OP, Teach your son that it is OK to fight back but not to bully. A self defence class as previously mentioned will do wonders for his confidence, will help stop the bullying and will teach him self respect and respect for others.
You seem to possess their sense of entitlement. A mere one break between each one hour lesson, a whopping 2 and a half hour afternoon stretch without a break. Pressure from management. Welcome to most people's working lives. If you scale up weeks worked per year, their 35k pay is more or less the equivalent of 50k, given that most people only get 4 or 5 weeks off, not 19 or whatever it is.
The only drivel is the sense of entitlement when you stick a dozen teachers together and they work themselves up into a militant frenzy about how they're as important as surgeons and senior hospital consultants. The first 3 years might be hard but everyone has to learn their job. After that you can't tell me that an experienced teacher is up till 10pm every night preparing tomorrow's exercises, when they've done that same class dozens of times before.
The reality is that there are excellent teachers who do care, but many more teachers who are too concerned about change or blaming the tories for this, that and the other, when in fact it boils down to the teachers simply not caring enough about their charges. I bet at least half of all children experience bullying and I bet at least 10pc of children have a significant part of their childhood ruined by it. It's teachers who look after these kids and it's teachers who should be held responsible if they can't stop it. Not the tory government, not "the cuts", the teachers themselves.
Why should I need to help out at a school in order to help them sort it out?
What absolute utter nonsense, it is absolutely utter tosh, I will base the below on my girlfriend, her friends and their family.
For starters you have vastly inflated what teachers actually get paid. A teachers pay scale goes along spine points starting at £21,600 and goes to £31,600 in increments along 6 pay points, There is a upper pay scale but to reach this you have to have been teaching for 6 years, meet all of your targets and be classed as an outstanding teacher which is not exactly a walk in the park these days. They only get a pay rise IF they reach certain targets and certain criteria. To reach that criteria they have to put in countless extra hours than you would expect. For instance my gf gets to school at around 7-7:30 each day and rarely leaves before 5pm (her friend who is a CL leaves around 7-8pm every day after getting to work at approximately the same time). She goes in nearly every Saturday to do extra work and teach additional lessons that are required to help those kids that just aren't up to scratch. She will rarely get a lunch hour due to other duties and planning that is required and this is all without all the Marking and planning that needs to be done.
As for the comments about teaching the same stuff day in day out so how can you need to keep planning, well that would be true if you don't care and don't want to be a good teacher you may be able to get away with it, or if the curriculum wasn't constantly being reviewed. Oh the holidays, are these the excessive amounts of holidays teachers get where they actually have to work a fair portion of it? I know that my gf works 3 out of the 6 weeks at summer for summer schools etc, most half terms are spent catching up with paper work and planning as well as running more of those additional classes.
Not only are they doing all of this just to do a part of their job they are attempting to pass on knowledge to the future generation of this country, Control upwards of 15-30 children at any one time, teach them how to behave and ensure they don't do anything stupid. Monitoring 1 child at a time is bad enough, doing it for 15-30 kids is a nightmare especially when doing the above. They then have to do all of the above while being underfunded and understaffed.
Teachers are unsung heroes and deserve a hell of a lot more respect and pay than they actually get.
Id suggest you try and find out the facts before spouting nonsense.
