Pupil's shocking attack on teacher shows SNP school violence guidance is a sick joke

Teachers are off work with stress and anxiety and many young people are routinely absent, some because they are too afraid to go to school

For some reason, three stories about Scottish education have jammed themselves together in my mind and lodged there like a bad tune I can’t get out of my head (say ‘Sugar, Sugar’).

The first is that story about the boy in Dundee who slammed his teacher’s head onto a concrete floor, leaving her unconscious in a pool of blood. The second is the release of the Scottish Government’s guidance on how teachers are supposed to deal, in 2025, with violence in schools. It’s called “Schools – fostering a positive, inclusive and safe environment: guidance”.

Now, call me brave but foolish, I have just spent an hour ploughing my way through its 47 pages, and, to be completely truthful, it’s left me feeling a wee bit bilious, because as I read it I couldn’t help but think of that poor woman in Dundee, lying on the floor covered in blood while the big lad who assaulted her sat at her desk saying she “deserved it”.

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Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth, seen visiting Madras College in St Andrews, needs to do more to ensure teachers and children alike are safe (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

Sorry for teacher and pupil

In the ‘ministerial foreword’ of the new document, Jenny Gilruth, who was, let’s remember, a teacher for a while before she gave that up for politics, says “I have listened to teachers, support staff and teaching unions who have shared their experiences with me...”

Odd, maybe, that parents and most importantly schoolchildren don’t make the cut, but it’s a real step forward for the SNP government to admit teachers might be worth listening to when schools are in trouble. I wonder if they listened to that teacher from Dundee.

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Of course, being an old retired teacher myself, while my first horrified thoughts were with the teacher, I also felt sorry for the violent boy who assaulted her because, of course, he should never have been anywhere near a mainstream school.

He has a very low IQ, is very neurodivergent and, most importantly, had been aggressive before. And you know, I don’t expect he was learning very much at school and, at points, I doubt if the rest of his class did either, particularly the ones who were scared of him.

Clichés, buzzwords and education-speak

The bilious Scottish Government guidance does say that “exclusion may be used as a last resort” but it suggests all sorts of other ways teachers can help disruptive or violent young people. Schools are advised to take “a child-centred approach when determining an appropriate response”; of course, “the appropriate response, even for the same child, may vary according to circumstances on the day”; teachers must always consider the underlying causes of the behaviour; and praise should be used as much as possible, praise that is specific and genuine (“Oh Donald, that was a fine right hook”).

Perhaps giving them a break from learning anything will help, or letting them out of class a couple of minutes early or, or… if it wasn’t such an awful collection of clichés, buzzwords, education-speak and – at points – silliness, it would be funny.

But of course it fits in with the current narrative in the relationship between the Scottish Government and the teaching profession, a narrative that eventually boils down to the government, bless them, telling teachers what they can do better.

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Everything will be ‘excellent’

Let us remember that the ‘Big Idea’ of the past few years has been the Scottish Centre for Teaching Excellence – things will get better in our schools if the teachers are more ‘excellent’, thus making them more equipped, one presumes, to pursue Scotland’s ‘Curriculum for Excellence’. Everything will just be ‘excellent’.

Meanwhile, the incidence of violence continues to escalate, and this new guidance will, I sadly predict, make no difference at all to that. Young people are routinely absent from schools, some because they are too afraid to go.

Teachers are off with stress and anxiety, including teachers who have taught brilliantly for decades in the past. No one wants to be a new teacher. Academic standards are dropping. Our schoolchildren are less happy than their European counterparts, but that’ll be because Scotland’s not independent, won’t it?

Apologies required

Here is my own ‘guidance’ document: “Many Scottish schools are in a very difficult and unsettled place. We will end the policy of the Presumption of Mainstreaming and introduce much more tailored, expert help for young people whose support needs are beyond the ken of the mainstream classroom.

“We apologise to teachers who have so bravely carried on teaching with disruptive pupils who, generally through no fault of their own, are incapable of learning in a mainstream environment.

“We apologise to the vast majority of young people who have had their educational opportunities damaged by this policy. And we apologise to the parents of all these young people.” It would then go on to say, among my own selection of appropriate consequences, that young people who assault teachers must be excluded (at least temporarily) from their school.

Sigh. Of course that’ll never happen. The huge monolith of the Scottish Educational Establishment, having created this 47-page wodge of words and worthiness, will move on.

The third thing that happened in Scottish education was the announcement of further expenditure on Gaelic medium education and on the place of Scots in the classroom. I have no problem with this.

Gaelic medium schools (there is to be a fourth in Glasgow) do very well, though one might ponder how their existence somewhat works against the comprehensive ‘mainstreaming’ principle. My grandparents and my parents all spoke the Doric and, even if Scots isn’t really a language, there’s no harm in young people knowing about it as a part of their cultural environment and heritage.

But it’s a wee thing, and a further diversion about Scottish exceptionalism. Really, Jenny, focus on what matters. Get a move oan, sort it oot and dinnae waste mair time.

Cameron Wyllie is a former head teacher. He writes a blog called A House in Joppa and is the author of a book called Is There A Pigeon in the Room? My Life in Schools