Children ‘threatening to stab and kick pregnant teachers’ as pupil violence increases amid funding cuts

Schools must deal with “Teflon kids” amid reports of violent threats against pregnant staff, teachers have said.

A motion calling for teachers to be defended when their safety is “placed at risk by pupil indiscipline” was passed at the NASUWT teachers’ union conference in Belfast over Easter.

Violence by students in schools has worsened following education budget cuts, teachers warned.

The union’s conference heard shocking examples of the threats and attacks teachers have experienced.

A seven-year-old boy said to one teacher: “I will stab you in your pregnant belly”, after he was asked to do literacy. Meanwhile, another pregnant teacher was called a “fat c***” by a pupil.

One teacher was left bleeding from the neck after a pupil attacked them, while another teacher was punched in the face by a child, the conference heard.

The stories of teachers being left injured as a result of pupil violence came as findings revealed that nearly one in four teachers are physically attacked by pupils at least once a week.

Emma Thomas, county secretary in Huntingdonshire, said she was dealing with a case where a pupil had pushed a member of staff with “enough force that his arm went through a double glazed window”.

She said: “Pupil violence is on the rise. Most of the cases I’m dealing with are injuries to staff where they are going in and trying to stop violence between students.

“This violence is getting out of control, not because of the way the students are but because way back somebody hasn’t dealt with the way they behaved.”

The motion, backed at the union’s annual conference over Easter, described indiscipline and violence as a “significant and worsening problem” in schools, adding that teachers are told it is just “part of the job”.

It called for the union to take industrial action in individual schools, if necessary, when members’ health, safety and welfare was in danger as a result of pupils’ bad behaviour.

The move comes after members of the NASUWT at a school in Gateshead went on strike in February over “management failure” to tackle pupil indiscipline.

Russ Walters, honorary treasurer, told the conference: “We cannot continue to put up with this lack of dignity, this absolute prostitution of our professionalism. We have to stand up for what is right.”

He said he knew of one special school where the headteacher gave the teachers tabards after they raised concerns about pupils spitting at them regularly.

David Baxter, a member of the union’s executive in Northern Ireland, added: “Let us find some way of dealing with Teflon kids – the ones that no sanction seems to stick to.”

Alfredo Gualda, a teacher from Doncaster, said parents needed to do more to help. He said: ‘If your child is constantly disruptive, if they are violent, if they are abusive, I think it’s about time that schools and teachers question the parenting of those children.”

It comes after delegates at the National Education Union (NEU) warned that local authorities do not have enough money to provide adequate resources for special educational needs (SEN) provision in schools.

Members of the NEU raised their concerns about the impact of zero-tolerance approaches to discipline in schools on vulnerable pupils at their conference in Liverpool earlier this week.

Speaking at the NASUWT conference, Stephen O’Connor, from Pembrokeshire, said budget cuts had fuelled violence in the schools and he added a lack of funding meant there were not enough places in pupil referral units so “extremely abusive and violent pupils” were being kept in mainstream schools.

Shaun Cooper, from Perth and Kinross, told the conference in Belfast that cuts had meant there are not enough staff to work with pupils who need additional support due to mental health issues.

He said: “We shouldn’t have to put up with any of this and the reason we are is there’s not the resources in our schools to enable us as teachers to teach our children and help them develop.”