The government has announced a £900,000 fund for further training and promised the development of a “multi-year plan”. Teaching unions and opposition politicians have already criticised a ‘plan for a plan’ which “won’t nearly touch the sides”. The Herald’s education writer, James McEnaney, offer a snap response to the latest developments.

£900,000 might seem like a lot of money, and that’s the point, but it isn’t. Divide it by each of Scotland’s 32 councils and they’d get about £28k each. Spread it out across every primary and secondary school in Scotland and each one gets a little over 350 quid. This isn’t even 'drop in the ocean' stuff, and it’s exactly the sort of the empty PR move that you might expect from a government that is out of ideas and energy.

In less than a week, three separate reports highlighted the scale of violence and aggression in Scotland’s schools. The education secretary has desperately clung to her belief that most pupils are well-behaved most of the time, but that’s little more than some rhetorical sleight of hand in this context. The whole problem here is that a single violent or aggressive pupil can cause chaos for the 30-plus others in the room.

Over and over again, teachers and other school staff have said that the problems we are now seeing with behaviour are a function of our failure to properly resource schools. There aren’t enough teachers, there aren’t enough support staff, and there isn’t enough time. All of that is down to the Scottish Government.

Read more: Scottish school behaviour: MSPs pan 'plan for a plan'

The education secretary – a former teacher who must know better – has now responded by offering some training and some bureaucratic tweaks. And the worst part is that precisely nobody will be surprised.

Teachers are already interpreting all of this as an attempt to blame them for what is happening in schools, and it’s hard to disagree with that position.

It doesn’t feel as if the government is willing to take this issue seriously but that's not a surprise either.

Confronting this problem would mean admitting that after all these years, and all those promises, and all that rhetoric, the SNP (and now also the Greens) have failed to ensure that schools have the resources they need not just to educate, but also to keep teachers and pupils safe. It's hard to think of a more serious indictment of a party that once claimed that education was their top priority.