Love your receiptsShe stole a scalpel?
What happens there is that the teacher absolutely freaks out. They count and recount. They go through the class list. They check the locked risk items procedure. They try to stop their heart bursting from terror and panic. And then they have to tell their line manager/SLT, knowing that this is very possibly the end of their teaching career. Every child who is known to be a little explosive is looked at in terms of whether they had access to them. The teacher probably goes home and doesn't sleep, tortured by what is going to happen to them and what might happen to another child or a member of staff. Everybody's on edge, any disagreements on site are jumped on because nobody knows if they're going to end up with a kid or colleague having her face or neck slashed or stabbed in the heart/leg/brachial artery; a scalpel is easily long enough to murder somebody - and without realising the seriousness of the wound until they collapse and die. Whoever is responsible for detention or isolation has to consider the possibility that one of the children is carrying an absolutely brutal weapon. Because there is one out there somewhere. The teacher has to contact their union to say what has happened and the union will say that if something happens, it's very possible that this will end up in their dismissal unless they can prove it wasn't their fault - which is very hard to do if they were not counted out and counted back in. The Art/Science/DT teacher probably lost their entire career for it, as no other school will take them on after that - and what teacher can walk into a job outside a classroom after 30 years, saying 'I was fired for failing safeguarding procedures'?
I've had colleagues - friends - fired for exactly this. In both cases, the kids concerned were permanently expelled and didn't get to take any exams. An innocent child on the receiving end of one also left school and didn't take any exams because of the danger/trauma/aftermath of it happening. Every single child ever found with a weapon on site in my career has been removed permanently from school. Even back in the dark ages when I was a teenager and got stabbed in school, the girl who did it was permanently removed.
No wonder they bleeping banned her from the site (they didn't expel her, or she wouldn't have been able to go back in and take any exams). She should count herself lucky that they let her do that - they could have called the police, who would have taken it utterly seriously as she was in possession of an offensive weapon and even all these years later, it would still result in permanent removal from school without the slightest bit of recourse to the Governors. As it was, they probably said that in view of the risk carrying a weapon involves, nobody was prepared to teach her and it was best that she stay at home. Rather than getting the girl from the Good Family a criminal record. Shame, really - this meant that somebody not psychologically equipped to take fire service emergency calls was employed when they should have instantly failed all checks.
When her child goes to secondary school next year, will she be happy to think that he could be in a class where somebody has stolen a scalpel? 'Oh, they must have been dared to do it, just a joke, or it must be for SH, nothing to worry about'? That kid sitting behind him, the one that knows all about his mother and for various reasons, such as horrible parents, trauma, MH issues, doesn't like SB? He's sitting behind SB thinking how much he dislikes the poor kid. Guess what, Jack - he's stolen a scalpel. It's in his pocket and there's only a short time until the end of class when they're all crammed up against one another in the corridor. Still OK with it?
She is a bleep now and, it would appear if this story is true, an absolute danger to everybody else in school as a kid. But hey, funny story, right?
Are scalpels even common in schools in your experience?
I did biology through to A Level and never saw one, our coursework was on potatoes and osmosis! The closest we got to organs was a teacher inflating a pair of lungs with a straw. She got them from the butchers (we asked / were horrified) so a potential new recipe for Jack
I for one am unable to think of a single job she IS suitable for, other than twatting about on twitter all day, and she’s not brilliant at that.
