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Saturday 5 November 2016

Shock horror violence

Derbyshire Times has a revealing piece on physical attacks by pupils on primary school teachers.



Gosh how appalling, but further down we have some context.

The figures show that incidents of violence against teachers by pupils in schools in Derbyshire are on the rise, with 12 reported incidents so far in 2016, compared to ten in the whole of last year and 12 in 2014...

...A spokeswoman for Derbyshire County Council said: “Violence of any kind is not acceptable and is not tolerated in our schools.

“But 12 incidents is relatively low considering we look after more than 107,000 pupils in Derbyshire schools. And half of these incidents took place in special schools where pupils have complex needs.

In other words, excluding the special schools leaves us with about 5 or 6 incidents per year. I don't find that shocking, but I'm not a local journalist who needs to fill the space between the ads.

5 comments:

Sackerson said...

Plenty in the special needs sector, I can assure you.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - and that's where the story is, if there is one in Derbyshire. No point trying to shock us with tiny numbers for primary schools as a whole.

Sam Vega said...

“Violence of any kind is not acceptable and is not tolerated in our schools."

I love these sorts of statements. Every time anything nasty is being discussed, someone official prefaces it with something like that. You can substitute any form of nastiness for the first word (bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment, homophobia, rudeness, microwaving puppies, etc) and any public or corporate body for the last word. It's a kind of background hum against which the slightly more useful info can be heard. There don't seem to be any along the lines of "We love a bit of violence in our schools, and find it sexually alluring".

Demetrius said...

The teachers at my Elementary (5-14 then leave) School were equipped with policemen's truncheons. Visitors remarked at the politeness of the pupils. At 11 and after at Grammar School, having higher educational standards, you got thumped with thick volumes of learning.

A K Haart said...

Sam - health and safety has created much the same culture. To borrow your idea - "We love a bit of zero tolerance in our workplace, and find it sexually alluring".

Demetrius - I'm sure a scientifically designed rubber cosh would do the same job.