In South Australia alone over the past two years, students injured almost 3,000 state school teachers.
According to an occupational health and safety report, students were “deliberately” responsible for 98 per cent of these injuries.
Correna Haythorpe, president of the South Australian Education Union, said: “The figures paint a picture of rising levels of violent incidents that teachers are facing. Teachers expect to go to work to teach, not to be assaulted or injured.”
At a primary school in a northern suburb of Adelaide, a woman teacher on yard duty was hit on the back of the head with a brick. As she lay on the ground suffering from shock, the young attackers stole her office keys and took cash from a drawer in her desk.
In Western Australia, teachers proposed emergency buttons in classrooms after a 13-year-old girl threw a garbage bin at her male teacher and repeatedly punched him. The teenager was charged with “assaulting a public officer” and suspended from school for 10 days. An education department official said a decision would be made whether to expel the girl or send her to a departmental behaviour centre.
Another student faces suspension for filming the attack on her mobile phone. The film shows the teacher backing away as the girl screams, punches him and then throws a bin at him.
Anne Gisborne, president of the State School Teachers Union, commented: “In circumstances such as at that school, there might need to be phones in each classroom - or an emergency bell.”
Liz Constable, the education minister in Western Australia, said all options would be looked at. “But you have to be in the place where that panic button is when the incident occurs,” she said.
Australian teachers are legally allowed to restrain students if they put others in immediate danger, but Ms Gisborne said that was not an easy call to make. “One of the issues will be: has the teacher intervened in an appropriate way in the circumstance?” she added.
It is not just teachers who suffer attacks: violence in the playground is also on the rise. In Brisbane earlier this year, 12-year-old Elliot Fletcher was fatally stabbed in the chest by a student in the school toilets of St Patrick’s College. A 13-year-old was later charged with murder.
