Meeting of the Parliament 24 May 2023
I recognise Mr Rennie’s comments, although I will not comment on his experience in school. The issue that he outlines is reflected in some of my experience in the classroom. I recognise that schools need to put in place behaviour management policies that support their staff, and I agree that the experience can be deeply frustrating for classroom teachers. I heard that in Mr Kerr’s response about my comments to the teaching union’s conference on this very issue. Staff need to feel supported, and so do our young people.
I provide all of that context for where we are now, because we should all reflect on how behaviour in Scotland’s schools and the response from the authorities has changed in the past 40 years.
I have been in post for nearly two months and, during that time, I have made it absolutely clear that behaviour—that is broader than school violence—relationships and wellbeing in our schools are among my top priorities. That is why I have already engaged with the Association of Directors of Education, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and our teaching unions, and why I have visited a number of schools in the past seven weeks to ask the staff directly about their experiences of behaviour and about the culture in their schools following the pandemic.
Stephen Kerr hit on a number of relevant points, the first being attendance. I receive fortnightly updates on national attendance, and it is interesting to look at the changes in relation to the year groups who experienced the start of lockdown measures when they were going through, for example, the transition from primary into secondary school. We are starting to see some of that show up in attendance evidence. We also know that kids from poorer backgrounds are much more likely not to attend school and not to engage with the system, so it is important that we reflect in Government that there are different challenges for different pupils in different parts of the country.