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The tone is weary but lucid, oscillating between satire and sorrow. Orwell and Stan Lee are invoked not for flourish, but to underscore the betrayal of power without responsibility. The writer’s reflections on riots, strikes and the British temperament are not calls to arms but expressions of suppressed rage; anger ritualised into resignation.

It offers a counter-narrative to policy documents and behaviour reports, grounding abstract statistics in lived consequence. The inner conflict; whether to blame disruptive pupils or the system that failed them, mirrors the broader tension between personal agency and structural injustice.

There is a follow-up to this, the courts decided that a no-touch policy will not work, when it comes to safe-guarding in the classroom as someone, like a teacher will need to touch the pupil in regards to disarming them.

That follow-up is pivotal, it reframes the entire narrative from criminalisation to common sense. The Court of Appeal’s ruling in Hewston v Ofsted confirms that a blanket “no-touch” policy is not only impractical but unjust when applied without nuance or training. The judgment emphasised that safeguarding cannot be reduced to avoidance; in moments of crisis, such as disarming a pupil; physical intervention may be necessary and punishing such action without clear guidance is procedurally and substantively unfair.

This ruling exposes the gap between policy rhetoric and classroom reality. It affirms that teachers must sometimes act physically to protect others and that doing so, should not automatically trigger disciplinary action or reputational harm. The absence of training, written standards, or forewarning was central to the court’s decision: without these, the teacher could not reasonably anticipate dismissal for conduct that was protective, not predatory where the narrative shifts from despair to judicial recognition. When the System Blinks: The Court Acknowledges Reality. But what for the teacher involved? Continue from where they left off, if they can, No compensation for time off work, with no pay, no counselling, nothing, back to the unemployment queue and a fight to clear their name via a flippant comment from a Judge that found it's way onto a CRB. Around 3-4 years fight before this was taken off, again; without the recognised compensation.