The Scottish Conservatives will use a parliamentary debate this week to call on ministers to create a “comprehensive plan” to tackle violence in schools.
Concerns have been raised in recent months after a number of videos circulated on social media showing violent outbursts from pupils. Student behaviour also dominated the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) annual congress earlier this month, where the education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, was told by one teacher that the job had become “unsafe and abusive”.
Last week the Daily Record reported that there were 10,852 violent incidents in Scottish primary schools last year; in secondary the figure was 2,951. In 2018-19 the number of violent incidents recorded was 10,772 in primary and 2,728 in secondary, according to the newspaper.
Speaking before the Conservative-led debate on Wednesday, the party’s education spokesperson, Stephen Kerr, said: “The escalation of violent incidents in schools in recent years is nothing short of a national scandal.
“The SNP have taken their eye off the ball on this issue and violent incidents have soared as a result.”
Behaviour: ‘Crisis of violence’ in schools
He added: “The Scottish Conservatives are using our party business on Wednesday to urge ministers to produce a comprehensive plan to address this crisis of violence, which has become endemic in our schools.
“We will urge the setting up of a school violence working group as well as a review of current exclusion policies. These would be positive steps forward to get on top of this serious issue.
“Ministers must also provide parents and schools with guidance, materials and support that would assist them in promoting acceptable behaviour and tackling disruption.”
Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said teachers and pupils cannot wait until the end of the year for a long-awaited government report on behaviour in schools.
She said: “It is simply unacceptable that teachers in Scotland are going to work worried about their safety or that parents worry about the safety of their children in school.
“This situation didn’t start overnight. For years teaching unions have been raising the alarm and this government and successive SNP education ministers have failed to act.
“That the planned report on this is not expected until December shows a lack of urgency from the government on this serious issue.”
Earlier this month Ms Gilruth told the SSTA annual congress in Crieff: “There is no place in our schools for violent behaviour.”
She acknowledged that “there are real challenges in our schools at the current time” and there had been “a shift in behaviour” in the wake of the pandemic, although she questioned if the extreme incidents reported in the press represented the “whole picture”.
She said that the government would be publishing relationship and behaviour research later this year, which would give “the national picture”.
However, when asked by Tes Scotland if she would be providing schools with extra resources to deal with the rise in challenging behaviour, Ms Gilruth said: “There is an assumption that staffing is going to solve this, and I just don’t think it is.”
She said it was about improving partnerships with other agencies such as social work “that can feed into schools”.
