Teachers Suffer Cyber-bullying From Parents and Pupils

Teachers Suffer Cyber-bullying From Parents and Pupils: Figures from a recent survey carried out by the NASUWT union suggest that teachers are increasingly seeing negative comments posted about them on social media sites and online forums. The Union said that teachers have been accused of rape and paedophilia, suffered racist and sexual abuse, and in extreme cases have received death threats from pupils and parents. A large proportion of the comments were seen on Facebook (77%), with other sites including Twitter (6%), Myspace (1%) and ratemyteachers.com (21%). {Tweet this}

Teachers Suffer Cyber-bullying From Parents and Pupils - Education Market Research - VoicED Education Community

Teachers Suffer Cyber-bullying From Parents and Pupils Says NASUWT Education Market Research

Among these, almost two thirds (64%) said that the comments had been made by pupils, more than a quarter (27%) said that they had been posted by parents and the rest said that these had been made by both pupils and parents.

Of those teachers who did receive abuse online from pupils, 47% received insulting comments, whilst half had a comment made about their performance as a teacher. There was a similar picture where parents were involved – with 57% receiving insulting comments and more than three fifths (63%) receiving comments related to their performance as an educator.

The majority of those surveyed did not tell their employer or the police about the abuse (58%) – with nearly two thirds (64%) stating that this was due to the perception that little or nothing could done to help the situation. A fifth (21%) did not think the report would be taken seriously, a tenth (9%) were too embarrassed and 6% had reported prior attacks and had received no support or the incident had not been dealt with. {Tweet this}

Of teachers who did report about to school management, two fifths (40%) said no action was taken against pupils and half (55%) said no action was taken against their parents. Where abuse was reported to the police, more than three-quarters (77%) said neither pupils nor parents received any form of reprimand.

The survey, which questioned more than 7,500 teachers, shows that just over three fifths (61%) of the pupils posting the comments had been aged between fourteen and sixteen years old, with a third (35%) saying these youngsters were between eleven and fourteen.

Around a fifth (21%) said that the youngsters responsible were sixteen to nineteen years old, while three per cent said that they were between seven and eleven.

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