A judge has awarded an Australian teacher almost £700,000 because his students were so badly behaved that he suffered a mental breakdown.
Peter Doulis won the payout after telling a judge that he was forced to teach “feral” students at Werribee Secondary College in Melbourne. He said he was repeatedly threatened in the classroom, sworn at and abused.
On one occasion, he said, a student brought a home-made flamethrower into his class and trained it on another pupil, setting his jumper on fire.
Mr Doulis sued the state of Victoria for negligence, saying the school forced him to teach the lowest achievers, including students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, dyslexia and acquired brain injuries, as well as those who were simply badly behaved.
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The size of the payout awarded by Judge Timothy Ginnane in the Supreme Court stunned Victoria’s department of education, which employed Mr Doulis between 1998 and 2004, when he became ill.
The judge ruled that the school breached its duty of care to Mr Doulis, 48, because it did not reduce the number of difficult classes he had to teach or monitor or support him adequately.
Michael Magazanik, his lawyer, said a flood of similar claims from teachers could follow yesterday’s judgment.
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