Teacher Loses Appeal for Headlocking Student in Self Defence; is Consequently Fired.

[lawrawrrr]

End of the day, teachers are there to teach; if you're trying to stop a child being violent is the best way to do that by acting violently back? No.

I've been in a situation where someone's gone to attack me before, and been trained for it (special needs though, bit different), step away and alert someone else. Mainly for the teachers' own protection. A child is, at the end of the day, a child, and will not go on endlessly punching someone in authority, no matter how much they protest to hate them.

Whilst teachers should not 'have to deal' with that, neither should social workers, carers, all those sorts of careers, but it's a risk you take. Less so with teaching, but like I said earlier, there's nearly always a record of those 'bad' children and the riskier schools, and 9 times out of 10 it's the teacher's choice to work there.


on phone xx

[MKR&*42]

You know Laura this might be hard to grasp the concept of, but I don't actually think the student ever intended to move/leave the room:

Mr Krix to "f*** off" several times - before punching him when he stood close to the student and refused to move.

So no, telling him to "go to a corner" wouldn't have worked, getting reinforcement who wouldn't be allowed to touch him (face it I doubt the police would be called until it escalated into a full blown beating) wouldn't have worked and just "moving away" when all the student has to do is move back towards him, wouldn't have worked.

I'm also 99% positive in the U.K. this would have been allowed based on this - https://www.gov.uk/government/public...rce-in-schools. To give you a brief overview of how the teacher actually did no wrong:

Force is usually used either to control or restrain.

Restraint means to hold back physically or to bring a pupil under control

Staff should always try to avoid acting in a way that might cause injury, but in extreme cases it may not always be possible to avoid injuring the pupil.

I'm actually sure the pupil wasn't injured anyway and even if he was minorly, it still would have counted as "reasonable" as the aim was to restrain the pupil.

It even says that a no contact policy is a ridiculous idea;

Schools should not have a ‘no contact’ policy. There is a real risk that such a policy might place a member of staff in breach of their duty of care towards a pupil, or prevent them taking action needed to prevent a pupil causing harm.

And further on under "unacceptable techniques", a headlock isn't mentioned.

Oh and yes schools can use reasonable force to

prevent a pupil from attacking a member of staff.

[GommeInc]

I'm also 99% positive in the U.K. this would have been allowed based on this - https://www.gov.uk/government/public...rce-in-schools

It's strange Australia doesn't seem to have these sorts of publications. There's Corporal Punishment: Key Issues, a document about the use of reasonable force for families, but not teachers, and that publication is from 2010 and may be out of date. This webite suggests that the teacher can only use reasonable force when in the company of other adults, which may explain why he should have called in reinforcements.

It suggests that Australia isn't as lenient as us, which makes a change

EDIT: This is dated January 2013 and suggests teachers can use reasonable force, which is further defined as when a pupil attacks a teacher. It seems Australia should have allowed it :/ It's strange there doesn't appear to be an official source like we have.

[Daltron]

All the policies for NSW where this took place can be found ere:

https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/policiesi...?level=Schools

Except I can't find the specific policy about making physical contact with students. All linked by Gomme are for different states such as QLD and WA.