Swedish Schools Increase Security, Hire Guards After Rising Violence Towards Teachers

Schools across Sweden have increased security, including hiring security guards, after a rise in violence towards teachers.

According to a new survey, 70 per cent of Swedish municipalities have installed security cameras and hired security guards as teachers are finding themselves increasingly threatened by both their students as well as parents, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

Sabina Bellanius, a teacher at a school in the heavily migrant populated city of Malmö and the city’s Ombudsman’s Teachers’ Association head, said: “It’s abusive discrimination, psychological and physical violence. I have a colleague that tried to separate a brawl but got his knee knocked out and today lives on cortisone injections.”

A survey of 700 teachers in Malmö showed that 13 per cent had been threatened and nine per cent had been on the receiving end of some form of physical violence.

“It’s terrible. There are teachers who do not want to come back and teachers who have to continue to teach these children, though they have been exposed to threats and violence,” Bellanius said.

Ulrika Wirgin, who previously worked as a teacher in Malmö for 17 years, said: “Parents simply need to take more responsibility for the behaviour of their children.”

Swedish schools are not the only ones facing a rising tide of violence directed at teachers.

In Germany, several schools have reported an increase in threats and violence including the Schoeneberg Spreewald Elementary School in Berlin, whose student population overwhelmingly come from migrant backgrounds, which recently hired security guards.

The security issues in Swedish schools follow a recent report showing that more than half of students in some of the country’s more troubled migrant-heavy suburbs are failing academically to the point where they are not even qualified to enter high school.