PRIMARY school teachers are twice as likely to be attacked by pupils than staff at secondary schools.
New figures show that 5396 primary staff in Scotland have been assaulted or abused over the past three years, compared with 2540 secondary teachers.
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said the figures, collated from local authorities, were a sad reflection of modern society.
He said: “This is astonishing and disturbing. If youngsters are already showing signs of violence at primary school then there has to be a concern things will only get worse.”
Philip Parkin, of teachers’ union Voice, added that the number of attacks might be even higher than the figures suggest.
He said: “There are concerns some schools are covering up incidents.
“There has been an increase in the general level of poor parenting and we have to do something about that.”
Education Secretary Michael Russell said that the Government is working to improve behaviour in schools.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article