Friday 24 June 2022 08:21 PM Supply teacher accused of hitting pupil on the shoulder with a pen is found not ... trends now
A supply teacher who was accused of hitting a pupil on the shoulder with a pen before calling him 'pathetic' has been found not guilty of assault.
Michael Good, 43, from Leigh, appeared at Tameside Magistrates’ Court following the incident at a Greater Manchester school.
Mr Good was accused of assaulting the boy during a lesson - a charge he denied.
The school’s deputy headteacher told him to leave the classroom, before he was marched off the premises by another member of staff, the court heard.
Mr Good said he identified the complainant - who was sat on the front row in class - as a potential ‘troublemaker’ and a ‘cheeky chappie’.
The boy first asked Mr Good if he supported Manchester United and, after replying that he did, the pupil said that was ‘sad’.
The teacher accepted the youngster’s behaviour was ‘jovial’ at that point and ‘brushed off’ the jibe.
Mr Good told the court the first half of his lesson went okay until the boy - who cannot be named for legal reasons - began talking to his friend.
Michael Good (above), 43, from Leigh, appeared at Tameside Magistrates’ Court following the incident at a Greater Manchester school
He told the court he asked the youngster to ‘face the front’ and ‘stop talking’ on a number of occasions, but he continued.
At that point, Mr Good claimed he used a whiteboard pen to tap the boy on the shoulder in an effort to get his attention.
The boy, however, accused Mr Good of striking him on the shoulder. During evidence given to court via video link, he claimed the teacher hit him so hard he could still feel the pain for up to an hour.
He told the court he had been speaking to his friend ‘about questions that were set’ for the students to answer and that he saw Mr Good make contact with him from the ‘corner of my eye’. He added: 'It wasn’t like really hard but it was, like, a bit.
The boy began to say ‘that hurt’, he told the court, to which Mr Good called him ‘stupid’ and ‘pathetic’ before ‘trying to mock’ him. Asked how it made him feel, the boy said: 'Angry, upset.'
Mr Good denied hitting the boy. The court heard how the youngster had changed his story when telling different people what had happened.
The boy had not told the first teacher who saw him following the incident, before telling a second teacher Mr Good had ‘put his hand on my shoulder’ and only later describing it as a hit.
Mr Good admitted shouting at the youngster and making him feel ‘embarrassed’, telling him he was ‘acting like a loser’.
During a police interview, he told officers he had ‘clocked’ the boy as ‘someone to keep an eye on’, and that the
