Children with mental health issues should receive more support at school, a Fife councillor has claimed.
Levenmouth member Colin Davidson has called for specialist counsellors to be based in high schools to ensure youngsters receive help when they need it.
The move would also help cut the number of school exclusions as the underlying causes of disruptive behaviour would be dealt with.
Mr Davidson was speaking as new figures revealed the number of exclusions from Levenmouth’s secondary schools more than doubled in a year.
In 2015-16, 43.9 out of every 1,000 pupils at Kirkland and Buckhaven high schools were excluded compared with 47 Fife-wide.
By the following year, Kirkland and Buckhaven had closed and pupils were merged into the new Levenmouth Academy.
Exclusions for 2016-17 had shot up to 99.2 per 1,000 pupils, compared to 41.7 for Fife as a whole.
Mr Davidson expressed concern at the numbers, which he described as “very, very high”.
The Labour councillor said: “A lot of these exclusions are mental health-related and I would ask that they are looked at by dealing with the underlying issues.”
The former teacher added: “I know how difficult it is working with disruption. We want an instant resolution but counselling will look at deep-rooted issues.
“A lot of schools have full-time counsellors working on campus and it’s producing excellent results.”
Alan Brown, Levenmouth Academy depute rector, said the school is in the process of employing the Our Minds Matter framework which saw two counsellors coming to the school to work with children whose parents abuse alcohol and drugs.
An art therapist also attends to help those affected by childhood trauma.
He said: “We have a lot going on but we would like to see more people in school. It could be a five-day-a-week job.
“I work hard to keep children in school and I’ve set up local learning hubs for certain young people.”
Other strategies include S1 nurture teams and personalised curricula for some pupils which involves working part of the time in the community and the remainder in school with one-to-one support.
Last week, the Scottish Government’s Mental Health Minister Maureen Watt said every child should have access to emotional and mental well-being in school.
Ministers are now carrying out an audit of school-based counselling.
A survey by the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) suggested two thirds of teachers felt ill-equipped to deal with pupils’ mental health problems.
