Teachers going on strike over pupils acting like ‘feral cats'

Times

25-05-2025

For ten years, Jorge Pashler loved being a science teacher at a comprehensive school in a deprived suburb of Ipswich not far from where he grew up.
But the Cambridge University graduate is reluctantly leaving Westbourne Academy for another school in July following persistent abusive and disruptive behaviour from pupils.
'You get quite a few classes where the respectful relationship that existed in the past has broken down. As much as you disliked your teacher, you would still call them Sir and you wouldn't swear at them,' Pashler, 32, said. 'You feel like you put a lot of effort in and there are some amazing kids here, but you go home and you feel a bit rubbish. I've had enough of going home and feeling sad.'
Last week, he and 50 colleagues at Westbourne Academy took the unusual step of going on strike over pupils' poor behaviour, which included swearing at teachers, throwing chairs, posting offensive videos of staff on social media, making homophobic and sexist comments, and disrupting lessons.
On Monday teachers at a school in Liverpool also started strike action because of 'dangerous pupil behaviour'. In January, teachers at a school in Scotland threatened to walk out, saying they regularly faced swearing and violence. Staff at a school in Wales went on strike for two days last October.
A survey of 5,800 teachers across the country last month found that more than 80 per cent say pupil behaviour has worsened in the past year. Twenty per cent have been hit or punched by pupils and 25 per cent suffer verbal abuse several times a week, the union NASUWT found.
The problems at Westbourne Academy, a co-educational secondary school, first emerged two years ago.
It has 1,063 pupils, a third of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and its GCSE pass rate for English and maths was 54 per cent in 2023, lower than the national average of 65 per cent.
The flat-roofed, red-brick school is surrounded by small, semi-detached houses in the residential area of Whitehouse, one of the most disadvantaged parts of Ipswich, where Year 6 obesity, school exclusions, depression and in-work poverty are prevalent, according to the 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation. In Ipswich, lone-parent households and unemployment are higher than the national average.
Every day, 40 pupils across all year groups run around the grounds, skipping lessons, banging on doors and dragging other children out of classrooms.
'They are just wandering around like feral cats and disrupting everyone else's learning,' Katherine Moore, a union representative from NASUWT, said outside the Westbourne Academy picket line on Wednesday.
'I was talking to a [teaching assistant] and there was some personal abuse about the colour of her hair, other [students] were being derogatory about LGBT people,' added Moore, who visited the school last Friday to plan for the strike and was greeted with pupils screaming in the corridor. 'The teachers told me that happens every day,' she said.
The situation has deteriorated over the past 18 months, forcing unions to open talks with executives at the Academy Transformation Trust, which runs the school and 21 others across the country.
After improvements failed to materialise, NASUWT and the National Education Union (NEU) announced strike action in April. Fifty of about 70 staff members were on strike for two days last week, according to the unions, forcing classes to be cancelled for students in Year 7, 8 and 9. Senior pupils still attended to sit exams.
Further strike action has been paused after the Academy Transformation Trust appointed a new vice-principal and promised new measures, including pastoral care, to tackle troublesome students.
'I love being a teacher and I love this place. I didn't want to [strike],' said Helen Feakes, 52, who has taught science at Westbourne Academy for 15 years.
But the problems, including regular verbal abuse, left her with no choice. Last week, students posted offensive videos on TikTok of Feakes and other teachers, criticising their appearance.
Feakes and Pashler believe mobile phones and social media are partly to blame for the breakdown in behaviour. 'You ask [the students] what they are doing tonight and they say 'scroll TikTok',' Pashler said. 'You do see a rise in sexism and over the past ten years words that were buried in the past have started to come back again.
'Kids weren't really homophobic but that's coming up a lot now. It's bizarre because when I first joined it felt like the opposite, everyone was defending that, but now it has tribalised out.'
While Pashler regularly stops classes to challenge pupils on their offensive comments, he faces an uphill battle. 'I don't think what we do for an hour a day, over a week, can change what people experience five hours a night on TikTok,' he said.
Covid lockdowns and poverty are two other factors behind the crisis, Pashler said. During a recent school trip camping in Scotland, he arranged for the students to go to Pizza Express. It was the first time the majority of them had been to a restaurant or a motorway service station.
'There's not really those opportunities, so the kids do not leave home. They do not see that there's a world outside the streets of Ipswich,' Pashler said.
In Merseyside, teachers at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) School were also on strike last week. Some pupils have been verbally and physically aggressive, including shoving pregnant members of staff, while misogynistic and homophobic remarks are common.
The school has 595 pupils, a third of whom come from disadvantaged homes. It was set up by Sir Paul McCartney as a performing arts school in 1996 and more recently has been expanded into a primary and secondary school, both in the city centre.
Bryan McConnell, 38, a union rep who is assisting the LIPA teachers in their dispute, said that online content — from social media to podcasts and Andrew Tate videos — had 'desensitised' young teenagers, especially boys, to offensive views. 'It's become more acceptable for younger age groups to have those views,' McConnell said.
McConnell, a physics teacher at another school in Merseyside, said the wider collapse of trust in society was fuelling problems at schools across the country.
'Since Covid and the rise of conspiracy theories, that respect and listening to authority seems to have diminished massively,' he said. 'Kids are copying what they see from their parents and if those parents have lost respect for society — whether it is the government or the police — then that feeds into what the kids think.'
McConnell said some schools had reported a rise in aggressive behaviour from parents at the school gates, with some having to enforce antisocial behaviour orders. 'We have completely lost, from a teaching point of view, that respect that we used to have from parents,' he added.
Others clearly feel the same. Teachers at the 1,000-pupil Ysgol Nantgwyn in Tonypandy, south Wales, walked out for two days last October. And in January staff at Kirkintilloch High School in East Dunbartonshire pledged to do the same, claiming that pupils faced 'no consequences' for abuse and violent behaviour.
Back in Ipswich, parents are widely supportive of the teachers' decision to strike, although some have expressed frustration at how a minority of pupils have been able to affect the education of the majority of well-behaved children.
For Pashler, the decision to leave Westbourne Academy is bittersweet. 'I love being a teacher, it's just not nice at the moment,' he said.
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A spokeswoman for the Academy Transformation Trust said: 'We take the wellbeing of our staff very seriously, and we fully support their desire to teach in disruption-free classrooms. The majority of pupils at Westbourne behave well, are respectful and want to learn. But we acknowledge there is a small but significant minority whose behaviour does not yet meet our high expectations. We are actively addressing this.'
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: 'As part of our Plan for Change, we are committed to turning the tide on poor behaviour, breaking down barriers to opportunity and ensuring every child can achieve and thrive.
'Our new attendance and behaviour hubs will directly target the schools with the highest need as well as providing wider support for schools in all corners of the country, and an additional 900,000 pupils will have access to support from mental health support teams by April 2026.
'But we know there is more to do and are looking closely at how we can go further to support teachers and drive high and rising school standards for all our children.'