Horrific stories have emerged of teachers facing violence and abuse, with pupils as young as seven ripping posters from walls before storming out of school.
It is the kind of behaviour that has led to suspensions almost doubling in England since the 2016/17 school year. In the autumn term in 2016 there were 129,151 suspensions, rising to 247,366 in the 2023 autumn term. Mark Morris, of the NASUWT, revealed he had been contacted by teachers forced to lock classroom doors to keep violent pupils out.
Mr Morris said: “None of us went into this job to be abused. Teachers are scared of challenging groups of kids because of the abuse. They are also getting misogynistic behaviour from boys and girls, putting up with sexualised language.”
He said one teacher had described behaviour so bad he thought she worked in a special unit. He said: “She said, ‘No, this is a mainstream school’.
“She had Years Three or Four just leaving her classroom. That’s seven and eight-year-olds throwing a strop, disrupting things, throwing things across the room, ripping pictures off the wall. Seven-year-olds leaving the school grounds – a huge concern.”
He has taught for 30 year in Wales, where the rate of fixed-term exclusions of five days or less increased to 50.6 per 1,000 pupils in 2021/22 from to 41.0 per 1,000 pupils in 2018/19. Teachers at Pencoedtre High School in Barry, South Wales, went on strike last month after suffering more than 50 serious incidents of verbal and physical abuse since September.
Mr Morris said one of the most disturbing “trends” was internal truanting, pupils going to school but not into lessons. He said: “They wander round and knock on doors of classrooms to speak to their friends. In Barry, they bashed into the room to start beating up a kid and teachers had to lock doors to keep people out.”
