Violence has brought our schools to a crisis, but does SNP even care?

It began when the cop told the teacher they’d recently attended a violent school assault. A teenager had punched a teacher square in the face. There was a "campus cop" in the school, but that hadn’t stopped the incident.

The teacher explained the number of special needs children in schools was growing rapidly, and how - despite wanting to help these kids - there just wasn’t the support.

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In their inner city school, there are no additional support needs (ASN) staff - none - even though numbers of special needs kids increased every year. Some kids with special needs can be violent.

The psychologist chipped in explaining that Scotland - like most western countries - is in the grip of a child mental health crisis, yet waiting times for kids to see someone like my pal is anywhere between four to six months, if you’re lucky. Something terrible could happen in that time, they added.

The three commiserated with each other about the rotten state of Scotland - and I thought to myself that as a journalist this conversation neatly expresses what we in the media call "a perfect storm’"

Each element of the conversation speaks to the other elements. The police officer’s experience explains the teacher’s experience, and the psychologist’s experience brings everything together.

Come Sunday, nursing a rotten mid-life hangover, I flicked through the newspapers. In The Herald, one report reflected everything I’d heard the day before. It was headlined "Scottish education is broken: union slams school violence".

While focused on Fife, the report could have been about anywhere in Scotland. The head of the EIS teaching union in Fife, Jane McKeown, spoke candidly about levels of “extreme violence”. She explained: “It’s particularly lots of children with unmet additional support needs.”

Teachers are “at the end of their tether”. In Fife, 61% have been assaulted. In one school, McKeown watched teachers crying because of the “levels of abuse they were experiencing”. Almost two-thirds of Fife teachers now consider quitting.

“I honestly believe that education is broken in Scotland,” she said.

Here’s some figures: between 2013-2023, the number of ASN teachers fell from 3290 to 2898 - a 11.9% cut.

However, in the same period the number of children with additional support needs almost doubled from 131,593 to 259,036 - that’s equivalent to 36.7% of the mainstream school roll.

Violence in schools rose by 53% between 2019-2023.

Clearly, children with special needs - such as autism - acting violently in schools with little ASN support aren’t to blame. The broken system is at fault. We cannot make these children scapegoats for failed government policy.

It takes around 18 weeks for 83.8% of kids with mental health problems to be seen. The Scottish Government target is 90% within 18 weeks.

What shamefully pitiful ambition. Imagine yourself as the parent of a child beginning to act violently and you must wait four and half months for a psychologist. As a father, I cannot express the fear, panic and guilt that would instil in me. Maybe I could go private. Many aren't so lucky.

My teacher friend added another fact into that Saturday afternoon conversation. Set aside the issue of parents struggling to get their children mental health support: teachers are just as desperate.

My friend explained it was all but impossible for kids in their school to see a child psychologist. A referral takes months and the one child psychologist tasked to their school has responsibilities for many other schools.

Yesterday, there were reports that in Tayside only the most urgent child mental health cases are being seen. So kids on the autistic spectrum face longer waits. Tayside saw a 400% increase in referrals, coupled with a shortage of medical staff trained for such issues.

There’s a very clear solution: hire more ASN teachers. This isn’t rocket science. You don’t need to be some government special adviser - usually a party loyalist with a second-class honours degree in politics and economics, and zero life experience - to work out what to do.

Teachers, cops and NHS professionals are drowning, and Scottish Government ministers are standing on the seashore waving, all smiles and no lifebelt.

It’s an egregious affront to the common sense of every citizen that the Scottish Government dares even claim to put either children or education first. Ministers do not care. If they did, matters would not be as they are.

Our police force is equally mistreated. Cops have been turned into psychiatric nurses, endlessly looking after the mentally-ill rather than fighting crime, as social work is also broken.

There is a growing mental health crisis in our schools (Image: Newsquest)

The Scottish Government has allowed public services - policing, health, and education - to deteriorate so badly that dominoes are now falling and knocking others over. We’re in a runaway crisis-loop. Everyone is suffering. Yet the one group which should never suffer - children - is at the sharp end.

My teacher friend explained there are qualified teachers queuing up for jobs that don’t exist. Fewer than one in five trained primary teachers have permanent posts. Universities keep churning out teachers with no prospect of employment, encouraged by the Scottish government.

To lure someone into a dedicated career, when the chances of employment are slim, is simply cruel. Meanwhile, Scotland’s biggest council,  Glasgow, wants to cut teacher numbers by 450.

How does any of this make sense? It doesn’t. Can those young graduate teachers without work not be given meaningful employment in schools helping out where there’s no ASN staff?

Clearly, ASN is a specialist role, but for pity’s sake, something is better than nothing. And those teachers want to work in education - not hospitality or retail where their training is useless.

We all know how this will unfold. Eventually something dreadful will happen in a school. We’ll engage in a moment of collective horror, the government will make promises, and we’ll return to the SNP’s default setting: steady downward decline.

That we’ve allowed such failure to take root says something terribly dark about the value we place on our own children as a society.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer at Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics