When I was in the school, on the day when the NAS/UWT's famous list of 60 pupils 'for exclusion' became public, it was creaking under the strain but still functioning. It did not bear the signs of breakdown I have seen elsewhere. It was clean, unvandalised, and the pupils went into lessons in a fairly quiet and orderly way. During the two day inspection it started to fall apart.

Throughout that week, dozens of journalists camped outside the school. They accosted pupils going in in the morning and at lunchtime. Some pupils say they were given money for their stories. Encouraged by the media attention, they stayed outside when they should have been in lessons. When teachers came out to bring them in they made rude gestures and comments behind their backs; these were filmed and they were able to watch themselves on TV when they got home.

On the Wednesday, a 60-foot gantry was brought to the front of the school and a camera on top filmed through the school windows. It is now said that the inspectors observed some of the worst behaviour they had ever seen. Who can be surprised? After 16 years as an NUT local secretary in a fairly turbulent area, I have seen similar effects of media attention before, most notably at Drummond Middle School during the Ray Honeyford controversy.

When I met the NUT members at the school on the Monday of its week of torment, they were very sceptical of the NAS/UWT's claims of 60 unteachable pupils. The school had enough real problems to start with - the results of Government policies concentrating a large number of disadvantaged children in one school. The concentration of large scale unemployment in particular communities, the selling off of the more attractive council houses and the use of the remaining small stock to house families with multiple problems, and the impact of policies on selection, grant-maintained status and open enrolment all combined to give the Ridings an intake more skewed to the bottom end of the ability range than would have been found at any secondary modern in the 1950s. Teachers were left to struggle with pupils who have many education difficulties and poor motivation. Resources were inadequate and diminishing year by year. The LEA - weakened by the loss of resources to a large grant-maintained sector - was not able to give adequate special-needs provision or make proper off-site provision for pupils with severe behavioural problems.

NUT members in the school said that before the media arrived they were under pressure but did not feel physically threatened. They wanted more support for the school: strengthened management, experienced staff brought in to cover for colleagues who were off sick, and the exclusion of some pupils who had worked their way through the school's internal disciplinary procedures. We were in negotiation on these issues, but our efforts have been overtaken by a different approach.

NUT members experience all the same difficulties as NAS/UWT members. Our front line of argument is to press for more resources to deal with them. We will also support members who refuse to accept assault and harassment by pupils who cannot cope with being left in a large mainstream class. I have been involved in my own authority of Bradford in two recent cases in which we balloted members on not teaching pupils who had assaulted staff but had been returned to school by appeals panels. We quite deliberately did not seek the publicity for our actions because we could see that the schools and the pupils would be labelled, and the prospect of a better future for them would be diminished by the media spotlight and the consequent posturing of politicians.

Calderdale NUT Secretary Sue McMahon and her colleagues have continued throughout the crisis to meet with, represent and support our members in the school. I have attended a number of meetings with them, at which we have pressed for greater school security and reduced media access. We are currently putting forward proposals for additional staffing support and for arrangements for dealing on- and off-site with pupils whose behaviour has been identified by the whole staff as unacceptable.

Messages of support for staff at the school can be sent to Sue McMahon, Calderdale NUT Secretary, 29 Goldfields Way, Halifax HX4 8LA.