“Too many teachers” are victims of unacceptable levels of verbal and physical abuse in the classroom and “threats and taunts” on social media from students, their representatives have warned today.

The NASUWT teaching union has found that schools are failing to support teachers or take action where staff report incidents of abuse from students.

More than one in 20 teachers (6 per cent) surveyed by the union said they had been subjected to physical violence by pupils in the past year. And one in 10 said they had received threats of physical violence from students, while nearly four in 10 (38 per cent) had been subjected to verbal abuse from those they teach.

Only around four in ten (42 per cent) of those teachers who said they had faced any kind of abuse from a student said their school dealt with it in a satisfactory manner.

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NASUWT general secretary Patrick Roach said: “The NASUWT is unequivocal that no teacher should be expected to put up with any form of verbal or physical abuse, whether in the classroom or online.

‘No teacher should be expected to put up with verbal or physical abuse’

“The union is continuing to take steps, up to and including industrial action and refusal-to-teach ballots, where members report to us that serious pupil indiscipline or abuse is going unchallenged by their school.

“Our action is securing successes, but members should not be forced to seek our protection in order to be able to go to work in safety.

“Improved training for school leaders and a whole-school approach to promoting positive behaviour, coupled with a consistent and robust approach to dealing with incidents of verbal and physical abuse against staff, should be embedded in every school.

“Schools have a duty of care to their staff and it is about time that all schools took that responsibility seriously.”

Today at the NAUWT’s national conference, 99 per cent of delegates backed a motion calling for better support for teachers when dealing with unacceptable behaviour.

National executive member Wendy Exton, who moved the motion, said there was a need to “reclaim our classrooms”.

“Year on year, we are seeing a deterioration in behaviour in our schools,” she said. Problems with drugs, knives and county lines crime were “spilling over into the classroom”, she added.

Another NASUWT national executive member, Rosemary Carabine, said: “Employers that fail to take seriously the problem of unacceptable pupil or student behaviour and who claim that such behaviour is part of the job. …It’s like it’s the teacher’s problem when they cannot deal with unacceptable behaviour.”

The NASUWT executive will now publish further guidance on unacceptable behaviour, including legal entitlements and remedies, and it will lobby to ensure teachers and school leaders receive appropriate training on behaviour management issues, as well as continuing to support members “using all appropriate means”.

The statistics are taken from the NASUWT’s Big Question Survey of members across the UK, which received 4,739 responses between 21 February and 29 March.