Daily Mail
April 23, 2014
Children as young as four are insulting their teachers on social media sites, it has been revealed.
They are among growing numbers of pupils making derogatory comments about staff on Facebook, RateMyTeacher as well as YouTube.
The NASUWT union has warned that teachers are being ‘increasingly adversely affected’ by pupils and parents abusing social media.
Staff are being labelled online as ‘psychos’ and ‘paedos’ and face nasty remarks about their appearance, race, competency and sexuality.
Others have been targeted with ‘abusive and highly offensive’ language and even been subjected to death threats.
The majority of remarks are being posted by secondary school pupils, mainly on Facebook, according to a survey of over 7,500 NASUWT members about technology use.
However, two teachers reported that the pupils involved were aged four to seven-years-old.
Twenty-one per cent of staff surveyed said ‘adverse’ comments about themselves had been posted on social media sites.
Of these, 64 per cent experienced abuse at the hands of pupils; 27 per cent by parents and nine per cent by both.
One teacher said they were attacked on Twitter with the comment: ‘You are a paedo and your daughter is a whore.’ Another said a pupil set up a Facebook page, claiming ‘he wanted to kill’ the teacher. He ‘invited others in the class to join in’.
A pupil posted on the Rate My Teacher site that a staff member’s ‘skin was covered in potholes’.
Another labelled their teacher ‘a wee w****r’ and said ‘he better not tell me what to do or I’ll flatten him’.