Help calls by teachers rise 45pc

Increasing numbers of teachers are seeking help to deal with bad behaviour in the classroom, new figures revealed today.

The number calling a special helpline for advice on coping with disruptive pupils has soared in the last year.

The disclosure comes as a documentary tonight exposes the unruliness teachers have to deal with on a daily basis.

Channel Five's Classroom Chaos, in which a hidden camera shows scenes of pupils fighting in lessons, will catapult school discipline to the top of the election agenda.

Teachers' unions have criticised the programme for filming children without their permission. But it reinforces their warnings that "low-level disruption" is growing.

Evening Standard has discovered that calls to the Teacher Support Network on behaviour issues jumped 45 per cent last year - from 253 in 2003 to 368.

In a TSN survey this year, almost half of teachers said they had been threatened with violence by pupils.