Teachers who are sexually assaulted in schools must be let take leave, ASTI official says

The Department of Education must review its leave system for teachers attacked in schools to include specifically the victims of sexual assault, a leading figure in the ASTI has urged.

ASTI deputy general secretary Diarmaid de Paor said one of the issues that was of growing concern to teachers was the need for them to be protected from sexual assault as well as from physical assault, verbal abuse and online abuse.

He told a press briefing ahead of ASTI’s annual conference in Cork next week that one of the motions at the conference would be seeking that the Department of Education review its policies to protect teachers in “light of the continuing assault of teachers physically, verbally and online”.

He said that one of the anomalies in the current system and one where the State was out of line with trends in Europe was that Irish teachers and others in the public service can only avail of assault leave – as distinct from sick leave – if they are physically assaulted.

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“There is a scheme for assault leave for teachers [but] the Department of Education definition [of assault leave] is extremely narrow – you actually have to show the physical scars of the assault, you have to have a broken leg or a broken jaw,” he said.

“We have teachers who have been sexually assaulted by students and who are seriously traumatised and there is no provision in the assault leave [scheme] for that, they have to take their ordinary sick leave for that, and this is out of line with European trends.

“We suspect within the next year or two there will be a European directive on it and they will have to change, but why on earth would you wait until Europe tells you to look after, normally but not all exclusively, young women teachers who were sexually assaulted?”

‘Shameful’

He said that it was “shameful” that the current Department of Education system of assault leave would ignore or exclude the victims of sexual assault and the huge psychological trauma that they can often suffer resulting from such an assault by a student.

Mr de Paor also highlighted the issue of online abuse of teachers and he said that this was recently discussed at a meeting of ASTI’s principals’ and deputy principals’ advisory group, where everyone present had a story about some such abuse occurring in their school.

“Every single person there was able to talk about teachers in their schools being abused online, and the abuse ranged from relatively minor stuff to serious homophobic and racist abuse and accusations of paedophilia and it’s very hard to deal with these things.

“When this motion from [the] Dublin North-West [ASTI branch] on the need for the Department of Education to review its policies is dealt with at conference, I expect there will be people telling stories from their schools, some of which are quite shocking,” he said.

Mr de Paor said the issue of teachers being subjected to physical, sexual or verbal assault or online abuse all fed into a picture emerging from an ASTI survey that wellbeing and mental health was a growing concern for teachers.

He pointed out that the online survey, conducted by Red C, found that more than one-third of 2,565 respondents – some 35 per cent – reported that individual staff members had been or were on sick leave due to stress and mental health issues.