Why SNP must realise that violence against Scotland's teachers is now an epidemic – Cameron Wyllie
Cameron Wyllie hits back at former Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth after figures show appalling levels of violence in Edinburgh’s primary schools
Evan Hunter’s great novel from 1954, The Blackboard Jungle, is about violence in an inner-city school in the USA through the eyes of a young teacher of English. The film, released a year later, was notable for three things, the use of Rock Around the Clock in the soundtrack; a very early appearance by Sidney Poitier; and the collective relief of teachers in this country as they sat in 1950s cinemas and appreciated how easy their lives were relative to those of some American high school teachers.
It came to my head recently as I read the following statistics from an end-of-session report about state schools in Edinburgh: session 2025-26 was the most violent year in the past decade in the city’s primary schools, with 1,900 incidents reported by support staff and 842 by teachers – to be absolutely clear, these were occasions in which a member of staff was attacked by a primary school age child, and these are the incidents which were actually reported.
A friend of mine, a senior primary teacher in the city, believes that “only one in ten of these incidents” is ever documented. Think on that.
This is Edinburgh
Further, if we include secondary schools and special schools, the figure is 4,016 attacks for that session. This means that staff in Edinburgh schools alone were attacked 21 times a day in the most recent school session. Ten years ago, that figure was a quarter of what it is today.
The figure in England, per head of population, is around half of that. It is perfectly reasonably to use the word ‘epidemic’ to describe this violence against teachers in Scotland, and it is time for something to be done about it.
Some of Edinburgh’s classrooms – just some, not all – are not far off being jungles, and the damage to teachers’ morale and young people’s learning is very probably irreparable. It is reasonable to assume that these figures are repeated throughout Scotland, no doubt with some variations from place to place. I mean, this is Edinburgh: “You’ll have had your kicking in?”
Verbal abuse ignored
The SNP government, of course, crows about how Scotland’s teachers are the best paid in the UK and they are; that is a consequence of good work by the trade unions – particularly the EIS – and the Scottish government’s fear of strike action in schools.
But now there needs to be concerted action by the unions which faces the fact that their members (and those colleagues not in unions) are being beaten up, hospitalised, kicked, bitten and spat on by children and young people in their care on a scale that would, I vouchsafe, be wholly unacceptable in any other occupation. I wonder what the figures are for prisons, and I wonder what happens to the assailants there?
These figures don’t, of course, include verbal abuse, which, as I have commented on many times before, is now so commonplace in some Scottish schools that it’s completely ignored.
Scared of their pupils
I wrote a piece three years ago in which I described a 16-year-old repeatedly causing trouble in a maths classroom as a “wee thug”. Jenny Gilruth, whose tenure as Cabinet Secretary for Education achieved nowt, berated me for this in Holyrood, and said we had to remember that all school pupils are “children”.
Sigh. I wonder how she would feel if, on a day-to-day basis, she was scared of some ‘children’ who were back in her classroom having previously bitten her? Or bashed her head off the floor? Or thrown bricks at her while she was pregnant? Well, she might feel – as she must have done when she was herself a teacher – that some other job might be safer and more rewarding.
Of course, violence in schools has two principal causes; firstly, the ill-fated Presumption of Mainstreaming policy which sees hundreds of children who, because of their additional support needs, can’t cope with the education on offer in straightforward local comprehensive settings – big classes, noisy corridors and teachers who aren’t trained to meet their needs – living out frustrated school lives.
The other culprits are those members of the educationalist elite headquartered in the comfy surroundings of Education Scotland and our universities – miles away from any poor kid (or young thug – oh, Jenny, I’ve said it again!) telling them to f-off and spitting in their face, whose highly theoretical approach to discipline involves restorative conversations and Mars Bars.
Self-applauding quangoteers
The worst affected by this lack of regulation and discipline in our schools are those who are most disadvantaged, often young people whose parents are not in a position to give them the structured support they need to get on with their education.
Our nation’s teachers are nearing the middle of their summer holidays, a great professional group increasingly worn down and absent from work because of the stresses – wholly unnecessary stresses – visited upon them by poor educational policy.
We can be sure that the current government in Holyrood will do nothing much about it (a committee? two committees? 12 committees and a conference of self-applauding representatives of worthless quangos? Oh, all of these things).
The EIS, the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, head teachers, their colleagues, our MSPs and councillors all need to be fully aware of the consequences of further time-wasting in doing something about this scourge of violence and indiscipline in our schools. The blackboards may have gone, but some of our classrooms are jungles.
Cameron Wyllie is a retired headmaster. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and hosts the podcast, Two Heads are Better than One, with Rod Grant