Fight Club

Despite the rather flippant header to this entry, the fight at school was a pretty frightening experience. A week last Friday a group of lads came onto the school site. I say lads, they were young men aged between 17 and 21 and were very threatening. The previous Tuesday, Bonfire Night, one of our boys had been jumped and left with a broken nose. The threat of further violence was made clear and on Thursday lunchtime the lad with the broken nose was confronted by one of the gang who came to the school on his own. He got a smack in the face and was then cornered and given a few more thumps for being so 'cheeky' in coming into school on his own.

That evening after school a group of young men were gathered at the school gates but could not get at our student who was kept in for his own safety before being collected by his father.

The following lunchtime there were 10 youths on site and I had to get myself between them and our students, you can imagine the crowd that had gathered to see what was happening. Initially there was a marked absence of adults about but to my surprise, they actually did as I told them and left the school grounds making their way over the road. They were hooded up with these neck mufflers on to conceal their identity and were very threatening but it looked like things were going to ok. I thought the police had been called by this time but it turned out they hadn't.

Following them I saw a couple climb over the school gates and go through the bushes. They were soon joined by the rest and instead of making sure the students they were after had been completely removed from the scene as I'd requested, they'd been able to hang around which was the cue for an almighty fight involving the youths from outside the school and effectively three of our Year 11s. There were teachers hanging on and trying to stop them fighting but they seemed completely ineffectual. I had to dive right in and grabbed one of the lads pinning his arms behind him, all the while waiting for him to jerk his head back and headbutt me but he didn't. I was able to get the three boys into the sports hall and out of harms way and spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out the mess because there was every likelihood of further trouble later.

Unsurprisingly the gang was back at the end of school, this time with a staffordshire bull terrier in attendance but myself and one of the PE teachers escorted them away from the school. This time a 999 call had gone out and they turned up as the group walked off. So I got to spend the next couple of hours going through CCTV and being interviewed about the whole thing and advised to use discretion in the future which I guess is the whole point of this. We were so lucky none of them had knives or similar and that they hadn't actually hit any of the staff. The incident could have been a great deal worse and I felt pretty shocked afterwards especially in thinking about stepping between the two groups initially and then piling in to grab the young men off our students.

That weekend the gang put a school leaver from the summer in hospital and they've been around the school since in drib and drabs but the police have been up on patrol each lunch and after school.

The whole thing stems from the fact that they are from a different area to our lads and that's enough excuse for a fight. I've never experienced anything like that in my life, people from outside school coming onto site and being completely set on achieving their goal of violence no matter what anyone did to prevent it.