THE Dunblane massacre has led to a school culture where parents find it difficult to approach their children's teachers, MSPs have been told.

The 1996 massacre, one of the deadliest firearms incidents in UK history, saw gunman Thomas Hamilton kill 16 children and one teacher at Dunblane Primary School, near Stirling, before committing suicide.

Since then, schools across Scotland have been made much more secure with many erecting perimeter fences and installing door entry systems.

However, Iain Ellis, chairman of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, warned the changes had made school staff much less approachable.

He said: "Things have actually changed over the years and you have to go back to the pre-Dunblane days. I hate to bring that up, but back then you could approach teachers when your kids were going into the school.

"Since Dunblane..... it is very hard to get to teachers now. You have got to go through headteachers to get to a teacher so that bit of personal relationship actually dwindled quite a bit after that.

"It is very hard to see a teacher now and you virtually have to get an appointment when you used to be able to get a two minute discussion before the day started or after the day ended."

Mr Ellis also blamed the growing workload of teachers which has been made worse in recent years with the roll-out of a new curriculum and associated exams.

He added: "The workload is now vast and if you cannot get supply staff there is no spare time during the school day to release a teacher so it is very hard to engage.

"Parental involvement is actually going down in Scotland rather than up. Part of the issue is because of the workload that schools are now having through the budget restraints."

Mr Ellis made his comments as part of an evidence session to the Scottish Parliament's education committee, which is looking at the progress being made by the Scottish Government in reducing the educational attainment gap.

The committee also heard that many schools still saw parents as a "nuisance" rather than an integral part of the learning process.

Eileen Prior, executive director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said: "The primary factor is the lack of partnership between many schools and their parent group.

"Education should be a shared endeavour, but unfortunately we are in a culture now where many teachers simply want parents to let them get on with their job.... and I don't think that's good enough.

"There is a great deal of work to be done in teacher education in ensuring that as our teachers are educated they also understand the critical role that families play..... and also our school leaders because you get the sense in some of our schools that parents are a nuisance."

Ms Prior said better parental involvement and engagement would improve attendance and attainment and make schools a better place to be.

The committee went on the discuss a survey compiled on their behalf which showed that nearly 90 per cent of parents whose children were educated in the private sector agreed that information from the school helped them support their child's learning compared to 61 per cent in the state sector.

Dr Sarah Morton, co-director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at Edinburgh University, said the survey results was a demonstration of the different approaches taken by schools.

She told MSPs: "The fundamental model of fee-paying schools is different because the parents are customers and in mainstream education it is a completely different basis for the transaction.

"There is still a sense that parents are maybe seen as a bit of a nuisance in lots of schools and there is a bit of trying to hold people at arms length and we don't have a real culture of keeping parents onside which of course the independent sector schools absolutely have to have."