POLICE have come under heavy criticism after a dinner lady was cleared of assaulting two primary school pupils.

The 56-year-old dinner lady was accused of pushing an eight-year-old boy against a wall and pulling an 11-year-old girl's hair at a Teesside school in May last year.

But magistrates in Hartlepool yesterday dismissed the charges against the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, as unsafe.

Defence lawyers had earlier called into question the police's prosecution, which they said had ignored the testimony of three other lunchtime supervisors.

The other dinner ladies, who appeared as defence witnesses, all claimed the woman had not pushed the boy as he alleged, but only placed him against the wall.

Defence barrister Victoria Lamballe told the court neither the school nor the police had bothered to get a statement from the three women, even though they all claimed to have seen the incident.

Speaking after the court case, the woman, who has been suspended from work since last May, said the stress of the ordeal had caused her to be ill.

The dinner lady, from Hartlepool, said: "It has been a very stressful and unpleasant ordeal and I'm just relieved it's all over."

She said she was still considering whether to return to work. "I'd like to go back, but for the sake of an hour a day I'm not sure that it's worth the trouble."

Teaching unions said over-zealous prosecutions had school staff running scared.

The NUT said that last year there were 215 allegations of physical abuse made by children against teachers. Just five per cent were found guilty in a court.

NUT spokeswoman Olive Forsyth said: "We had one case last year where a teacher was dragged to magistrates' court because she was alleged to have spilt tangerine juice on a pupil.

"The effect of these false allegations can be devastating. Teaching is a caring profession and teachers, or anyone who works with children, can define themselves totally by it. When something like this happens it really knocks them, it really is devastating."