Third of teachers threatened

To view the original article Click Here

Title – Third of teachers threatened
Source – The Independent
Date – 17th March 2008

Yet another statistic we should be ashamed of in our society. I remember my school days vividly and although I can’t claim I was any kind of saint or that there were no disruptive students in my class, one thing I can remember is that teachers were respected and the possibility of a teacher being abused let alone assaulted would have been headline news.

Today the news that 1 in 3 of all teachers has been threatened and 1 in 10 suffered actual assault, seems unbelievable. Maybe that in itself is the problem, it is difficult to believe that such a thing is possible, so those people making the rules and setting the standards might be wholly unaware, especially those that had the privilege of attending private schools, of the scale of the problems. Maybe spending some real time in a school would be of help to them…

The teachers I have spoken to, tell very similar stories to the one depicted in this article; stories of pupils who regularly carry knives; who shout and scream abuse and who threaten and seem to have the impression that because of their age they are protected by the law rather than frightened of it; stories of dissent amongst teachers as some want to take a hard line, some want to ignore the problem and hope it goes away, some who seem oblivious to it and some want to brush it under the carpet because the pressure on them to be a ‘good school’ or meet an Ofcom standard is greater than the need to be honest about the problems they face.

None of these situations are acceptable; teachers need to feel safe, secure and respected in order to perform as well as they can. To achieve the first step honesty is required. Honesty to confront the problems and to work on the statistics to make sure they accurately reflect the problems. Are all incidents reported? Our experience suggests they are not, either because some teachers feel that it achieves nothing, that they are discouraged from reporting or that they feel guilty reporting; none of these scenarios is acceptable. Once an accurate reporting structure has been established teachers can start the difficult process of addressing the actual problem and seek help where it is required. If it is just ignored we all know which way it is going and do any of us really want our children going into schools where the entrance is guarded by security personnel and pupils are ushered through metal detectors on the way in. Is that really conducive to a positive learning environment?

In the mean time teachers need to be protected, that happens in two ways. It happens by the relevant authorities sticking up for them and it happens by them receiving the correct training to deal with these situations before they occur. Training in Conflict Management & Resolution is a good first step and for high risk environments physical intervention and restraint training may also be relevant. Here they can learn disengagement and break-away skills as well as restraint techniques.

Working with children presents additional concerns in this area and we believe that our low-impact techniques are perfectly suited to dealing with children as none of them involve the use of force or strength, but are effective if the conflict management and resolution skills are not enough to deal with the situation a teacher is confronted with.

We are very interested to help these public sector workers achieve reductions in the workplace violence they face and allow them to redress the balance in favour of the children and their ability to learn in a safe and secure environment that we all enjoyed in our school days.



Please visit our website at www.btbl.co.uk