SHOCK HAS been expressed in Perth and Kinross after the local authority admitted that pupil attacks on teachers more than trebled in just three months.

A call was made for more power for head teachers as it was revealed that children are assaulting their teachers in huge numbers.

Perth and Kinross Council confirmed that assaults on teachers rose to 49 in the period December 2004 to February 2005, a huge increase from just 15 over the preceding three months.

The revelation prompted Douglas Taylor, Conservative candidate for Perth and North Perthshire, to demand that head teachers are allowed to decide whether pupils should be permanently excluded.

He said, “It is worrying that there has been a sharp increase, but I commend Perth and Kinross for being open with the number of attacks against teachers. It is the only way that the problem can be dealt with properly.

“This is in stark contrast to the Scottish Executive, which is burying its head in the sand on this important issue.

“I believe it is disgusting that there is an attack in a Scottish school against a member of staff every 12 minutes of the school day. How on earth can this be an environment to create a learning ethos?

“Despite thousands of physical attacks on teachers every year, only 176 are expelled. If attacking a teacher is not an expulsion offence what is? Something has to be done to restore the balance of discipline in our schools.”

The Conservatives have been critical of the Scottish Executive for no longer gathering figures on the number of attacks in schools, also claiming school indiscipline in Scotland has risen by 900% since 1999 and permanent exclusions are down from 292 to 176, a 40% drop between 2002-03 and 2003-04.

Mr Taylor continued, “We must take action to restore discipline in schools. Violence in our schools harms teachers, prevents good pupils from learning and saps morale.

“Schools should be run by teachers, not politicians, and we will give teachers back control of their classrooms so they can enforce discipline. Head teachers will have the right to permanently expel unruly and violent pupils.”

A Perth and Kinross Council spokeswoman said, “The council takes incidents of violence and aggression against teachers and other school staff very seriously, and works closely with staff, head teachers, professional associations and unions to develop the most appropriate ways of dealing with such incidents.

“Guidance and training have been provided to staff to empower and encourage them to report incidents where they feel it is appropriate to do so.”

The Scottish Executive no longer publishes annual statistics on assaults on school staff because it considered previous exercises to establish the number of physical and verbal attacks had been unreliable. It considered there were discrepancies between the recording methods of different education authorities.

A pupil swearing at a teacher may have been recorded as an incident of violence by one school but not by another, for example.

In the same way, a pupil swearing 10 times at a teacher may have been recorded as one incident of violence at one school but as 10 incidents at another.

Instead of an annual report with area breakdowns, the Executive is carrying out two longer-term studies.

One is examining teacher and pupil experiences of pupil behaviour and the second is a detailed study of discipline issues.

Although there is no longer an annual national report on assaults against staff, Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross and Fife councils all provided statistics on the situation in the 2003-04 term to The Courier in their areas last month.

Dundee and Angus councils provided figures only for assaults on teachers. Dundee’s 272 incidents showed a 14.7% rise from the previous session.

Angus recorded 72 incidents but a comparison with the previous year was not possible as in 2002-03 Angus provided figures on assaults on all school staff.

Perth and Kinross recorded 331 incidents (23.9% up) and Fife 887 incidents (50.8% up). These figures concerned all school staff, and in Fife’s case a spokeswoman said the increase reflected an improvement in reporting.