Stunning Student Teacher Violence Report
The stunning student teacher violence increases may affect Workers Comp in the future. The National Center for Education Statistics recently published a study – Indicators of School Crime and Safety – 2013.
One of the more shocking statistics pulled from the study was student-on-teacher violence increased by 34.5% from the previous year. The study results came from a survey given to teachers every year. Over 5% of the teachers reported physical violence perpetrated by a student.
What does Salt Lake City Utah have to do with the study? There were more than 209,800 attacks by students in the 2011 – 2012 school year. That number actually exceeds the population of Salt Lake City Utah.
Violent attacks by students often result in the teacher filing a Workers Comp claim. States such as North Carolina have a Teacher Violence Act that actually pays the teacher for up to one year of full salary + benefits in these cases. Many teachers cannot return to a classroom after suffering a violent attack by a student. Moving the teacher to a nearby school system has worked in certain cases.
The post violence act benefits would then have to be picked up by the Workers Compensation carrier if needed. Having worked with many school systems nationwide, the return to work situation can become very complicated in such cases.
I had attempted to compare the student teacher violence statistics with the BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics injury and illness numbers.
The BLS had these numbers (number of injuries per 100 secondary education workers):
- 2009 .7
- 2010 .7
- 2011 .7
- 2012 .4
There was no proper way to assess how many teachers that reported acts of violence by students actually filed Workers Comp claims and did not return to work.
The violence mentioned in this article does not refer to student-teachers. All statistics mentioned are students perpetrating violence on teachers.
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