UNRULY PUPILS are disrupting the education of their classmates in too many Scottish schools, according to Scotland’s chief schools inspector, writes Steve Bargeton, political editor.

Graham Donaldson found that roughly one in 12 secondary schools, and one in 30 primary schools, had important weaknesses in pupil behaviour.

Commenting on the Executive’s disciplinary policy he said, “In too many schools low-level disruptive behaviour is a significant problem that prevents children from learning as much as they could.

“Very challenging behaviour from a few pupils also continues to cause concern.

“It is not down to teachers alone to deal with discipline. At an individual and organisational level we all have a role to play.

“Parents, school management and children’s support and care services must all work together to ensure that our children get the most from their education.”

Mr Donaldson said the Executive’s strategy “Better Behaviour, Better Learning” was helping to tackle indiscipline.

“Evidence gathered independently through the inspection process shows that most Scottish schools and most Scottish teachers manage these issues well and that most Scottish children behave well at school,” he said.

Areas for improvement included a need for consistency in dealing with discipline issues, making the most of curriculum flexibility and involving parents more closely in promoting good behaviour.

Commenting on the secondary and primary schools with “important weaknesses in pupil behaviour” Mr Donaldson said, “In almost all of these cases within both sectors, these relatively widespread discipline problems coincided with a lack of a clear and consistent lead at all levels on how to deliver an appropriate classroom experience for these pupils.

“Relationships between senior managers and teachers were often strained.

“Teachers were uncertain how to promote positive behaviour or had little confidence in so doing.

“In many cases, they had adopted only a limited range of teaching strategies so that pupils, even well-behaved ones, were not well-motivated in lessons.”

But while progress was being made in the classroom, there was still significant cause for concern at the behaviour of pupils outside the classroom.

“Many schools and authorities gave too little attention to ensuring good behaviour at breaks and on buses,” he said.

Mr Donaldson added, “While most schools made reference to promoting positive behaviour in their development plans, they often needed to do more to monitor the effectiveness of developments and to disseminate good practice.”

The SNP education spokesman, Fiona Hyslop, said, “Despite today’s HMIE report on progress of schools in this area, the Executive have once again failed to produce their annual statistics on indiscipline in schools. Peter Peacock can run but he can’t hide from his record forever.

“While I agree with the report today that there is good work being carried out in some schools across the country to combat indiscipline, we need action now to ensure that we spread any good practice more widely round the country.

“The minister should publish these statistics now.”

Scottish Tory education spokesman James Douglas Hamilton, said, “Over half of our schools have a discipline problem and 8% have a serious discipline problem and yet in Scotland we do not have any kind of scale on which to grade discipline problems, nor do we have central figures any more.

“Centrally held discipline figures are the only way to show the true picture of indiscipline in our schools, but the Labour/Lib Dem Executive has taken the ridiculous decision to stop collating and publishing them.

“The Executive thinks that by ignoring the figures the problem will go away.

“A member of school staff is assaulted every 12 minutes and yet permanent exclusions are down 40%.”