Teachers seek ways of preventing violence

The Teachers Association has called for schools to introduce crisis intervention teams and step up efforts to prevent violence.

The association presented a new handbook for teachers, schools and authorities to deal with crises, including bullying, suicides, vandalism and even armed attacks.

“These are all incidents which make a teacher often feel helpless. But we have to learn to cope with such situations,” said the association’s Beat Zemp at a news conference on Thursday.

Zemp said it was not sufficient to have a handbook ready in every school, but to train teachers and set up special crisis intervention teams made of medical, legal and psychology experts in all cantons.

The cantons have wide-ranging autonomy in education matters.

“Teachers often wait too long before they get help,” said Christian Randegger of the Centre for Violence Prevention and Crisis Intervention.

The booklet is published in German, but moves are underway to translate it into two other national languages, French and Italian.

Violent incidents vary from school to school, according to the association. Ten years ago a teacher was killed by the father of a student.

There have also been threats of massacres.

Urs Geiser, swissinfo.ch