Violent classrooms: Statistics released by the teachers’ union

School staff are being hit more often, students are fighting more often, and police are increasingly being called to school grounds, according to data compiled and released this week. Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association.

The union counted 4,052 violent or aggressive incidents reported to school board administrators or the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary; This works out to an average of 22 incidents in schools across the state each school day.

This is the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person learning in 2020.

“It’s only a matter of time before something more significant happens,” union president Trent Langdon said. “We have had situations in this state in recent years where guns have been found on school property.”

“As president of this association, my concern is that one of my members or a student will be seriously injured or worse in the coming days and years.”

NLTA prepared its report by requesting data from the province’s English school district, the RCMP and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.

By nearly every metric in the report—fighting, strangulation, threats, and harassment—violence has gotten worse over the past three school years.

St. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, which patrols the St. John’s, Corner Brook and Labrador West region, was called to schools 178 times in the 2023-2024 school year, compared to 111 calls the previous year.

“We’re seeing this more broadly in schools,” said Jerry Earle, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Public and Private Employees Association. His union represents student assistants who work one-on-one with students who have learning disabilities or certain physical or cognitive needs.

“Being around, and sometimes directly involved in, a (violent) workplace causes serious harm,” he said. “The work our students do to help our exceptional children become a part of our schools is challenging enough. It’s stressful enough.”

Teachers in Ontario found much the same thing; Over the summer, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation released the results of a school violence survey indicating that school violence was on the rise in that province.

According to results from the survey, nearly 30 percent of union members, including the majority of teaching assistants, child and youth workers and early childhood educators, reported being personally targeted by physical force.

“We shouldn’t normalize this,” said Karen Littlewood, president of the teachers’ federation.

“I go to the Canada Post Office and it says ‘violence (and) harassment will not be tolerated.’ That’s in the doctor’s office. It’s available in stores. “We cannot say this in education.”

Littlewood disagrees that the COVID-19 pandemic had a starting point; He says problems with school staffing and resources go back years and are the root cause of violence in schools.

“I think we need to start by addressing students’ mental health issues, but we need to do this when they start school. “When you have a 17-year-old kid and something happens, we can’t say, ‘Oh, we should have done something.'”

Many of their members don’t even bother reporting violent incidents, he said, because class sizes are still high, the paperwork is daunting, and they don’t think much will change.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Education officials brought more school administrators and guidance counselors into the school system and created new positions, including student services teaching and learning assistant.

“To date, feedback on these newly appointed positions has been positive and will inform future expansion of the position,” Secretary of Education Krista Lynn Howell said in a statement.

“The Department of Education’s approach to preventing violence in schools focuses heavily on social emotional learning and self-regulation to limit or eliminate impulsive responses.”

Earle says schools in Newfoundland and Labrador are not inherently violent, but the trend is alarming and it’s time to intervene.

“We have to think about our children and we have to think about all the people who work in our education system, and I think that’s something we have to sit at the table and turn our attention to and understand why this is happening.”