Teacher's £92,000 payout

A teacher has won £92,000 from her employers after facing such violence from pupils - some as young as seven - that she had to retire through ill health.

The payout to Jo Redmond, who taught at a London special school, is one of the biggest compensation settlements ever won by a teacher.

Today she spoke for the first time about her ordeal, which she claims has left her, aged 51, psychologically unable to work again. In two years at the school, she was:

Spat at, kicked and punched by pupils on a daily basis.

Cut when she attempted to remove a broken piece of glass a pupil was using as a weapon.

Hit so hard in the face with a carton of orange juice that she lost a tooth.She lost more teeth when a pupil tripped her up with a fire hose.

Attacked with a fire extinguisher.

Ms Redmond, who taught for 20 years, said today: "My experience was horrific. From the first day I walked through the school gates I was subjected to verbal and physical assaults which did not stop until I left. The assaults had such a profound effect on me physically and psychologically I have been forced to give up a career I loved."

Ms Redmond received the payout two years ago from a local authority in the Greater London area that cannot be named for legal reasons. She spoke today at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) conference in Bournemouth, where schools were accused of ignoring a rising tide of violence against staff.

Too many headteachers were "sweeping assaults under the carpet", the union said, for fear reporting them would damage their school's reputation. Delegates demanded schools automatically report any physical assault on a teacher to the police.

They said that if police refused to prosecute, local education authorities should do so privately.

Ms Redmond today told the conference that although she had previously taught for eight years in special schools, the violence took her by surprise. "I had experience of teaching children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. But just because you work at a special school, you shouldn't expect to be assaulted every day. You should expect to be treated with respect.

"I feel I have to speak out because I don't want anybody else to undergo what I have done. I want teachers to have the confidence when they face violence at work to speak out. I suffered in silence for too long. When school authorities are made aware things like this are happening, they need to have procedures in place to deal with it."

In the same year as Ms Redmond's payout, another teacher received almost £82,000 after being assaulted by a pupil with a ruler. The biggest recorded payout was £225,000 to a teacher who fell down stairs while dealing with an unruly pupil.

Martin Pilkington, the ATL's head of legal services, said many schools were still not alerting teachers to pupils' violent histories, and failing to report assaults.

"The suspicion has to be this is because they do not want the reputation of the school to suffer, that if other parents hear what is going on, they will not send their children to these schools," he said. Despite Government promises to support heads who excluded violent pupils, many teachers were "frustrated" at the lack of internal disciplinary action taken after assaults, he added.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said it would " support heads who take tough decisions" on discipline, but those decisions rested with schools.

However David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said a blanket policy of reporting all assaults, however minor, to police, would be "unworkable".