My child was hit by a pen, thrown by a teacher

[Tiredallthetimelaura]

So my daughter who is in year 8 was in a lesson when her teacher 'cold called' her a question. My daughter responded she didn't know the answer and the teacher then threw a highlighter pen at her, hitting her on the arm. The teacher then did it again to another student, also hitting them on the arm. We have reached level 2 of a complaint, but it's always investigated by management within the academy. The school keep down playing what happened and not investigating what we ask. This teacher is still teaching, although my daughter isn't going in on the day of that lesson, which is greatly affecting her attendance. The school said they would move my daughter so she could do a different lesson (double Maths or double English), but we said no! This feels like a punishment to our daughter. She wants to do that lesson, just not with that teacher... and we agree.
Any advice on what/how the school legally should be handling this? Happy to answer any further questions Xx

Which is why the school investigated and offered OP a solution...

You would also get sent to HR if you put your employee in detention or inspected your employees clothes every morning to check they were smart enough.

but the comparator between work and school is incorrect. The comparator would be if say, you went on a work training sesssion. I definitely had sessions where the trainer would lob chocolates at us to liven things up an otherwise dry subject. I’m not agreeing the highlighter pen is ok but we have zero context other than what the OP has said. For all we know there was a game where she was supposed to catch it after answering a question to keep the kids lively and awake but she just misunderstood the instructions.

The professionalism of teachers in some UK schools is quite dreadful and the excuse is that they can’t do anything about it because of the huge shortage of qualified teachers.

Unfortunately OP, I suspect that despite your best efforts, the school will only dig their heels in further.

I’d pull her out of music and try again next year and be clear that you don’t expect her to be timetabled with that particular teacher. She can easily teach herself the topics on the curriculum if she’s keen on music, but she needs to put the effort in herself. My teenage son loves music and has largely taught himself, especially the theory side.

By way of an outcome, would a sit down with your daughter and teacher help with an apology. Perhaps this would have been a better thing to do to restore the trust quicker than the campaign against her. I think if you’re honest you want her fired. It’s clearly not going to happen so what is the compromise?

Oh gosh, with such a charming attitude, what a shame I don't work with you, I am obviously missing out so much 😂

Did she have a problem with the music teacher too?

The music teacher is the teacher that threw the pen.

Winner of the thread IMO 🥇

Cant believe 30 pages later it is just as entertaining, but you are most definitely the winner. (With close second place to the daily mail sad face article suggestions)

It wasn’t at break though. It was during a lesson and a secondary age student would be reprimanded for throwing a pen. Also the account of the child is that the pen was thrown for getting an answer wrong - we need to believe children, or it sets a very dangerous precedent.

This is such bullshit. 😂

Don’t be stupid. They’re leaving because they’re overworked and underpaid, and not supported by the government but rather drowning in administration. This still
doesn’t give them the right throw pens or model behaviour to the class that wouldn’t be accepted from the students. There are some amazing teachers; there are also some very shit ones who shouldn’t be in the profession anyway. Good riddance to those ones!

Wow the responses here are vile. Women can be so vicious.

I would not be ok with this, no one throws things at me at work, I wouldn’t be ok with my DC throwing things at a teacher.

Tonsillitis: Just to warn you that your daughter might have the same experience at university. In my class we aren’t given a list of “selectively mute” students, and even if we were, the class is too big, the lesson too fast paced to implement a filter.

Discrimination law applies to universities too. You probably haven't had a selectively mute student, it's rare, but if you did you would be expected to make reasonable adjustments. You should be made aware by the uni if there were any students with relevant disabilities in your class.

If you personally have difficulties with remembering or recognising a student you are needing to make an adjustment for, perhaps you could ask for a reasonable adjustment yourself, like asking them to sit in a particular place you will remember, or some people with hidden disabilities like to wear a sunflower lanyard (though you wouldn't want to force that on anyone).

@Oioisavaloy27 Is the OP married to Ian?

Having attended school in the 60s and 70s flying chalk, board rubbers etc was a regular occurrence. Not saying this is right and those board rubbers hurt if they hit you.
But also when this happened you wouldn’t have dreamt of telling a parent because basically you were either misbehaving in class or hadn’t done the work properly and would have got a further telling off at home.

So she's now not going in for the entire day that the lesson is and you are allowing that??
Honestly, she really needs to be told to get back to class. A complete and total overreaction. You could just have complained, asked that it not happen again, tell your daughter that and then send her back in. What seriously do you expect to happen? This teacher to lose her entire career because of this? How would you feel if you had invested years of study in your career, one of the hardest jobs on the planet, only to have one minor complaint derail it.

My advice is that you and your daughter need to move past this.

You’ve raised it with the school, the teacher is highly unlikely to do it again but it’s not a sacking offence and realistically they’re not going to hire another teacher to cover your daughters lesson so this is the teacher she has if he wants to keep doing music. No one was actually hurt, it was never likely that anyone would be hurt by a highlighter hitting them so this was never really a big issue.

Your only alternative is to move her to a different school or homeschool. The head has spoken with the teacher, that may have included an official reprimand on their file but the headteacher would not be able to tell you that because it’s the teachers private information. No more action by the school would be considered reasonable or proportionate against the teacher so there is no where else for your complaint to go and your daughter can’t just keep missing a day a week for this.

Op I doubt very much it was done out of spite, or with malice. It was probably done playfully and the teacher assumed your dd would take it that way. She obviously doesn’t know your daughter as much as she thought she did. My DS would take it playfully, but my DD who is autistic may be a bit put out until I explained the teacher wouldn’t have done it as a punishment, rather done playfully.

I remember my history teacher calling the class cretins and then throwing the wooden blackboard cleaner across pupils heads. I really couldn’t get worked up about this

I think the school saying it was a game but not just having a simple restorative could have nipped this in the bud earlier.

This thread is wild indeed. There seem to be differing views but I think there are some things most would agree on:

• The narrative “I had board rubbers thrown at me in the 1970s and it did me no harm” is not especially helpful; no one would think this was OK now
• It’s not reasonable to say teachers should never throw anything at students – what about PE teachers with a ball? MFL teachers with a squishy fish?
• It was not OK for the teacher to throw this pen at the student, as even if it was a game it seems to have been badly done
• The teacher should not have asked the student a question if it was agreed that they would not (IMHO this is worse than the pen throwing)
• Teachers are not people who can do no wrong

The situation doesn’t seem to me to warrant as much upset as it seems to have caused. Surely a resolution might be that the teacher apologises to the student for throwing the pen and asking them the question; the student goes back to the class and maybe the teacher has some informal training in following procedure.
It’s not clear if this is the outcome the OP wants. But I think it highly unlikely that the teacher will be made to resign over this tbh.

So get her back to school and stop her missing 20% of her education…. Yep agreed!

clary, agree, good summary.

Except - squishy fish?? whut?

I always said to my kids when they were little, you'll be in much more trouble if you lie than if you just apologise.

We do have disability and SEN lists and we do make reasonable adjustments of course for many. We do not have (maybe just yet) selective muteness listed as a disability, or someone requiring a particular adjustment in class not to be called out on that basis - it might happen of course, I am not familiar with disability rules on whether this would warrant an adjustment. Such grey areas are decided upon by a committee, which is usually favourable to students. So yes, there might be case for reasonable adjustment, with the operative word being “reasonable” .

What would reasonable mean in this context? In the class there would be not be a requirement for me to memorise 200 names lol. (In those cases we do the soft toy throwing game. In Harvard style students can also have name tags on them.)

Neither there would be a requirement to change my style of teaching. It is a well established method where entire classes are taught in this way. In fact faculty who can teach this way is sought after, with teaching demonstrations being a part of interviews. I dont see it going away at all I’m afraid.

Maybe the student would be encouraged to take another course, or not attend and watch it online. Some classes wont be able to be recorded, due to their nature and content. I would prefer the student not took this class, because participation is more effective than watching the lecture like a TV series. So they would be automatically at a disadvantage.

Anyway, no need to be a snarky saying I should remember all students otherwise “I should ask for an adjustment"; clearly not possible in every case. Usually, normal, mature people, teacher or student, meet in the middle and there is no escalation.

Squishy fish was what I threw to get students to answer a question in my MFL lessons :) - a Jellycat kind of toy (not actually Jellycat haha). It was a popular plenary method until a year 8 decided to steal it and throw it in the bin. Hey ho.