Case No. 12

All of the situations have occurred in schools, with scenarios 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 10 drawn from the personal experience of the case writers.

12 scenarios:

1. You are backing your car carefully through the school carpark. A child runs from nowhere, you run over the child who is injured!
   
2. You briefly leave your class to go to the toilet. While you are away a fight amongst pupils breaks out. As a result a pupil is injured.
   
3. You are returning pupils to school by bus after a sports venue. At 3pm you stop the bus in the local shopping centre and let 4 pupils alight because they would have to walk 2kms back to the centre from the school. You continue to the school and the remaining students alight and leave. At 3.05pm one of the pupils you let out in the centre is run over and hurt.
   
4. You see a child smoking while walking home from school. You bring this to the attention of the Principal who suspends the pupil even though the parents encourage the pupil to smoke at home.
   
5. You suspect that a student has stolen the property of another student. You ask to search the bag of the student but they refuse.
   
6. Whilst on playground duty you observe a pupil smashing the windscreens of teachers' cars in the parking lot with a brick. You stop the child by grabbing the pupil's arm and making desist statements. The pupil hits you two or three times with the brick and runs away.
   
7. A child you know well comes to you and asks to speak to you privately. The child explains that a teacher on the staff has sexually molested them. You don't really believe the child. What do you do?
   
8. A child you know well is normally picked up by one parent. The child has been the subject of a recent high profile custody battle - won by the parent who usually picks up the child. One day the other parent arrives just after lunch and demands to take the child.
   
9. You always take squash as your sport but spend most time at the squash centre marking. One term on the first time with a new group with two students who have never played before, one smashes a squash ball in the eye of another who is partially blinded.
   
10. You have a particularly difficult Year 8 who never behave and seem to go out of their way to bait you. One period 7 on a Friday after taunts from the ring leader of the group you become exasperated and slap the student a few times with your open hand. The student mutters a few times that he is going to get you in the courts.
    
11. As a result of misreading a document you teach the wrong novel to your Year 12 HSC class. After the exam the students inform you they couldn't do the exam properly.
    
12. One day a pupil you continually admonish for leaning back on their chair leans back once too often and falls off fracturing their skull!

Activities1

Examine the legal implications of the scenarios with particular reference to the teacher's behaviour.