Last week, he and 50 colleagues at Westbourne Academy took the unusual step of going on strike over pupils’ poor behaviour, which included swearing at teachers, throwing chairs, posting offensive videos of staff on social media, making homophobic and sexist comments, and disrupting lessons.
On Monday teachers at a school in Liverpool also started strike action because of “dangerous pupil behaviour”. In January, teachers at a school in Scotland threatened to walk out, saying they regularly faced swearing and violence. Staff at a school in Wales went on strike for two days last October. A survey of 5,800 teachers across the country last month found that more than 80 per cent say pupil behaviour has worsened in the past year. Twenty per cent have been hit or punched by pupils and 25 per cent suffer verbal abuse several times a week, the union NASUWT found. The problems at Westbourne Academy, a co-educational secondary school, first emerged two years ago.
Every day, 40 pupils across all year groups run around the grounds, skipping lessons, banging on doors and dragging other children out of classrooms. “They are just wandering around like feral cats and disrupting everyone else’s learning,” Katherine Moore, a union representative from NASUWT, said outside the Westbourne Academy picket line on Wednesday.
McConnell said some schools had reported a rise in aggressive behaviour from parents at the school gates, with some having to enforce antisocial behaviour orders. “We have completely lost, from a teaching point of view, that respect that we used to have from parents,” he added.
