A comprehensive set of figures for violent incidents against school staff in Dundee have been supplied by the City Council in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from D C Thomson:The headline figure is a total of 557 violent incidents against School staff, mainly teachers.
This is broken down by types of establishment as follows
Pre-school centres of education - 6
Primary schools - 283
Secondary schools - 112
Special schools - 146
Offsite centres - 2
Behavioural support - 8
Total 557
I am surprised and alarmed about three aspects of these figures.
Firstly there is more than a doubling of reported incidents compared with previously figures released to DC Thomson in 2009 which were as follows:
2009/10 - 557
2009 - 276
2008 - 245
2007 - 345
2006 - 353
This apparent surge in reported incidents is very concerning. Unless I can be convinced that this has been caused by changes to the system of recording of violent incidents, it is hard not to conclude that we have a growing problem in our schools. A steeply increasing number of violent incidents against school staff is unacceptable, although I concede that this still involves only a minority of our pupils.
In addition, I am very concerned that a majority of the incidents recorded were in our primary schools (5-12 year olds). This does not bode well for the future.
I also notice that the Police were only notified 5 times from those 557 incidents. Does this indicate that our schools are overly reluctant to involve the police? I wonder how many of these incidents, had they taken place on the street, would have been deemed to be common assaults.
We don't want a blackboard jungle in our schools. What measures will the Education Convener, Liz Fordyce, introduce to respond to my concerns, which I am sure are shared by many parents in the city?
