“You are a paedo and your daughter is a whore” – this comment is one example of the disgusting and abusive messages being sent to thousands of teachers by pupils and parents using social media.
Research involving 7,500 teachers has discovered that more than a fifth have been harassed, abused or insulted via social media.
The majority of the abuse is from pupils (64 per cent), but parents are also responsible for almost a third of the comments posted (27 per cent). What’s more, one in 10 of the comments reported in the study were made jointly by parents and pupils.
Other examples of posts include death threats and threats of physical violence, racist and sexist abuse, as well as comments about teachers’ appearance, competence and sexuality. In one case, a bogus Facebook account was set up in a teacher’s name with the post: “I will rape every year 8 pupil who comes to the school.”
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