Schoolgirl Dragged Across Changing Room By PE Teacher

A PE teacher who dragged a Year 8 girl across a changing room floor because she took ‘too long to tie her shoelaces’ has been spared a classroom ban.

Sports teacher Charlotte Venables grabbed the student by the ankle as she attempted to get her out of the girls’ changing room at Stewards Academy in Harlow, Essex.

The pupil had been sitting on a bench tying her shoelaces when Venables pulled at her, causing her to fall to the floor, a misconduct hearing was told.

She then grabbed the girl by the wrist and yanked her out into the corridor in front of other children.

The Teaching Regulation Agency watchdog heard how she then failed to report the incident to superiors at the secondary school.

Venables acknowledged acting in an improper manner and in a way that might damage the reputation of the profession.

However, she was spared being struck off the teaching register after the panel ruled she had acted ‘entirely out of character’.

Venables claimed she was trying to hurry children out of the changing rooms so lessons could begin.

She said she had been left to lock up both PE changing rooms and had counted down from sixty seconds for pupils to leave.

But when one girl, referred to as Child A, asked for an additional 20 seconds to finish tying her laces, Venables ‘grabbed her trainer and pulled her to the floor.’

Venables was suspended from duty when the girl’s mother complained to the school, saying her daughter had been manhandled ‘while doing nothing more than fastening her shoe.’

In evidence, the teacher accepted her behaviour had dropped far below the standards desired.

Venables said: ‘I recognise that I made an error in judgment in how I responded to the situation in September 2022. At the time of the initial investigation, I did not recall this action.

‘When I was shown the CCTV footage during the disciplinary process, I immediately accepted that it was me and that my conduct was inappropriate.

‘I deeply regret my actions, as they were not in line with the values I hold, nor the standards that were expected of me.

‘Please know that my intention was never to cause harm or distress to the child.

‘However, I fully understand that my approach was inappropriate, and I take responsibility for the negative impact it may have caused.’

The Teaching Regulation Agency concluded that Venables had used inappropriate and extreme force against Child A and had failed to follow safeguarding practices.

To be fair, in my day and age, if that had happened and I went home and told my parents that had happened to me, I would have got a backhander for winding the teacher up that much, but things have changed so much, and this sort of thing happened everyday when I was at school in the 1970s, but then that was when we did have teachers disciplining pupils, not the pupils discipling the teachers.

It’s high time these ‘woke’ organisations started to support their teachers.

The problem is that teenagers won’t learn much from this, other than they can do what they like. School is the coop that we live inside, but when they get out there into the big wide world and wind people up, they then wonder why they get arrested or launched by a bouncer. We all have kids in school like this, but it should be nipped in the bud before it’s too late.

When my parents were at school, blackboard rubbers would be hauled across the classroom at some pupil for doing something wrong. Generally, for being an idiot, and the teacher was at the end of their tether, did they behave afterwards? Normally, they did, problem solved, but there were some that were carted off to reform school.