PPTA voices concern after teacher censured for stopping boys banging heads into desks
NZ Herald 9 December 2017
Family First Comment: Ever wondered why NZ has shortage of teachers? Wonder no more.
Common sense has left the teaching profession.
A teacher who has been censured for stopping two boys banging each other’s heads against their desks says that in hindsight she should have left them to it.
The Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal has found that Wairarapa College teacher Lesley Davies committed “serious misconduct” when she put her hand on the head of one of the students in a Year 9 maths class to stop him banging the other student’s head on the desk.
“We find that the respondent’s decision to apply pressure to a student’s head in circumstances where he was pushing another student’s head to a desk is conduct which reflects adversely on her fitness to be a teacher and may bring the teaching profession into disrepute,” the tribunal said.
Post Primary Teachers Association president Jack Boyle expressed concern about the case, which comes less than a month after another teacher was censured for carrying a child to a school principal’s office after the boy was accused of hurting four classmates.
“On the face of it, one student banging another student’s head on a desk would seem to be causing harm, and stopping that with reasonable use of force would appear to be fine,” Boyle said.
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