Primary School Teacher Won £155,000 After Student Savagely Attacked Her

A primary school teacher has been awarded more than £150,000 in damages after a student attacked her for asking him to get on with his work.

The six-figure payout was amongst cases in which education workers were awarded settlements for damages and discrimination suffered in schools.

Overall, the NASUWT teaching union obtained more than £11.7 million for its members across the United Kingdom over the past 12 months, and the latest compensation figures show that in one case, a couple was awarded approximately £50,000 after they were fired by an independent school in London when one of them fell sick and was temporarily unable to work.

The figures were released ahead of the NASUWT’s yearly conference on Friday, which will be held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A teacher in a primary school in Cheshire secured just over £155,000 after she sustained severe injuries to her hand and wrist after being attacked by a student, simply because she asked a student, who was misbehaving, to get on with his work.

When she turned her back, he sprang up and grabbed her neck and then her right hand, twisted her wrist and then dug his finger into her arm.

The attack left her with ligament damage to her wrist, hand and fingers.

The NASUWT also secured more than £48,000 for a couple from Dyfed, Wales, who were dismissed from their positions at an independent secondary school in west London after one of them became unwell.

The pair were never presented with a formal contract of employment by the school, but they were employed on an ongoing basis as timetabled teachers.

In August 2018, they advised the employer that due to one half of the pair being unwell, she would be unable to return to work from the start of term but she would do so as soon as she recovered.

Her partner also advised the employer he would have to stay at home in Wales to look after her. The school then refused to employ them any further.

The NASUWT brought claims of unfair and wrongful dismissal on their behalf and they were awarded £28,935.99 and £19,220,20 each in 2020.

In another case, £60,000 was obtained for a deputy headteacher in the North West of England who was sacked after growing concerns about her school, including bullying and intimidation of staff and child protection concerns.

The union successfully lodged claims for unfair and wrongful removal, as well as maintaining the dismissal was automatically unfair due to whistleblowing.

The principal thing here that astounds me is that this child dared to attack his teacher and that pupils believe they have the license to attack their teachers, and really, how did it get to this? And it makes me question who raised the people that raised today’s generation.

When I was a girl, you only talked to a teacher to answer a question, and you’d daren’t even look them in the eye, and if you’d been in any trouble at school involving a smack or the cane, my parents would have given me worse back at home – the threat was enough, we just didn’t misbehave.

Numerous schools now turn a blind eye to the bullying of children and teacher abuse, and this needs to change.

Schools were once an establishment of learning, teaching, and encouraging children to be better human beings, but now teachers just teach and don’t believe that they are there to babysit or bring up your children, and this is where it’s all gone wrong.

And now some teachers, particularly in the US are being asked if they’ll wear a stab vest, as children are being identified as dangerous, and they’re using pencils, pens, or anything that comes to hand, and they’re only six years old.

No discipline equals no respect, and teachers should be allowed to discipline children that have no respect, and that respect should be developed at school as well as at home.

Now we have the softer education and the worst education and attitude in this system – the cane, detention, expelling and discipline. It was all taken away and everything just got worse, with pupils thinking that they can do as they want, and it’s time to bring back discipline in schools, or do people think that this is wrong?

But this is what happens when our nation’s become a soft touch, and it’s the school’s responsibility to provide a safe place, not just for the children, but for the people that work there as well, because this is what you get when you remove the ability to discipline a child.