We usually hear about violent attacks on teachers from unruly and unstable students. We rarely here of this phenomenon in reverse.
However, today we did. A teacher in a secondary school in Mansfield , UK has been charged with attempted murder of a student. When does illegal corporal punishment become attempted murder? When the victim ends up in a pool of blood at the science classroom door.
Sky reports :
Peter Harvey, 49, is accused of attacking Jack Waterhouse, 14, at All Saints’ Roman Catholic School in Mansfield on Wednesday morning.
Harvey will appear before the town’s magistrates tomorrow morning, Nottinghamshire Police said.
Jack was found by paramedics unconscious in a pool of blood at the entrance to a classroom in the school’s science block at 11am on Wednesday.
He is currently in a stable condition at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, where he is being treated for serious head injuries.
A police spokesman said: “A man has been charged with the attempted murder of a pupil at a Mansfield school.
“Peter Harvey, aged 49, of Rannoch Drive, Mansfield, is accused of the attempted murder of Jack Waterhouse, aged 14, at All Saints’ Roman Catholic School on Wednesday, July 8, 2009.
He will appear at Mansfield Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning.”
Point of interest,
In April 2009 , the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, released details of a survey of over 1,000 of its members which found that nearly one quarter of them had been on the receiving end of physical violence by a student.
In Wales, a 2009 survey found that two-fifths of teachers reported having been assaulted in the classroom. 49% had been threatened with assault.