LAST year's Astley Cup rugby league brawl was one of a string of violent incidents in western NSW schools contained in a new report made public by the NSW Department of Education and Communities this week.
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The Incident reporting in schools - Term 2, 2014 report contained details of 35 incidents, the lowest number reported for the region since term 1, 2013.
Of those, 12 were assault matters, eight involved threats, four were incidents involving weapons and three involved drugs.
In the aforementioned incident, a 17-year-old Orange High School player was taken to hospital with blood streaming from his nose and forehead and the game was abandoned after punches and kicks were exchanged in the melee involving players from his school and Dubbo College.
NSW Police investigated the matter but did not lay any charges over the brawl. A spokesperson for Orana Local Area Command (LAC) has since told the Daily Liberal there are now no plans to do so.
At the time, the NSW Department of Education and Communities described the incident as "unacceptable" and said discipline would include suspensions and exclusion from representing the school in sporting activities. It also pledged to support sanctions involved by Country Rugby League and to assist police with their investigation.
Other incidents described in the report include a punch-up between two boys on a bus that later saw a Dubbo-district school placed in lockdown and police from Orana LAC handcuff one of the students after he hit windows and kicked doors in the principal's office.
In another incident, a student left the grounds of a Dubbo district school "looking for someone to fight" before he was involved in an altercation with another student, pushed and shoved a second and headbutted a third student in the face.
Further west, in the Bourke Education Region, a student threw a chair at a teacher, narrowly missing the teacher and breaking the chair upon landing. The student then stormed out of the room and punched a glass panel in the door, shattering the glass.
The report described a further incident from June 2014 reported to Darling River LAC police where a male student stole a teacher's bunch of keys from a bench and organised for another two students to keep watch while he used the key to unlock the staff room door, before going through staff handbags and stealing items from them.
