Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2024 [Draft]
I declare an interest as a former councillor on Moray Council. I will look at the matter from that perspective.
I start by acknowledging the fact that many pupils in our schools are well behaved, which I agree with the cabinet secretary about. That is stated in the report “Behaviour in Scottish Schools 2023”. Although I cannot ignore—and most of us are not ignoring—the worrying rise in disruption across all areas surveyed in the report, we must remember that we have many exceptional young people across Scotland. I am glad that my colleague spoke about sport and the young people who are doing so well in it.
As others have said, the report highlights that low-level and more serious disruptive behaviours, including physical and violent aggression, are increasing in Scottish schools. That view is shared by people who I have spoken to in recent days in Moray and in Argyll and Bute.
The cabinet secretary held a number of summits on behaviour in schools, but the summary of those summits, which was sent as a guidance note to councils in January, does not fully correspond with the discussions that I hear on the ground across the Highlands and Islands, or with the worrying survey on violent and aggressive behaviour by the EIS’s Aberdeen local association.
Let me be absolutely clear about what I am hearing now and what I encountered when I was chair of the children and young people’s services committee on Moray Council. Teachers are feeling traumatised—many fear for their safety and many are scared to go to work. Although I accept Willie Rennie’s point about the complexities of additional support needs and social and emotional behavioural needs, that does not take away from what teachers are experiencing on the ground every day. The sharp rise in disruptive behaviours since 2016 is deeply troubling, and a contact told me earlier this week that things are getting so bad that more and more emergency meetings of leadership groups are being triggered over the issue.
Turning briefly to the EIS Aberdeen local association report, it bothers me, as Liam Kerr said, that the cabinet secretary implied that it would be for Aberdeen City Council to respond, not the SNP Government. I can imagine the collective dismay—