But a strategy adopted widely in the caring professions could help them cope. Preventing Face-to-Face Violence: Dealing with Anger and Aggression at Work has only been taken up by a few education authorities, but is already getting a favourable response.

Dr Will Davies, director of the Association for Psychological Therapies and co-founder of the programme, has been teaching it to psychiatric nurses, social workers and probation officers for 10 years, and recently held his first open training course for teachers.

PFFV focuses on what triggers aggressive behaviour and psychological techniques which can help prevent it. Dr Davies, who has 10 years’ experience as a prison psychologist, has drawn up a programme that details the behaviour, attitudes and body language that can escalate into violence as well as the office design, language and behaviour that can help defuse it.

The training also includes advice on escape tactics and psychological recovery if an incident occurs.

Dr Davies would like more schools to use PFFV. “It highlights what we should be doing anyway, but especially when dealing with violent people. It focuses on getting people to consider what they would do in these situations. People can do the most bizarre things in the heat of the moment. If they had been on the course they would be very clear about the difference between protecting and defending and turning into an aggressor themselves.”

Hampshire has trained many of its special school staff in PFFV as part of a strategy for managing behaviour, while Birmingham has trained around 150 teachers and Kent has used APT’s distance-learning materials.

Lionel Gent, head of The Polygon School in Southampton, which caters for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties, says staff found PFFV useful. As a result of the training he reorganised his office, moving the desk and putting comfortable chairs in a circle so that potentially angry parents or students would feel less intimidated.

“It has diffused potentially difficult situations to some extent if I have sat at the same level and people can see that it is more of an equal relationship, ” said Mr Gent.

“It has also been useful to learn that we don’t have to try to keep calm. If you don’t react at all when someone gets stroppy that can make them even angrier. You have to show a bit of emotion yourself so they can see you have responded to their anger. ” Hampshire has used PFFV in conjunction with Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention (SCIP), an American programme based on the work of Gary La Vigna. It is currently taught to staff in schools catering for pupils with learning difficulties or emotional and behavioural problems as well as to those working in pupil referral units. It aims to give children alternative ways of communicating and of managing their aggression. It also trains teachers in non-punitive methods of physical restraint.

Educational psychologist Liz Herrick, one of Hampshire’s four SCIP trainers, says this aspect has been welcomed by teachers. “The situation has always been foggy in the area of physical restraint in schools. The training gives people the right techniques for taking control in situations where someone’s safety is at risk, but without hurting or endangering the child. Teachers have felt relieved and supported by it.”

Andrew Seber, Hampshire’s deputy county education officer, says both SCIP and PFFV training have given staff confidence. “This is part of an overall Hampshire policy and philosophy that recognises that there have always been behaviour problems in schools and that there are always going to be.

“It has been an expensive policy but a very sound investment. We don’t have a big problem in Hampshire, but that’s the way we like to keep it.”