Teacher opens up about being 'mocked and stalked' online after being injured breaking up fight between students
A teacher has told LBC how she was injured trying to stop a fight between students and "mocked" online after pupils found her private social media accounts.
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Kate, a teacher from the East Midlands, described how she was forced to intervene when a fight broke out between two male students in her classroom.
While Kate has undergone restraint training, which she says in itself is "shocking", she was hurt while restraining the two males and injured her back.
She said: "Leadership didn’t support me. Nothing happened to those boys. I was told, ‘Well, you’ve still got two more lessons today,’ even though I was in pain.
"When I took a couple of days off, the response was, ‘You should be coming back now, you’ll be fine.’ No one acknowledged the trauma, the fear, the mental toll.”
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However, it’s not just physical abuse teachers are being subjected to - they’re now being targeted online.
Kate said: “At another school, a student managed to access my private social media and launched a hate campaign against me on TikTok.
"They took my personal photos, made videos, and spread them across the year group. I never saw the videos. The leadership told me what had happened, who it was, and removed that student from my class.
“But the damage was done. Every time I walked into a classroom, I could feel the judgement.
"The students had turned on me because of what was posted online. I was being watched, mocked, and stalked. It made doing my job unbearable.”
Figures shared with LBC by Save My Exams showed that the number of suspensions in England for students who assaulted members of staff rose from 9,099 over the 2016/17 and 2017/18 academic years to 19,039 in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 school years - an increase of 109%.
Kate believes the rise in such poor levels of behaviour by students was most noticeable when they returned to the classroom after the pandemic.
She said: “When students came back into a more regimented, structured system - a system they hadn’t experienced properly for over a year - we saw a huge shift. They didn’t want to fit back in.
“There was a lack of respect, a disregard for rules, for personal safety. In my school, which was already quite challenging, we had students taking face masks off and deliberately spitting at staff. There was this sense that the boundary of respect between student and teacher was gone.”
Daniel Kebede, Secretary General at the National Education Union, told LBC: “It absolutely should be staggering for the government to hear such terrifying statistics.
"But there is a human story behind each statistic, and the fact of the matter is, assaults against staff are becoming increasingly commonplace in our schools. The government need to get their fingers out of their ears and recognise the scale of the crisis.”
The Department for Education said: “Nobody should face violence or abuse in the workplace, including our incredible school staff who are vital to improving life chances for all children.
“As part of our Plan for Change, we are committed to turning the tide on poor behaviour, breaking down barriers to opportunity and ensuring every child can achieve and thrive.
“Our new regional improvement teams will work with schools to spread the highest standards of behaviour across our classrooms, and we are committed to providing access to a specialist mental health professional in every school.
"But we know there is more to do and are looking closely at how we can go further to support teachers and drive high and rising school standards for all our children.”