Patrick Nash, Chief Executive of Teacher Support Network, talks about violence and indiscipline on Teachers TV Pupil behaviour formed the focus of a Teachers TV debate on Monday this week when Patrick Nash joined an audience of experts in the TV channel’s studios to debate the problem facing teachers.

Discussing the emotional impact on teachers, Patrick highlighted the 45% increase in the number of calls to Teacher Support Line from teachers who have been abused or assaulted.

The debate, chaired by Jonathon Dimbleby, came at the same time as Teachers TV launched the results of its survey which found 22 per cent of respondents said up to 15 per cent of their teaching time has been disrupted by discipline problems.

Teachers from 500 schools who took part in the survey called for tougher measures to tackle the problems, ranging from greater parental involvement and punishment to a zero tolerance approach.

With the Government taskforce on school discipline due to report to Ministers later this month, the National Association of Head Teachers, has also issued “a warning of the consequences of violent and abusive behaviour”.

The association has sent round posters to 30,000 members in schools, headed ‘Welcome to Our Caring School’, and outlining a zero tolerance approach to abuse a promising to remove aggressive pupils and parents from school premises.

Teacher Support Network handles some 17,000 calls to its Teacher Support Line each year and in the last year, the charity received 850 calls about pupil behaviour and classroom indiscipline. Teacher Support Network also received 1,960 requests for online fact sheets about handling pupil aggression.

Teacher Support Network also carried out research on violence and abuse in schools earlier this year, which showed that 84 per cent of teachers have been verbally abused, 29 per cent have been physically assaulted and 38 per cent have had their property vandalised. In 63 per cent of cases, respondents said that pupil aggression and unruliness would force them to consider leaving the profession.

 Alex, a 29-year-old secondary school teacher from the South of England says that the biggest challenge he faces at work is pupil indiscipline. He says: “Indiscipline takes many forms. I have incidents when pupils refuse to stop chatting to their friends when I’m trying to teach. Some pupils play fight and often shout or scream at each other and sometimes pupils swear in the lesson too. A few have sworn at me but this can result in suspension so it is rare.

"Some pupils just walk out of the lesson. Others can even walk in and out several times. I cannot physically stop the pupils doing this so I can only call for a manager to come and remove the pupil from the classroom. The problem is that in the five minutes it takes for the pupil to be removed, it causes yet more disruption to the lesson.

"My main frustration is that sometimes the lesson I have planned will not even go past a starter activity because I will be trying to deal with indiscipline".

Teacher Support Network strongly believes that teachers cannot work in isolation – they are there to teach, not to control indiscipline and bad behaviour. Schools must implement codes of conduct whereby students understand the consequences of their aggressive behaviour or indiscipline.