TEACHERS are threatening to strike after school governors overturned the head's decision to expel a violent pupil excluded from class eight times and given 69 detentions.

The 14-year-old boy had been permanently excluded from Byrchall High School in Ashton in Makerfield, Wigan, for persistent unruly behaviour - including attacks on other pupils, vandalism, theft and abusive behaviour.

Head teacher Stephen Wall ordered the expulsion before Christmas after the boy was caught walking on the roofs and bonnets of staff cars and repeatedly kicking the door of a teacher's car.

But school governors have now taken a controversial decision to reverse the decision. The boy is currently being taught at a separate 're-integration' centre in Wigan, but furious teaching staff at Byrchall have voted overwhelmingly to walk out if he returns to the school, as planned, in three weeks' time.

Mr Wall was ordered by education chiefs to say nothing about the situation today. A spokesman for Wigan education authority said they fully understood the concerns of the teachers and were working with the school to resolve a very difficult situation.

But he said: ''The bottom line is that the governors took a decision in accordance with their powers. The child is therefore on the register and legally entitled to be taught.

''He is currently receiving an alternative programme of education under the school's direction and is going through a process of 're-integration', which will include anger management and how to manage relationships with staff and other pupils.''

Steve Wilson, Wigan branch secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, said the governors had got it ''spectacularly wrong.''

John Garnsey, local spokesman for the National Union of Teachers said: ''It does sound a very strange decision. This boy has openly flouted authority. '' Both teaching unions are now hoping that a solution can be agreed with the education authority over the next two to three weeks.

  • In April, the M.E.N. reported how teachers at St Chad's Primary school in Cheetham Hill threatened industrial action rather than be forced to take back seven-year-old Kisha Campbell. Since then, Kisha has been allowed back into the school after drastically improving her behaviour, thanks to a six-week anger management course.