TEACHERS at a Coventry primary school are refusing to teach a seven-year-old boy after the head’s decision to expel him for violent behaviour was overturned by an appeal panel.
Staff at the 550-pupil Frederick Bird school voted last month to take industrial action over the pupil, who has a history of violence and who has made malicious allegations against a member of staff.
The boy is being taught at a neighbouring school while council officials attempt to resolve the dispute.
The city council said it had “identified a range of options, which have been offered to the parents and are the subject of continuing discussions with their legal representatives” but would not give further details.
Bob Johnson of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, which represents teachers at the school, said staff would refuse to accept an instruction to teach the pupil because it was “unreasonable.”
“Some of the decisions appeals panels reach are verging on the bizarre,” he added.
The Coventry case is one of three involving violent pupils on which members of the NASUWT have recently balloted over industrial action. So far this year, 40 disputes concerning violent or disruptive pupils have been taken up by the union’s national executive. Last year there were 77, of which 61 went to a ballot.
The union this week praised the Education Secretary’s intervention in the Glyn case as “a welcome development” and called for fast-track legislation to scrap independent appeal panels.
“The fact that she (Estelle Morris) is powerless to overturn the decision, where it is clearly perverse, highlights the need to reconsider urgently the continuation of the appeal panel procedure,” Chris Keates, NASUWT deputy general secretary, said.
At John Paul II Roman Catholic school in the London borough of Wandsworth, a year 9 girl is being taught separately after staff refused to teach her.
An independent appeal panel decided an assault by the teenager, in which two members of staff were scratched, pushed and punched, was not serious enough to warrant expulsion.
The case was raised at this month’s Tory party conference by Malcolm Grimston, cabinet member for education in Wandsworth, and a governor at John Paul II RC school.
Speaking at a fringe meeting, he said the girl had punched and scratched a teacher and been excluded by the head. Governors had approved her expulsion, and the council had given “100 per cent support” to the expulsion.
But the appeal panel noted that the teachers had not been seriously injured and reinstated the pupil.
