Teachers use web to spell out abuse from pupils

SCOTTISH teachers are using an internet chatroom to highlight the violence and abuse they experience on a daily basis in the classroom.

A series of incidents have been logged anonymously on to the forum by teachers who are wary of speaking publicly about the problems they face.

The details come after senior school inspectors reported earlier this month that more than half of Scottish secondary schools and a quarter of primaries are struggling to deal with problems caused by disruptive pupils.

The revelations, posted through the Times Education Scotland website, have led to calls for teachers to be given more powers to act against troublemakers.

One entry posted by a teacher, under the username "carol75", read: "One child ... shouted over the top of me whenever I tried to speak, kicked me, called me names, including a fat sh***."

She told how this had rendered her powerless and unable to teach the other well-behaved children in her class.

Carol75 later logged on to the site again to say her department head had merely reprimanded the child by giving him "an official warning".

Another teacher, named "Scotia", told how the inclusion policy in its present form has been "disastrous for discipline" within Scottish education.

The website also recorded incidents where teachers found it difficult to discipline pupils, because they felt they would not have the backing of parents.

Pat O’Donnell, of the teaching union NASUWT, said he was not surprised by the incidents reported on the website.

"This is the kind of thing we hear on a daily basis," he said. "Approaches to discipline vary greatly within schools and in different local authority areas.

"Some headteachers are not keen for violent-incident forms to be filled in, but senior management teams can only do what they’re allowed to do by the local authority. What is needed is a national approach.

"There are some places where things aren’t working and we need to do something about that."

The number of pupils who were excluded from schools in 2003-04 rose by seven per cent with almost 40,000 pupils banned from the classroom.

A quarter of the exclusions were for disobedience, one in five for verbal abuse and 14 per cent for physical abuse.