Staff at primary and lower-secondary schools in Fredrikstad are subjected daily to violence, serious abuse and death threats from pupils, according to nearly 1,800 incident reports filed over two years concerning breaches of safety and the working environment, as reported by Fredriksstad Blad on Thursday.

The reports paint a deeply disturbing picture of everyday school life in which staff experience everything from physical violence to serious sexual harassment, psychological threats and online shaming.

The incident reports describe dramatic situations ranging from pupils carrying homemade weapons to episodes in which offices are vandalised and head teachers are threatened.

In one of the most shocking cases, it is described how a teacher received a text message from a pupil telling the teacher to take their own life.

Teachers go home and cry, says an anonymous teacher with 15 years of experience.

Both teachers and the Union of Education Norway believe that the 1,800 incident reports are merely “the tip of the iceberg”, because teachers refrain from reporting incidents, knowing full well that nothing will be done, the local newspaper writes.

The union representative and teacher Halvor Stensrud Erikstad says that the situation has rapidly deteriorated:

“If someone called you a ‘whore’ five years ago, you would have reacted strongly. But now it is more like, ‘Oh well’, because it happens every day. Today, you might perhaps file an incident report if a pupil throws a stone at you in the classroom.”

– What was extreme three or four years ago has become so commonplace that one almost forgets that it is serious, Erikstad says.