TEACHERS have spoken out against an epidemic of classroom violence revealed in new figures yesterday.

An average of eight physical and verbal attacks on teachers per day take place in Wales alone, the stats showed.

The shocking figures, obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests by National Union of Teachers (NUT) Cymru, show 4,711 incidents of abuse directed at primary and secondary school staff in the past three years.

And the full number of incidents is likely to be higher because five local authorities failed to respond, while others gave only partial figures.

Across Britain there was a 50 per cent rise in classroom incidents recorded by the police since 2014, according to another set of FOI requests.

Police have been called to schools more than 700 times in the past three years to confiscate weapons from kids: figures from 28 local forces show 192 weapons were taken at schools in 2014, 221 in 2015 and 283 last year. Most were knives, but some guns were confiscated and Lancashire police even confiscated a Taser from one child, according to the Sun newspaper.

NUT Cymru secretary David Evans said: “Clearly any incidents of physical or verbal assault by pupils towards teachers or any members of the school staff are unacceptable.

“No teacher should feel unsafe or threatened within their working environment. That impacts on the individual teachers and of course their ability to deliver high-quality education to the rest of the class.

“A disruption in class, or in the school, due to physical or verbal assault by a pupil is not conducive to a positive education environment.”

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