London, United Kingdom – Nearly one in five teachers in England says they have been hit by a pupil in the past year, a poll revealed Thursday, as schools grapple with a post-pandemic slide in behaviour.
The findings come after education chief Amanda Spielman last year blamed a national increase in disruptive classroom behaviour on the loss of “socialisation” caused by Covid lockdowns. The outgoing head of the UK’s school inspection agency Ofsted said the problem would take years to resolve and was taking up “disproportionate” amounts of headteachers’ time.
The poll of around 9,000 staff in February and March, carried out by the BBC using the Teacher Tapp survey tool, also found that 30 percent of teachers said they had seen pupils fighting in the previous week. Fifteen percent of teachers working with pupils aged 11-18 said they had experienced sexual harassment from…
