Staff in schools are facing increasingly complex challenges 鈥 and some of those challenges are now putting their safety at risk. When did violence and assault become an occupational hazard for teaching?
As someone who鈥檚 worked in education, frontline behaviour management, and youth violence prevention, I鈥檝e seen the pressure teachers and support staff are under. The rising levels of abuse from both students and parents, particularly in high-need communities, is creating an unspoken safeguarding crisis 鈥 not just for the pupils, but for the adults too.
Protecting staff requires more than policies.
But instead of relying solely on reactive strategies and punitive behaviour systems, I believe the solution lies deeper. If we want to keep our staff safe, we must take a wider, systemic look at the environments our students are coming from and what they鈥檙e carrying with them into school.
Safeguarding through a different lens
When we talk about safeguarding in schools, we usually focus on the students. That鈥檚 important 鈥 but it can鈥檛 come at the expense of the adults who are there to protect and support them. Physical assaults, verbal abuse, and threats toward staff are more than just 鈥渃hallenging behaviour鈥 鈥 they鈥檙e safeguarding concerns in their own right. They鈥檙e criminal offences.
Don鈥檛 get me wrong, I鈥檓 absolutely not advocating for the criminalisation of children, I am advocating for everybody, especially school leaders to understand the severity of the issue we have on our hands.
Rather than viewing these incidents in isolation, we need to ask: what鈥檚 driving this behaviour?
That鈥檚 where an ecological lens becomes essential.
Understanding the bigger picture
is a helpful framework for understanding why behaviour escalates in some students 鈥 and how it affects staff safety.
The theory outlines five interrelated systems that influence a child鈥檚 development:
- Microsystem: immediate relationships 鈥 family, peers, teachers.
- Mesosystem: interactions between different parts of the microsystem 鈥 eg home-school connection.
- Exosystem: wider influences 鈥 social services, parental employment.
- Macrosystem: cultural norms, political systems, poverty, racism.
- Chronosystem: time-based changes 鈥 eg loss, trauma, pandemic effects.
When staff are exposed to violent or abusive behaviour, it鈥檚 often because students are reacting to stressors in these outer layers. A child who has experienced community violence, neglect, instability at home, or systemic inequality may enter the classroom already in survival mode.
Safety doesn’t begin with discipline 鈥 it begins with understanding.
In that state, learning becomes difficult 鈥 and so does regulating emotion, managing conflict, or responding appropriately to adult authority. The consequence of which is students lashing out, giving seemingly unreasonable responses. My use of the word reasonable was specific because in the eyes of the law, reasonable is defined as proportionate and necessary. The behaviour being displayed is rarely ever proportionate or necessary when looking at the behaviour alone.
From crisis management to prevention
Working frontline in extremely dangerous environments, studying behaviour management, I鈥檝e learned that safety doesn’t begin with discipline 鈥 it begins with understanding.
If a child is escalating, we need to ask:
- What are they reacting to?
- What鈥檚 missing in their support network?
- How can we respond in a way that protects both them and the staff around them?
Creating safer schools does not mean tolerating dangerous behaviour. But it does mean building systems that address the causes rather than just the symptoms.
What schools and trusts can do
Protecting staff requires more than policies. It requires a culture of care that includes the workforce as much as the students. Here are a few approaches that align with both trauma-informed and ecological thinking:
1. Early intervention and relational practice
Invest in pastoral staff, mentors, and trauma-informed practitioners who can build strong relationships with students early 鈥 not just after a crisis. Proactive not reactive.
2. Clear boundaries with compassion
Staff deserve to work in environments where expectations are clear and consequences are consistent 鈥 but where those systems also allow for curiosity in relation to context when behaviour spirals.
3. Whole family and community engagement
Many schools are doing incredible work to improve home-school links. Where possible, support services should work with families, not just individuals, to address wider systemic needs. We need a multi-agency approach, remembering that the mesosystem is where all the components of the microsystem interlink. How do the teachers interact with the parents, how do the parents interact with support services, how do the support services interact with the teachers.
4. Post-incident support for staff
When a member of staff experiences aggression or abuse, it鈥檚 vital they鈥檙e given space to process and recover. Debriefs, supervision, counselling, and time off are not luxuries 鈥 they are part of effective safeguarding. These are not to be a tickbox exercise: In depth analysis of these events, hearing from the victims themselves and helping them move forward is the only way we can truly protect the emotional wellbeing of educators on the front line.
5. Leadership modelling
A culture of safety starts with leadership. School leaders must demonstrate a commitment to both relational behaviour strategies and staff wellbeing, modelling calm, considered responses to high-risk situations.
Long-term change requires systemic reflection
While individual strategies are important, we can鈥檛 ignore the bigger picture.
Systemic issues like underfunding, unmet mental health needs, and lack of youth provision all contribute to a school environment where staff are at risk. Supporting staff safety means advocating for change across education, health, and social care systems. It means pushing back against the normalisation of abuse as 鈥渏ust part of the job.鈥 It鈥檚 not.
Final thoughts
Staff should never have to choose between keeping themselves safe and supporting the young people in front of them. With an ecological approach, we don鈥檛 have to make that choice. We can build school environments where the needs of both students and staff are recognised, respected, and met.
A child who doesn鈥檛 feel embraced by the village, will burn it to the ground, to feel its warmth – African Proverb
Creating safer schools begins with empathy, systems thinking, and the courage to look beneath the surface.
Only then can we truly safeguard those who spend their days safeguarding others.
