Two in five teachers assaulted as classroom violence surges

31 comments

1. The problem isn’t just violence, it’s that the behaviour is allowed to escalate to violence through a poverty of standards by everybody involved. Poor leadership not having the teachers back with poor behaviour. Parents not willing to take responsibility for their child, and my god the parents that worm their kid out of a detention by lying or accusing teachers of picking on their kids are low.

   The job is hard – there’s almost no downtime in the day. The responsibilities are invasive, meaning you are almost always taking something home with you. It requires extensive education and training, and returns pittance. And worst of all, you are expected to be a doormat to shitty behaviour. 

2. So I’m on £48k in an office job in London, a decent wage although doesn’t go that far here with housing costs and I’d definitely like a pay rise. But even if they were offering let’s say £60k as a salary for newly qualified teachers, I definitely wouldn’t be tempted, probably not even if it was £70k tbh

   I know several people who took up teaching jobs mostly in London and who quit within a few years, citing appalling behaviour, ungrateful children, obnoxious parents, violent incidents, police constantly being called for gang related fights, insane workload, pressure to get students who literally just don’t want study anything to somehow pass regurgitation exams, _etc_

   The pay is just not worth it; imagine going to work worrying some volatile 6 ft tall teenagers might throw a chair at you if you tell them to be quiet. You get danger pay when working on oil rigs or down mines, so why not as teachers in urban schools?

   And I think this all connects to a deeper problem of general lawlessness and declining social cohesion, it’s like people just don’t care any more because there’s no consequences to anything whether its shoplifting, bad driving, fly-tipping, terrible behaviour at school, etc

3. If you gave teachers a small rounders bat for two weeks and no questions asked, the problem would be solved in two weeks.

4. There’s zero accountability for youth violence and criminality these days and they know it, the only thing that keeps some in check is good parenting, but for those where that’s nonexistent the system will allow to victimise and terrorise others all they like until they kill someone… then “lessons will be learned”.

5. What’s even in it for teachers anymore? How much pay could possibly make dealing with this shit worth it?

   That wasn’t me making a weird case about not paying teachers what they deserve, btw. They 100% need huge pay increase. I just struggle to imagine wanting to be a teacher at all after seeing news reports like this.

6. Id love to see statistics on the people committing the crimes.

7. Force children and teenagers into a stuffy classroom with no regard whatsoever to their desires and wishes in the matter. Have some dry overschooled unimaginative morons (who aren’t teachers) make a curriculum and get an unelected body to approve it.

   Then, pay teachers peanuts to teach this shite,
   but threaten the teachers with legal trouble if they use force against their captives.

   What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

8. The lockdown generation of kids will move through the system like rings in a tree.

9. Huh looks like me failing my teaching assistant apprenticeship 10 years ago was a blessing in disguise 😅

10. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to be a teacher in an inner city state school

    We’ve got far too soft on crime. Shops just tolerate kids walking out with goods now as they know the police won’t do anything

    It’s no surprise these same kids you see causing trouble are also a problem in school. Time to get strict with them.

11. It’s the same as residential care. You are expected to let children slap you about, verbally abuse you all day, meanwhile you have absolutely no rights and you get paid awfully.

    If you get injured in residential care by a child, you get statutory sick pay.

12. Because we are teaching kids it’s ok because you have

13. Because we are teaching kids it’s ok cos they all have ‘label’. Their parents are the same so instead of accountability we breed it.

14. We need to be moving persistently rule breaking and violent students to a totally different type of education, far more strict and focused on ameliorating behaviour. At the same time bring back grammar schools and save intelligent and hard working pupils who are stuck in classes full of disruptive kids. It’s insane. Seems mainstream is moving closer and closer to adult daycare

15. iPads and iPhones have created a generation of emotionally attrophied teen-toddlers, and it’s 100% on the parents.

    parents are only interested in praising not really much into discipline, so you get these maladjusted weirdos that believe they’re the chosen one.

16. I have a few friends and family members that are or where teachers.
    One qualified and got a job in a school in a very nice area. They had a yr 10 student come to them crying saying they had been assaulted under a staircase, they reported it to the head and got the cctv from the IT team. Turns out the perpetrator was the deputy heads son so they hushed it up until the girls mum found out and went to the police, deputy head even threatened my pal and the IT team with firing “or worse” if they told the police the truth. Eventually head and deputy head quit, my pal also left due to the mess.

    My family members just took a job in a special needs school because “I’d rather help someone teach someone who struggles with social skills or has meltdowns but isn’t thinking and talking about doing cocaine or stabbing me in lessons”

    Another friend stepped down from a head of year 7 role because they got fed up of calling the police when they found kids with knives and then having to deal with aggressive parents because they’re precious child would never do that.

    Finally had my cousin go become a copper because he can actually do something about little twats instead of having to take all the abuse and they get screamed at if he dared try to stop if.

    UK schools are failing because UK parents are fucking useless. Bring back national service and jail parents for having cunt kids.

17. [removed]

18. I was a teaching assistant in an SEN secondary school. The mainstream school next door offered genuinely worse behaviour, teenagers squaring up to me to try to break in to the specialist school, throwing scissors out of their classroom windows on to the playground, breaking in and running through our corridors screaming and pulling fire alarms.

    Whilst there were violent incidents in the school I was working in, there was actual procedure and personalised de-escalation and restorative measures in place for these particular children, which actually made it somewhat manageable

19. Have we really thought about what impact a well written Netflix drama could have on this problem?

20. The right to discipline your children is taken away and this is what happens.

21. When even parents aren’t allowed to discipline their own kids, what else do you expect??

22. This is also likely partly due to a rise in child poverty rates in recent years along with reduced funding for schools

23. The kids run the schools these days.

    And when they get out, they run the streets.

    We have failed.

24. We’ve decided to home school our children, no way I’m risking sending them to a school as things stand. One bad kid in their class is all it takes.

    We are incredibly fortunate to be able to do this and honestly if we couldn’t, we wouldn’t be having any.

25. The solution is clear; give teachers immunity to retaliatoraly fight one student a year.

26. Because of crap parenting. They want the attention for having kids but none of the responsibility.

27. Easy way to solve this. Send the wee bastards back up the chimneys.

28. Parents don’t have the time or the willingness or the authority to educate their children anymore, so it will get worse.

29. This didn’t used to happen when Mr. Chips was in charge.

30. I have the ultimate solution. Don’t teach or work at schools.

31. I spent over 3 decades coaching kids and the difference over those decades is staggering.

    In the beginning, if a kid misbehaved, the parents almost always took responsibility.

    As the time past, that slowly changed.

    Now, many of the parents refuse to take responsibility and actively try to blame everyone else. Its the coaches fault, organizations fault, etc.

    Anyone but them.

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