PROSECUTE MALICIOUS PUPILS, TEACHERS URGE

UK Guardian, Matthew Taylor, education correspondent, April 1, 2005

Children who maliciously claim to have been assaulted or abused by a teacher should be removed from their school and prosecuted, union leaders said last night.

OFFICIAL FIGURES SHOW THAT FEWER THAN ONE IN 200 ALLEGATIONS MADE BY CHILDREN END WITH TEACHERS BEING CONVICTED OF AN OFFENCE. But yesterday delegates at the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers conference in Brighton heard how false claims were putting huge pressure on teachers and their families.

"THERE IS REAL CONCERN ABOUT FALSE ALLEGATIONS," SAID CHRIS KEATES, THE UNION'S GENERAL SECRETARY. "IT IS BECOMING AS BIG AN ISSUE WITH TEACHERS AS THE ISSUE OF PUPIL INDISCIPLINE."

Delegates said tougher measures were needed after it emerged that youngsters, in search of compensation, were being encouraged by unscrupulous legal firms to make malicious claims.

Sarah-Jane Millington, a teacher from Accrington, Lancashire, said SOLICITORS HAD PUT UP NOTICES IN PRISONS AND WERE ADVERTISING IN LOCAL NEWSPAPERS ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO MAKE CLAIMS AGAINST FORMER TEACHERS. "I think it's absolutely disgusting - even worse than ambulance chasing," she said.

Ms Millington, a secondary school history teacher, said a colleague had faced repeated disciplinary hearings after being accused of throwing a pupil down a manhole.

After a lengthy investigation it became clear that the member of staff had been in a supermarket at the time of the assault, which had been carried out by another pupil.

Another teacher, Bryan Cook from Wolverhampton, said he had seen a sixfold increase in malicious claims in his region in the weeks after a storyline in Coronation Street that showed Ken Barlow hitting a pupil when working as a supply teacher.

The union passed a motion that demanded an "obligation" on police to "consider a criminal sanction" against anyone who made false allegations.

Speaking at the conference, Tim Collins, the shadow education secretary, said a Tory government would introduce a teacher protection bill. But he backtracked on an announcement earlier this week that promised a Conservative government would bring in a law making assaulting a teacher an aggravated offence, on a par with attacking a police officer.

Yesterday Mr Collins said the Tories were only "examining the possibility" of such a law. He admitted the original press release had gone too far.