Teacher Assault

although I got my fair share of abuse coaching football, and especially referreeing football it is nothing compared to the physical and verbal abuse I have seen teachers reporting recently.

some people are saying teachers should grow up when it comes to verbal abuse

but most people don't go to expecting to be swarn at, insulted or shouted at.

nor do people worry each day if someone is going to hit them, throw a chair at them or have things flung at them from across a room.

that seems to be a unique perk of being a school teacher.

bring back the cane, bring back physical punishment some people would argue.

no. that is just not a good idea for lots of reasons.

but punishment or behaviour management is certainly at the center of this.

when I first saw these inccidents I was reminded of situations when I was at school.

A local math teacher and student went to france without telling her parents.

that triggered an internataionl hunt for them that went all over the news.

Male teachers taking advantage of female students

but also female teachers taking advantage of male students.

the whole dynamic between teachers and students is riddled with moral and ethical situations.

there is nothing new about that.

That is what all the safeguarding paperwork is for.

But how do you do paperwork for a fist in the face or a chair to the back of the head.

I thought about scripting this video but instead, I am just talking as an interested researcher but also concerned person.

if children are assaulting teachers in school.

also assaulting other pupils for that matter, I do worry what will happen if that trend continues and extends outside of school.

I don't think it will turn into civil war or anything like that, but it does make the streets sound much more potentially violent.

it does sound like people may worry about saying the wrong thing as they could be assaulted.

maybe that is already happening and we are already seeing that.

maybe the children are seeing what us adults are doing to each online and in person all over the place and are replicating the behaviour they see in school.

there is multiple potential causes here but its certainly worth thinking about.

know I like data.

when I talk about something I like to know what the numbers say, what the research supports

so I went looking for the numbers of teacher assaults in school.

Being from england I looked at the data in England.

Although a small sample size when compared to other countries. it is first, more relatable to me, but second easier as I know where the data can be found.

most articles I saw online where giving percentages and numbers that were inconsistent.

and because jouranlists are rarely transparent with their work, sources were hard to come by.

off to the government website I go to create more custom tables.

and i did export the data to excel and played around with graphs and things but my editor likes to make the data look nice so here it is

hopefully you can see that the data shows a huge increase.

for a quick explanation of the data obviously schools were closed during the pandemic so limited data in those years.

and before the pandemic the suspension and exclusion data, what I am looking at here, wasnt that specific so not as useful.

I am not sure what happened in the spring of 21/22 if I figure it out my editor can put something on screen

but the autumn of 22/23 so the first term in that year is higher than all past terms.

up by 7000+ physical assaults on pupils and teachers in one term

up by 4000+ verbal assaults on pupils

and up by 17000+ verbal assaults on adults

like what can we just think about that for a second.

that's close to a 50% increase in verbal assaults on adults for just one term.

and some politicians wonder why we are struggling to keep and hire teachers.

now they were just suspensions, temporary exclusions

for those being excluded. asked to leave the school and go somewhere else

do you see a trend.

yes there are limitations with this data but the increased difference in verbal abuse on adults is bigger than the total in some terms.

in 2 years we have more than doubled in verbal assault exclusion cases.

maybe schools are suspending and excluding too much.

maybe children aren't behaving the way we would expect them to.

probably a bit of both but I am more pursuaded by the, behaviour bad reason.

abuse is abuse and should be punished. there should be a consequence. there is outside of school. its called prison.

if we don't punish those that abuse others in some way, what stops them doing it next time?

me being nosey at the numbers I wanted to see if the teachers age had any correlation

I did look at other numbers but this one peaked my interest

teachers seem to be getting older.

more teachers between 30 -50

I think because new teachers are in that age bracket

that doesn't necessarily mean anything significant,

but with technology and social media playing such a huge role in childrens lives I am not sure how well teachers of that age will be able to relate to the lives and situations those students find themselves in.

it isn't like teachers have lots of spare time to check out the latest chatGPT update, or tik tok trend.

I am not sure they have enough time to do the job they are being asked to do in some cases. let alone this other stuff.

teacher workload being a huge discussion area as well right now.

according to data the top concern of teachers. [8]

so if the teachers say something that the children see as offensive, or goes against some meme or thing that is happening online.

A teacher could offend, frustrate, or trigger a reaction from a student without them knowing it.

or children could be replicating or play acting something they have seen online which an adult responds to because they don't understand what is going on.

my mum shared a perfect example of this a couple of months back.

she saw a two boys fighting outside of a shop and another boy recording them.

after stopping and looking around, she got concerned.

my mum isn't tall, big or strong by any means and often keeps to herself but seeing this fight she reacted.

she stormed over and starting shouting at the boy that looked like was winning the fight.

trying to the help the boy that was being beaten

but when she shouted they said on no its not real. its all fake.

my mum didn't believe them and said that another person had called the police. which they had.

and the boys then ran off laughing.

the one acting beaten said it was to see if people would react.

my mum explained this to me while we were eating dinner that night and I had to explain that people do that for content online.

people pretend to fight or do things to find good people.

I don't get it but I know about it because I am online and see this stuff.

Teachers, parents, adults that aren't online wouldn't necessarily understand that.

And there are loads of other instances and situations where students behave in a way that adults may not be able to understand.

I am not saying teachers need to follow online trends but finding the reason behind behaviour could lead to an explanation which in turn opens up learning opportunites.

also policies to try and prevent the poor behaviour in the first place.

online safety bill.

that doesn't explain the increased assaults, but might explain why the increase in verbal assault was far more for adults than pupils

in my search to understand these abuse numbers a little more, I looked at the recent teacher survery from 2023 [8]

lots of worrying numbers in there but the things that stuck out to me were that

77% of teachers said they have day to day problems with pupils inability to follow rules
47% with day to day struggles of swearing or verbal abuse in class
27% with day to day struggles with violence between pupils
16% with day to day issues with physical assaults of teachers

16% that is far to high. that is more than 1 and half teachers. I know can't have half a teacher but still

over the past year 47% were subject to verbal abuse by a pupil, 28% by a parent or carer so it isn't just the kids.

19% subject to threats of physical assault by a pupil, 14% subject to assault.

but what is more worrying for me is that 41% felt that their school had not dealt with abuse by a parent/carer or pupil in a satisfactory manner.

if the school doesn't protect the teachers, and they can't protect themselves because then they could be seen as assaulting a child, what do they do?

looking at the biggest concerns from teachers in England workload is right up there at the top.

82% worrying about workload but 62% worrying about pupil behaviour. that is second on the list.

school inspection which can lead to disasters as I explained in a past ofsted video is 43%, pay 61%.

behaviour in schools is an issue. the clips from the start can tell you that.

but looking at this data, it is becoming more of an issue, which if 74% of teachers are serciously considering leaving their current job, 69% the teaching profession.

will it be up to the internet to educate children.

I love online education, and do support much of what it offers.

But there are lots of dangers and limitations that need to be sorted before people can even consider it as an alternative to school.

educating teachers sounds like a great idea but again that is money, resources, time which is in short supply in the education sector.

plus people interaction is important arguably vital for the species

I don't have answers, only ideas and suggestions but I will leave the professionals to share the advice because it is not my area of expertise.

But I did discuss exclusion and suspension reporting recently from a guardian article which if you are interested in this topic you find also want to watch.