Teaching assistants face violence and threats every day

Teaching assistants are routinely facing threats and violence from pupils and their parents, a shocking new report in the Morning Star reveals today.

School support staff blame shoddy disciplinary policies, staffing cuts and a lack of training for allowing students to run amok. Now public-sector union Unison has called on the government to get a grip and fund schools properly to deal with the crisis. Over half (53 per cent) of teaching assistants said they had experienced physical violence at school, with the same proportion reporting verbal threats. One assistant said they had been “kicked, punched, slapped, headbutted and insulted verbally by children,” while another said verbal abuse was “constant.”

Unison’s head of education Jon Richards said: “This paints a grim picture of the way cuts and a general lack of cash are having a huge effect on school support staff. “These are not just occasional incidents. Abuse is becoming a regular and alarming occurrence.”

Of those who experienced physical attacks, almost all said this had come from pupils, while one in 20 had faced violence from the children’s parents. Nearly one in five teaching assistants said their school did not have an adequate behaviour management policy. Twenty-seven per cent said their school did not provide adequate training to deal with violence, while 24 per cent said their school offered no training at all and 11 per cent reported cuts to staff who dealt with violent incidents — either through redundancies or so-called “natural wastage.”

Unison, whose annual conference begins today in Brighton, represents a quarter of a million school support staff including 150,000 teaching assistants — alongside general union GMB. It called on heads to stamp out violence through supporting staff better and sending tougher messages to parents. Schools are obliged to provide parents, kids and staff with their discipline policy every year, but it is thought that many do not. “A lack of resources means schools are unable to address behavioural issues,” Mr Richards said. “Dealing with these problems can dominate the day when time could be better spent supporting children’s learning.”