Half of all parents 'do not feel their children are safe in school'

The grim finding was shared during a special one-off meeting of Holyrood's Education, Children and Young People Committee to discuss violence in Scotland's schools.

MSPs agreed to hold the roundtable with unions, academics and representatives of pupils and parents following several high-profile incidents.

READ MORE: SNP told to draw up 'comprehensive plan' to halt violence in schools

Ms Burnett told the committee: "The initial result of our survey has shown that over half of the parents that we've surveyed so far do not feel their children are safe in school.

"And that's quite a damning response for us.

"As a parent, you put your child to school, you want to ensure that they're being nutrtured, being safe and supported."

"If the children don't feel safe at school and the staff don't feel safe at school, then the system is broken and it needs to change."

There was much discussion over the current use of restorative justice in the classroom, with the committee being told that teachers simply do not have the time to encourage children who have broken the rules to take responsibility for their actions and make reparation for any damage caused. 

Lib Dem MSP Willie Rennie told the panel of witnessess he was “getting significant numbers of concerns raised by parents and young people, and teachers and staff.”

He mentioned that he had met one teacher last week who showed him bruises on her legs and patches on her head where hair had been pulled. 

“I hear repeatedly that teachers are just fed up with doing the endless repetitive restorative discussion that goes nowhere,” Mr Rennie said.

“And what I want to really understand is, is it a failure of the application of the restorative approach effectively, or a misunderstanding of that policy? Or is there something else we need to do in this situation?

Anne Keenan, Assistant Secretary of the EIS said it came down to capacity. 

“Teachers need time to be able to develop these relational approaches,” she said. 

Ms Keenan pointed to the experience of one of her members in Edinburgh, who said they “can't really have a restorative discussion with the pupil, because I've got 26 other children in the class, waiting to be taught.”

“So it was almost as if this was being segued into a quick discussion outside the classroom door. And if we are really going to invest in these practices, we need to give our teachers the time, the training, the space and we need to look at the resourcing issues, we need to have smaller class sizes so that you can develop those approaches.”

READ MORE: Teacher reveals 'failings' causing turmoil in Glasgow school

Mike Corbett, the National Official (Scotland) at the NASUWT, said teachers needed “more prompt support from senior management teams.” 

“We've got evidence over and over again, where the next step up in many schools is a referral system where the teacher says, well, I've tried all I can, I've tried all my restorative approaches, and I'm just not getting anywhere. 

“And they refer it up to typically a deputy head in the school. But the number of examples of feedback we get from members who say, Well, I've put in 10 referrals in the past month and I've not had any response to them.”

Mr Corbett also told MSPs of an exchange between a deputy head teacher and a probationary teacher, when the senior staff member dismissed concerns over behaviour by saying: “I get told to f***off all the time, what makes you think you're special?”

“Now if that's the support that's been given to probationary teachers, no wonder a lot of our teachers are feeling that they don't know where to go next,” the union official added. 

READ MORE: LETTERS: We must change ethos of how schools operate to reduce pupil violence

Earlier in the session, Dr Colin  Morrison, Co-Director, Children's Parliament told the MSPs that pupils were still reeling from the impact of Covid and lockdown when many schools and nurseries were closed. 

“The closure of early years, the closure of community-based services for the most vulnerable families, that's kind of coming home to roost now.” 

He said there was a “significant minority of three, four, five and six-year-olds, “who do not access green space or a garden at all in a week.”

“These children are behaving in these ways because their lived experience has been so shut down,” he added.

Dr Joan Mowat, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Strathclyde University cautioned against taking a “zero tolerance” approach to bad behaviour. 

”There has been research that has shown that these policies just do not work in the long term. 

“And I also think that the word consistent needs to be considered very carefully. Because to me you need to be consistent in your approach to teaching treating every child as an individual, and taking account of their individual circumstances. 

“That does not mean going light on them. But if you have an approach, where consistent means that every time X happens, Y happens, that is not actually in the best interest of children or their rights.” 

There was broad agreement that exclusions were sometimes necessary but only as a last resort. 

“I think in the past, we've been far too quick to go to exclusions,” Dr Mowat said. “And I know, as a deputy head, I was under a lot of pressure to exclude children. And sometimes I had to work very, very hard to explain to a member of staff why I didn't think it was the appropriate thing to do in a particular context.”