotten about this report in The Courier:

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/education/schools/4770049/levenmouth-academy-fife-bullying-stories/#comments

I'll add that - for only the second time in my life - I voted LibDem on Thursday, purely because of Willie Rennie's promise to address school violence.

Only 102 voters in my constituency voted LibDem. Perhaps if parents refused to vote for parties ignoring the issue, something might be done.

I said above that the local council has closed specialist schools in our area. The few that still exist specify that they address 'complex needs'. This normally means that the children have to be non-verbal before they'll be considered for admission.

A teacher friend taught in a small ex mining village in Fife (primary). It was a community that was very closed; they never left the immediate area. It was multigenerational unemployment with no aspiration to do differently so no purpose to education. No real opportunities in the community if they did wish for more. ‘Wishing for more’ or to
leave the area was considered a betrayal of community values. The school was fighting against apathy.

That sounds familiar.

In certain parts of Fife, it's a struggle to encourage secondary pupils to apply for tertiary education outside Fife: if one of the Fife College campuses doesn't have the necessary course, they're unwilling to go elsewhere. That's primarily because of parental attitudes.

Mind you, I recall my husband telling me that he had fellow workers trying to dissuade him from furthering his education when he worked on an Aberdeenshire estate: "Bide whaur ye belong, laddie." (He ignored them.)

As a parent that’s been through this I was shocked how powerless parents are. The politicians and councils genuinely couldn’t give a shit. “Oh so your child is being beaten up? How dare you worry about your child when the poor bully is only trying to communicate etc.”. Willie Rennie is good at organising getting parents on tv / radio to highlight their experiences etc but the SNP has no motivation to change. The people who haven’t been affected by this think you’re exaggerating. No one understands how terrible it is in schools just now. SNP likes to paint everything as rosy in their usual ‘Weesht for Indy’ way.

For me it’s teachers. If they all walked out together and refused to go back until it was addressed properly the SNP would be forced to act. The country would fall apart otherwise.

I think that part of the problem is that we have so many separate unions (Okay..."Professional Associations") that refuse to work together.

I'm trying not to out myself here. I mentioned a violent pupil above...

The reason that we were landed with this little darling was as follows. (I only got the info about the previous school second-hand. The info about our school is first-hand knowledge.)

One parent worked in a solicitor's office and threatened to sue the council if the whole school transfer was not to a school of the parent's choice.

Why were we chosen? The parent had, I was informed by an even older member of staff, been a problem pupil at our school. As best as we could understand, said parent had a grudge against a particular member of staff and was determined to...Lord knows what.

The pupil had been violent at their previous school, a member of staff had intervened and the parent had (predictably) claimed that their child had been assaulted by the member of staff.

Teachers in Scotland are - we were constantly told - not allowed to refuse to teach specific pupils. However...

One of the union reps at the previous school called a meeting for all teaching staff and pupils support assistants. This is highly unusual.

They persuaded all those present to refuse to interact with the violent pupil. That's as much as I know, but it was enough to force the SLT, LA and parent to agree to move the pupil on...to us.

I haven't given the full story here, since I don't want to out myself (as I've said). I will say that I'm now fully retired and no longer on the GTCS register.

So you're right. The problem is that we [former in my case] teachers rarely seem to be able to work together.

I've been in the EIS and I've been in the SSTA. In the highly unlikely event of my re-registering as a teacher, I'd join the NAS/UWT - their reps seem to have more balls than anyone else, largely because of better backing from their head office.

Reading through this thread I’m wondering how pupils likely to have violent or uncontrollable outbursts are managed in practical classes. Are there specific risk assessments done which follow the pupil around?
Im thinking of science labs where there’s glass, technical subjects with tools, computer labs with banks of screens.
Teachers and pupils could come to real harm if these are lobbed at them

Yes, generally a risk assessment will be done if needed.

The issues is that at some point on the plan it will have to state something along the lines of ‘if child doesn’t comply with instructions to keep them/others safe, they need to be removed from the room and taken to X’

That generally needs another adult and if there aren’t any, the plan falls down. A member of SLT might pitch up and ask them to come, but if they refuse, then what?

Yes the teacher can evacuate the whole class, but someone still needs to supervise the remaining person who may or may not be trashing the science lab.

When SLT don’t come and help and then just tell you to ring the parents in your own time, then you can see why teachers are leaving in droves.

One of the most violent attacks against my child happened in the science lab. Admittedly it was the chair that did the most damage rather than any of the scientific equipment but yes, you do wonder how the school reasons with giving certain pupils hammers / chisels / screwdrivers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy02p7d4eyeo

timely BBC article about the ever escalating violence. Until the Scottish government takes some form of action this is only going to get worse.

This topic has been heavily covered on radio Scotland today

Fife.

https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/26116939.figures-reveal-shocking-levels-violence-fife-schools/#Echobox=1779142404

We had a situation where a boy held a screwdriver to a girl's throat. The Risk Assessment put in place was fairly useless.

Unfortunately suitcases like this are happening daily in our schools. I honestly think in the future, if things hopefully change, it will be a scandal like the abuse that happened in children's homes. Sadly, at the moment, no one in any position of power is changing things so I can't see it stopping.