I was physically attacked at the above school and if my assailant had had a knife then I too would be dead, and I wouldn't be writing this Blog Post. I saw two full hearses today. After the first one went passed I started singing 'Another one bites the dust' but I sobered up when I saw the next one. I think only teachers and former teachers can fully understand the importance and far reaching consequences of this fatal stabbing. In 2001/2 our Headmistress at the above school brought in photocopied pictures of knives that they had confiscated from pupils and showed them to us at our staff morning meeting. Security at the above school was non existent and one day I was covering for a Deputy Head Teacher who was absent on a course or applying for another job if I remember rightly. Half way through the lesson a person entered the classroom, not in uniform, and proceeded to the back of the class to pursue a conversation with a pupil. "Don't mind me" I quipped. "I'm just the Teacher". He kissed his teeth as he walked out. I walked behind him and at the door I shouted 'Make sure that you are in uniform, next time'. Perhaps it was the word, uniform that upset him. He didn't want to be uniform. 'Don't want no uniformity man'. He placed his hoody over his head and returned, pushing the door open. He placed his leg behind mine and pulled me over. He was tall and thin. I got up. He did it again. The pupils in fairness went quiet. I got up again. He grabbed me in a headlock and walked me towards the door with the intention of obviously trying to bang some sense into me. I pulled out of the headlock and pushed him through the door. He walked chillingly out of the doors and slowly towards the exit. The pupils shouted "Why didn't you hit him Sir?" I said " Because if I had, you would have been the first to report me". I thought that he was a pupil. He was a former pupil apparently who had been excluded from the school in Year 8. He was a Foster Child apparently. This information came out afterwards when the police attended the school but I became the bad guy because I had reported it to the police. If there had been adequate security at the school gates he would not have been able to get in. I had no support whatsoever. I was covering for a member of school management and the incident was treated as more of a hindrance. The police called to the school once again. On another occasion I witnessed a break in during school hours to a room above the classrooms, reported it, and no action taken. I was convinced then as I am convinced now that there is a conspiracy of silence in many schools in the UK. Bullying is rife and their Anti-Bullying policies are not worth the paper that they are printed on. Be they Faith schools, Welsh Medium Schools, Inner City Sink Schools and Government Academies. These Institutions are more concerned with their reputations and their Ofsted Reports and their place in the school league tables than they are with the welfare of their pupils and especially their teachers. Teachers are Expendable! Supply Teaching Agencies make fat profits out of the failure of the British Education System. I am whistleblowing now because Dafydd Cameron and his Big Society need to take a 'Ghost Busting' attitude to this cancer and go into schools and start talking with pupils and teachers, not with Head Teachers and Heads of Department. They are the ones who are bullying. They are the ones who are kicking over the sand, the evidence. Leave that Pin Cushion Michael Gove at home. This cancer needs strong political action, needs legislation. My incident is now history, the school is no more. It is now a Government Academy with a fancy name. I'm still alive. I can write about it.
R.I.P Anne Maguire
I was also saddened by this news. It's out there, bullying and violence and every teacher knows that. The institution that is school is not some brave little sanctuary of learning any more, it is a thriving reflection of greater society and that includes apprentice sadists, budding psychopaths and a large crowd of disaffected, disengaged teenagers who have no moral compass and would have broken it, had they realised it was at their disposal. Many schools claim to be on the top of the problem of bullying, but if you dig a little deeper into their administration, the protocols may be in place, but that is no guarantee of their implementation, as bullying is a hassle to deal with, difficult or subjective or time-consuming to deal with...whatever argument might be employed to deflect from the issue itself, the shortcomings of the system, their expertise, it's better to sweep things under the carpet and not deal with it. Effectively, the education system is in meltdown as experienced teachers who invested their skills, who built reputations and relationships with their pupils walk away from their profession, leaving children in the hands of supply teachers who owe no oath of allegiance to their temporary employer or inexperienced rookies who will never be given the time or space to work on their professional development. Even if we don't want schools to have metal detectors arched over the entrance, or have spot checks on bags and lockers or to lock our pupils into school, more attention needs to be given to educating pupils in the virtues of kindness, respect and solidarity and development of a social conscience - prevention is always better than cure :)
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