Education secretary Jenny Gilruth has said that school staff need better support when confronted with “extreme” behaviour.
Ms Gilruth was responding in Scottish Parliament to an incident at a secondary school that brought wider concerns about violent behaviour into focus, and days after she was grilled at the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association annual congress about the impact of “a tidal wave of distressed behaviours” in schools.
Tory MSP Jamie Greene asked her what steps the Scottish government was taking “to reduce violence in schools, in light of reports that three teachers and a 14-year-old student have been injured in a disturbance at a Renfrewshire school”.
“We need to support our school staff better in responding to such incidents when they are extreme,” said Ms Gilruth as part of her response.
Ms Gilruth said that “no teacher or member of staff should suffer verbal or physical abuse at their place of work”, but that it was “for schools and local councils to respond to specific instances of challenging behaviour”.
She added, however, that she had recently discussed concerns over behaviour in schools with the education directors’ body ADES, trade unions, local authorities’ body Cosla, and the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools, which she chairs. It was “important that we do not necessarily look just at the specifics of the extreme cases, but instead that we look to support our local authority partners on the ground”.
Ms Gilruth said: “We are currently gathering evidence that will help us to better understand behaviour in our schools at national level through our research on behaviour in Scottish schools, which will report by the end of the year. That will ensure that future policy, guidance and support for our schools’ staff reflects the current challenges in our schools and what is working well.”
Mr Greene said: “The reality is that teachers are at their wits’ end. They should not be afraid to go to work in the morning. I agree that other pupils and young people have to bear the brunt, in disruption to their learning and their wider school experience.
“I am afraid to say that the cabinet secretary is just one of many education ministers who has promised action on the matter. To say that it is just a matter for individual schools or councils simply does not wash any more; it is a national problem, which requires a national solution.”
Many headteachers have told Tes that Covid has exacerbated behaviour problems, a view which Ms Gilruth picked up on in the parliamentary exchanges yesterday afternoon.
“Fundamentally, we need first to recognise that Covid has changed the culture in schools,” she said. “It is changing relationships, behaviour and things including attendance.”
Ms Gilruth, a former secondary teacher, also said that she sought the views of former colleagues to better understand the situation in schools; violent incidents such as the one in Renfrewshire “are not the norm in terms of behaviour in schools” and, in her time as a teacher, “examples such as Jamie Greene cited were few”.
She added: “We need to be careful about how we politicians characterise behaviour in our schools because we do not want to send a message that is indifferent to the daily reality in our classrooms up and down the country, which is that teachers are equipped with the necessary skills and expertise to defuse challenging situations as and when they happen.”
Ms Gilruth also said that “when we talk about specific incidents, we should be mindful that we are talking about the impacts not only on staff but on our children and young people”.
She added: “We politicians must be careful not to use specific examples to form policy. That is why, in my initial response to Jamie Greene, I talked about the national evidence base. That evidence was last gathered in 2016 and has not, as a result of the pandemic, been updated.
“A number of weeks ago, I asked for an update on it, but I will not be able to access the data until the autumn. At that time, I will share with the Parliament the updated national picture on behaviour in our schools.”
However, Mr Greene cited figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives under freedom of information in 2022, which showed that staff in Scottish schools had been physically or verbally attacked by pupils 73,218 times over five years.
Yesterday, Mr Greene said that “75,000 is not a ‘few’ incidents - the incident that I mentioned is not unique or isolated”.
Labour MSP Martin Whitfield, a former primary teacher, said: “It is right that the local authorities have responsibility in the matter, but interpretation of what is a violent incident varies across Scotland. That means that bringing together statistics will be almost impossible; that responsibility surely rests with the government.”
Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie said Ms Gilruth should have behaviour “at the top of her priorities list”, as it is “a huge problem that is causing massive issues for management of our schools”.
He added: “I fear that the government is not moving fast enough. There has been a mushrooming of cases since the pandemic.”
