The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday November 29 2023 #Education
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00:08 Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin.
00:11 For Wednesday, I'm Alan Young. I am Deputy Editor of The Scotsman.
00:14 I'm joined today by our education correspondent, Callum Ross,
00:17 to take a look at some of the main headlines. Hi, Callum.
00:19 Morning, Alan.
00:21 Let's have a look at the front page first.
00:25 And you can see why Callum's here. We lead today on his story,
00:29 and that is around a really shocking report which lays bare
00:33 the levels of violence in classrooms across Scotland.
00:38 We'll speak to Callum about that in just a minute.
00:41 I also want to point out it's now 10 years, it's quite unbelievable,
00:45 10 years since the Clutha tragedy in Glasgow.
00:49 And our investigations correspondent, Marta McLoughlin,
00:53 has a special report in today's paper.
00:56 We, of course, cover all the drama in Europe last night
01:01 as Celtic crashed out after a defeat to Lazio.
01:06 But Callum, let's talk about this story today.
01:10 We've been hearing a lot about rising levels of violence
01:14 across classrooms in Scotland.
01:17 It hasn't really been quantified in any meaningful way.
01:20 A lot of it's been anecdotal.
01:23 Is what we've got from this report the first hard evidence of what's going on?
01:27 Yeah, that's right, Alan.
01:30 I mean, we've had surveys from trade unions and parents groups.
01:34 We've had committee hearings and FOIs and all the rest of it.
01:37 But this is really the one we've been waiting for.
01:40 This is the behaviour in Scottish schools research,
01:43 which carried out for the first time since 2016.
01:47 It was supposed to happen in 2020, but got delayed because of the pandemic.
01:52 And yeah, I mean, it's found,
01:54 confirmed what we suspected, really,
01:57 that there's been a consensus among all types of school staff
02:01 that there's been a deterioration in behaviour among pupils in schools since 2016.
02:08 Now, that's not just violence.
02:10 It's a whole kind of range of issues, you know,
02:12 from kind of low-level stuff like talking out of turn and staff
02:16 and class constantly looking at mobile phones.
02:19 Then you've got things like truancy, not just kind of not coming to school,
02:23 but coming to school and not going to class,
02:24 kind of wandering around the school and playground.
02:29 Drug taking and then, you know, kind of aggression
02:32 and physical violence between pupils and against staff.
02:38 One of the key things, or certainly standout things,
02:41 I took from the report was a particular issue in primary schools.
02:47 Now, it did say that most of these issues got worse as the kids got older,
02:52 but with the exception of physical aggression and violence,
02:55 which was actually worse in primary schools, particularly P1 and P3.
03:02 11% of primary school staff had experienced violence
03:09 towards themselves in the last week.
03:13 And another factor that was pretty shocking was about weapons.
03:17 11%, again, 11% of primary school support staff
03:22 had experienced violence involving weapons in class in the last week.
03:28 That's up from 3% in 2016.
03:31 So some pretty shocking stuff,
03:33 even though we expected that there to have been a rise.
03:37 Some of the figures are pretty worrying, I would say.
03:39 Parents will be concerned across Scotland.
03:42 Absolutely. How much of this has been linked to the disruption
03:47 in education down to the pandemic?
03:49 Well, I think 77% of school staff said it got worse since the pandemic.
03:56 So clearly, yes, it's got worse since the pandemic.
04:00 There seems to be a bit of debate about whether it's caused by the lockdowns,
04:05 you know, the disruptions then,
04:06 or whether that kind of exacerbated an existing trend.
04:11 There's also issues around the rise in the number of pupils
04:14 with additional support needs
04:15 and whether there's enough support for them.
04:18 Kind of unclear messaging around what kind of punishments are available
04:24 and a bit of a postcode lottery too.
04:27 And also teachers and school staff just not having enough time
04:31 to deal properly with issues.
04:34 Jenny Gilruth, the Education Secretary,
04:36 is going to be making a statement in Holyrood this afternoon.
04:39 I mean, she's expected to kind of discuss some of the actions
04:44 the government might seek to take.
04:47 She's also spoken about wanting to hear more from pupils about this issue.
04:51 So whether we're going to have yet another consultation, I'm not sure.
04:55 But we'll certainly be tuning in to see what she's got to say.
04:58 We do know this is a big issue for the government.
05:04 We know already that the big exams shake-up has been delayed,
05:08 apparently at least partly because of this,
05:11 to try and get a handle on this issue.
05:13 Any hint at all about what might be coming this afternoon?
05:16 Not really.
05:18 I mean, she's used the phrase 'action plan' on several times.
05:22 But then I did see yesterday that she'd spoken about
05:24 wanting to hear more views from speaking to pupils, etc.
05:29 So I don't know how detailed this action plan is going to be.
05:32 I mean, one of the problems is that, essentially,
05:37 there's calls for more spending on more staff and more training,
05:40 and the government doesn't have much money at the moment.
05:43 So it's going to be interesting how she deals with that.
05:46 Indeed. Thanks very much for that, Callum.
05:49 You can, of course, read Callum's report and analysis online at scotsman.com.
05:55 And in today's paper, if you are on the website,
05:58 please do subscribe as ever, then you will not miss a thing.
06:02 And if you're out and about today, it's a chilly day,
06:04 but please do pick up a paper from me and from Callum.
06:07 So bye for now.