TEACHER WINS £250K FOR FALLING OFF DESK
A TEACHER has been awarded £250,000 for a fall at school.
The huge payout was part of £20million handed out in taxpayer-funded compensation to teachers
last year. It came after the woman lost her balance as she tried to pin some artwork to the classroom wall.
She was using a chair and table to try to reach the display, according to the National Union of Teachers.
Other payouts include £85,000 for a 55-year-old teacher who fell on black ice and £60,000 for a 53-year-old who slipped on some spilled food.
A teacher on a school trip was awarded £31,000 after falling in a car park, while compensation of £19,907 was paid to another who suffered concussion after a shelf came down on their head.
The level of compensation payments has soared over the past 12 months, union figures show.
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers alone secured more than £16million for its members.
But critics say the compensation culture has got out of hand, pointing out that £250,000 would pay the basic salaries of six qualified teachers.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “This is more proof that the teaching unions care only for teachers at the expense of pupils.
Salary
“In the real world, being paid for doing your job is called a salary, and most of us don’t get quarter of a million extra thanks to union bullying.
“This is all taxpayers’ money that now cannot be spent on helping schoolchildren succeed and must stop.
“Either local authorities are failing to live up to the standard required of them by law or they are giving in too easily to compensation claims. Both scenarios leaving hard-pressed taxpayers to pick up the bill.”
Christopher McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, claimed councils were being bullied into coughing up.
He said: “Councils are being bullied by a health and safety brigade of money-grabbing lawyers. They need to contest claims that result from teacher doziness and the Government should legislate against opportunist claims against schools and councils.”
The teacher who fell off her desk suffered a fracture in her foot which then aggravated the symptoms of her fibromyalgia and depression.
The injuries prevented her from working and her contract was terminated. A case was brought against the local authority in eastern England for
failing to provide proper equipment. A teacher from the Midlands also received £250,000 after being subjected to violence by pupils over four years.
The money was awarded because the local authority failed to manage the pupils’ behaviour effectively or carry out a formal risk assessment.
This led to the teacher’s “steadily worsening health and eventual breakdown”, the NUT said. A third case
involved an academy worker in the North-west who suffered “a prolonged assault by a female teenage student, who flew into a rage when the member asked her to stop chewing gum before lessons”.
She suffered blows to the stomach and bruises to her hand, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and was awarded £47,837.
But other victims of violence have
not been so lucky. One unnamed teacher in Scotland was paid just £12,000 after a brutal attack which left him with horrific knee injuries.
In London, the NASUWT fought a discrimination case involving a 26-year-old trainee who the union said was “forced out” after becoming pregnant. She was awarded £35,000.
MOST people would accept that when someone has an accident through no fault of their own that results in the loss of their career and livelihood, they deserve something to make up for it. But almost a quarter of a million pounds for a teacher who put a chair on a table, stood on it and slipped? For a start that is not the most stable basis from which to put up a class display: the children in the class the woman was teaching would have been able to work out the level of risk that was involved.
And that is the crux of it: surely the teacher should accept that she was at least to some extent at fault herself? Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt recently said we need a learning culture and not a blame culture and although he was talking about the health service, surely the same applies here. The teacher was foolish and has been awarded a huge sum in recompense.
This is one of the many examples today of a compensation culture that has got completely out of control. Driven by greedy “no win no fee” lawyers, people who have suffered almost any accident at all are encouraged to sue.
They should beware. Quite a number of people who went away on holiday and put in false claims for food poisoning have found themselves the subject of court action.
No one is suggesting that this particular teacher exaggerated her injuries but future claimants may pause for second thought.