Voilent assaults in school

[Liverpool2025]

Two in the past week. Primary.

I feel like it's been done to death on here but really, what are we doing to our young people?! Why is no one responsible for keeping children safe in school.

Its not just pupils being assaulted. My niece is completing her teaching degree.
She's had things thrown at her, been bitten, kicked and punched.

Teachers are limited what they can do and the parents dont care

Parents can do nothing. Schools can do nothing. The Scottish government doesn’t give a damn. What can be done? People keep voting for the SNP, who keep letting your kids be battered.

I'm just not sure how it's legal.

Well the child can be charged with assault but this is meaningless when the SNP have taken away all consequences with the charge. Some MSPs are more strident than others on this. Much as it pains me to say it, like women’s rights the Tory party are doing best at standing up for our kids welfare, Willie Rennie of the Lib Dems too.

I mean how is it legal that violent children are kept in school to hurt others again and again- even in jails, prisoners are protected from violent people and physical assaults but in schools, children are not.

Why is that legal?

Well this is Scotland where none of the politicians in charge have the intelligent I think through the consequences of their political policies. They have a total tunnel vision in thinking about the violent thug who’s interests are to stay in school rather than go home - where they have likely learned this violence from - and not the hundreds of thousands of kids who suffer due to either experiencing the violence first hand, witnessing it or having their education disrupted by the teaching staff constantly dealing with behaviour instead of educating.

The above only relates to violent thugs. There are clearly children who due to ASD etc cannot cope with mainstream and act out their overwhelming distress with violence. I am totally sympathetic to these children and their families but they don’t belong in mainstream at all and need to be given an education that meets their needs as their violence has exactly the same effect on the class.

But the Scottish government has banned any other approach. The violent childrenMUST be kept in mainstream as it is more INCLUSIVE to do so. Someone is clearly going to get killed at some point and I hope their families sue the heck out of the Scottish government. This is the only way I can see this terrible situation ending.

Sadly, I agree.

My daughter was assaulted by a boy in her class. He ran up to her from behind totally unprovoked and fly kicked her leg/knee (P7)
This was a targeted attack and planned as the group of boys he was with were standing watching waiting for it to happen.

She called my husband and he immediately went to the school and spoke to the head.

Whilst many assurances were made at the time none of them actually happened, in the end he was given "15 mins reflection time", yes 15 mins!!

The Scottish school system is abysmal when it comes to disciplining children with unnaceptable behaviour.

Our council did a survey of teachers which claimed that 80% of teachers had been verbally or physically assaulted in the past 5 years. I think the other 20% are in denial or have been told not to admit to it by HTs pretending their school is fine - I've worked for one of those.

I retired 3 years ago, intending to do supply at my old school but never did.
How is it that many workplaces can have signs that say zero tolerance of any kind of abuse to their staff, but this doesn't apply in schools? Kids know they can get away with it - we've had pupils say things like "I can get you to lose your job" etc etc.

I had a pupil throw a jigsaw piece at my face, while laughing. It narrowly missed my eye. When I said I wasn't happy having me in my class, I was told I had to teach the pupils assigned to me. He wasn't even excluded.

Kids know they can get away with anything and it's only going to get worse.

The no consequences at home,no consequences at school filters down as a lot of our city centres have become like the wild west and again no consequences as hardly any police patrols on foot.

Yes.

I also can't let me kids out to play independently as I'd planned, as young people who commit violent assaults on the street are let out on bail to carry on with their lifes.

I'll never vote SNP again.

It's a UK wide problem,gangs knife crime and just a general I can do what I want attitude in some people kids and adults alike.

They've ruined so much but education is what was the final straw for me. Teaching kids absolute nonsense, with basic scientific facts going out the window and this pandering to violence. The problem is the government have been so sneaky in saying they provide "guidelines" so any criticism of the policies they just pass the buck back and blame the local authorities, who blame the schools.

Don't get me started on the "Every behaviour in a communication" malarkey.
Who thinks up this stuff?

It has to stop.
I wonder why the SG are finally addressing the issue when it's been blindingly obvious that the pandering and soft touch approach would be a disaster.
Hmm aren't there elections next year

Goodness knows how this genie will ever be put back in the bottle of sanity.

I really don’t think they are addressing it though are they? I read the ‘behaviour in schools action plan’ over to cover and it’s a load of blah, blah, blah. Utterly meaningless nonsense, produced no doubt at great expense by a member of the lanyard classes who has never once entered a classroom. Unless it says that councils will be given funding to reopen pupil referral units and specialist schools and schools will be encouraged to decant violent and disruptive children there nothing will happen (and it doesn’t say that). Have any teachers read the ‘action plan’ and felt it contained anything useful whatsoever? Anything resembling ‘action’ or a ‘plan’?

I've just come off the teaching register. The report of the Dundee case did for me.

It used to be that the police would avoid becoming involved with school-related incidents when the perpetrator was under 16. Now, even if they're arrested, sentencing guidelines seem to mean that those under 25 are highly unlikely to have any kind of meaningful punishment.

Local Authorities keep stressing the importance of keeping the miscreants in school. They don't want to think about the effect on other children.

This started a while back. I miscarried after being punched in the stomach in the noughties. (The only mitigation is that I was very early on in the pregnancy and the miscreant didn't know that I was pregnant.)

The two male teachers who came to my assistance were also punched. We all made statements to the police. There was no action taken. The police claimed that all the paperwork had been lost.

A while after, I got a phone call from SACRO wanting me to have a "restorative meeting" with the miscreant. He'd explained that he'd been the "victim of a homophobic assault" and that I'd "got in the way".

Reality: I was minding my own business in my classroom at break. A boy came running in; the miscreant came running after him; I tried to keep out of his way, given that I'd got a faint positive pregnancy test and was waiting to re-test.

The 15 yr old miscreant deliberately punched me in the stomach. I swear that he was grinning. He was certainly grinning when he punched the two male teachers who came in to help.

Later, he was admitted to a practical course at college. I heard that he was thrown out for picking up a pair of scissors and threatening another student.

Years later, I heard that this now grown man was boasting about punching me in the stomach. When I found out, I asked the pupils who were laughing about it to relay to the thug that he should expect to hear from my solicitor. (Yes, I was bluffing.) He fled to Aberdeen.

In 2001, another 15 yr old boy punched out one of my male colleagues. The parents tried to have my colleague charged. When they police told them that there was no charge to answer, the parents complained to the ed dept and had him suspended. (He was later reinstated.) In the meantime, they also notified the tabloids.

My colleague was doorstepped on a Saturday morning and had his face plus the parents' accusations plastered all over the front of a Sunday tabloid.

I've relayed these experiences in Mumsnet before, but I'm repeating them in response to people stating that it's all the fault of the SNP. They sure as hell haven't helped matters, but the rot started a good while ago. Now that I think of it, the first time that I faced a pupil with a knife was the 1990s.

Most of the violence was brushed under the carpet. Things might well be getting worse, but at least it's now harder for the authorities to hide it.

Even so, it's not all publicised. The last knife incidents that I recall while I was in my permanent teaching post happened about 2017. In fact, one wasn't actually a knife - a first yr boy used a screwdriver to threaten a first yr girl.

The mantra is: "A child cannot learn if he's not in the classroom." Shame about the other children having their learning disrupted.

Oh no one ever thinks about the rest of the kids in the classroom. It’s all about how they can best pander to the bully.

Not dealing with violent behaviour early on surely just reinforces the behaviour - is there any evidence that reduced sentencing for people under 25 reduces reoffending? It's a bizarre policy given that under 25s can still vote, run for parliament, join the armed forces or indeed be teachers, doctors or lawyers. If you're not mature enough to be fully responsible for your own criminal actions you definitely should be barred from any sort of public office.

I'm unaware of any evidence. I'm a cynic and tend to think that it's just a way of cutting back on the expense of keeping someone in prison.

Unfortunately, a young relative of mine has entangled herself with a bad 'un. His family is involved in drug dealing. He's beaten my relative and a shed mysteriously went on fire after her parents tried to get her and her baby away from him.

A local police officer dealt with the beating by suggesting that my relative's middle-aged father should give the miscreant "a doing".

The thug has had community service at least twice. When he failed to turn up, the court dealt with it by...giving him more community service.

He finally got a short prison sentence after driving under the influence of drugs and assaulting the police officer who arrested him.

It used to be that people wouldn't want to be secondary teachers because of rowdy pupils, then that filtered down to top primary, now it's infants and even nursery. My friend is a PSA and has to work 2:1 with a P1 pupil who regularly hits, kicks, bites and punches them as well as calling them every swear word under the sun. Why on God's earth do any politicians think this is remotely acceptable?

My daughter is a nurse who works with quite a few colleagues from African countries. They are absolutely appalled at what their own children are reporting back about daily life in Scottish schools. That would not be tolerated in their countries - in fact, it would never occur to children there to be disrespectful to adults.

I feel sorry for children who have to be evacuated from classrooms on a daily basis due to the behaviour of one or two pupils. Yet, they're back in the same class again the next day.

It's a complete shitshow.

https://www.gov.scot/news/building-positive-relationships-in-schools/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK-gcljbGNrAr6BAmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEehAqVkJPeJ6Gn-ox4RDpGKIDWIuBMG50SY9q_Va_U1HpiXDk9LUXbDEDMYws_aem_7OKpgmwtJRQ6-0UZqXm65QLatest guidance

It is the closing of alternative provision that is the problem.

Smaller classes are always better, for everyone. Yet we have a push to have children in busy, large classes. The latest publication pushes for this too.

I can't see local authorities needing to report on pupil on pupil violence but perhaps I've missed it. Adding on Seemis is mentioned but what's the point if no actions to keep pupils safe are made?!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kwqvv3lno

Im not a big Tory fan but Miles Briggs utterly nails it in the above article. Teachers don’t need yet more waffle l. They need a clear timeline on how they can permanently exclude these children.

It was full of phrases like "There will be consequences" but what are these consequences?

It will be like the CfE - roll something out but don't tell schools how to implement it and then blame them if it doesn't work.