Pupils bully teachers on social media
A GROWING number of pupils are bullying teachers online, experts warn.
In one case a student even set up a fake dating profile to target a female staff member.
Digital Awareness UK, a charity working to combat cyber-bullying in schools, said 30 per cent of the victims they support are now teachers targeted by children.
Many teachers do not realise their pupils know how to find them online, the charity warned.
Its co-founder Emma Robertson said online abuse of teachers is a ‘growing concern’ and that the charity – which was initially set up to run workshops for children – is increasingly being asked by schools to show teachers how to protect themselves online.
She told the Times Educational Supplement: ‘It’s a huge trend recently. It was something that was bit of a shock to us. A lot of the time teachers will just be really upset and will come to us for one-to-one advice.’
In one of the most shocking cases, a boy used photos of a man to create fake profiles on Facebook and dating app Tinder to flirt with his female teacher.
She sent messages back, thinking she was speaking to an adult, and he asked her out on a date. As she sat alone at a table, having been ‘stood up’, the boy secretly photographed her. The pictures were then shared widely around the school.
In another case, a pupil created a fake Facebook account for a female teacher, using images from Google to make it look genuine. Using the fake account, the pupil sent out friend requests to the teacher’s colleagues.
Those teachers, believing the requests to be genuine, accepted, granting the pupil full access to their accounts.
The pupil then trawled through Facebook to find compromising photos, including from parties and stag and hen dos, printed them off and posted them around the school.
Another teacher was filmed by students while bending over in a classroom and the video was uploaded on to YouTube with abusive comments about her appearance.
Miss Robertson said: ‘When it happens online it is so humiliating and so public, and sometimes so permanent, that it can be hugely distressing for those teachers who have been targeted.’
A recent survey from the NASUWT union found almost a third of teachers had suffered online harassment in the past year, with pupils the culprits in many cases. Chris Keates, the union’s general secretary, said this was ‘appalling’, adding: ‘Being a victim of online abuse can be a very traumatic experience, which can potentially ruin lives and careers.’
The survey also found even when abuse was reported no action was taken in 45 per cent of cases, and 38 per cent of teachers felt it was necessary to stop using personal social media accounts.
But Geoff Barton, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: ‘Schools take robust disciplinary action against any student responsible. Teaching is being made more difficult because teachers now have to be conscious of the danger of being targeted online.’
‘Can ruin lives and careers’