Plant pots, pebbles and snooker cues: 300 violent pupils banned from Wolverhampton schools
More than 300 children were excluded from Wolverhampton schools for attacks on teachers in less than five years, shock new figures have revealed.
Attacks included a young student using a skipping rope as a whip, while a teacher was struck with a snooker cue.
In other cases unruly pupils hurled shoes, plant pots and pebbles at their tutors.
Since 2012/13 there have been 220 temporary exclusions at primary schools in Wolverhampton, with 17 children expelled.
In the city's secondary schools there were 87 fixed-term exclusions and seven permanent.
Lib Dems say teachers and staff are facing a ‘war zone’ in the city's classrooms, a claim the local council says is 'wholly unfair'.
Rob Quarmby, a Lib Dem campaigner, said the figures were a 'scandal' that proved there was 'a plague of violence in our schools'.
“It is disturbing that so many young children are exhibiting such violence," he said.
“Classrooms are supposed to be places of learning but for a small minority of kids who are off the rails they seem to think they are war zones. Teachers need to be able to discipline children who get out of line.”
Union NASUWT general secretary, Chris Keates, said: “The NASUWT is being inundated with teachers who are reporting assaults that are happening to them on a daily basis.
"No teacher or other worker should go to work with an expectation that they should tolerate violence and abuse.
“Yet evidence shows that teachers are not receiving the support to tackle these issues.
“Where a pupil is known to exhibit violent and disruptive behaviour, a risk assessment should be undertaken and action taken to support the pupil to address their behaviour and to protect other pupils and staff.
“Employers who fail to disclose safety information leave themselves vulnerable to legal challenge and industrial action, but more importantly they are behaving recklessly with the health and wellbeing of staff and other pupils and this simply cannot be justified.”
Bill Hague, Wolverhampton council's head of school planning and resources, said the authority was determined to do all it can to eradicate violence in the classroom.
But he added: “It is wholly unfair to describe classrooms in Wolverhampton as 'war zones'.
"We have well over 100 schools in Wolverhampton; pupil behaviour is one of the areas that Ofsted considers as part of its inspection regime and evidencing good behaviour has been key in helping nearly 90 per cent of schools in the city to be rated either Good or Outstanding."
