Willie Rennie has called on the Scottish Government and Scotland’s education leaders to do more to tackle the increasing problem of violence in schools.

He wrote in the Daily Record that images shown to him by a constituent of a young girl being kicked in the face by another will stay with him forever.

He said that there was a “conspiracy of silence” as those responsible didn’t admit to the extent of the problem, which led to staff at sone school taking industrial action because they didn’t feel their pleas for intervention were being heard.

He wants action to tackle a problem which has become much more severe since the pandemic closed schools for extended periods. Not only that, but there are fewer experienced staff around to help:

There has been a fall in specialist teachers, long waits for mental health treatment, a reduction in classroom assistants, insufficient educational psychologists and not enough staffed spaces to provide appropriate support to pupils. The list goes on. That needs to change.

But, he says, intervention has to be inclusive:

I am a liberal and I believe in tackling the root causes of behaviour rather than simply punishing the symptoms, so I support inclusion and the restorative approach adopted in Scottish education.

Some say schools don’t exclude enough, that they are a soft touch, that the offenders must be punished and the police should be called. It would be a sign of a failed system if the only answer was increasing numbers of young people condemned to the criminal justice system, probably for life.

He gives examples of how some schools have turned things around:

I visited a school which had experienced big issues with behaviour and performance. A new headteacher was brought in who built relationships with parents, engaged with their lives and brought in the Aberlour charity, using the government’s Pupil Equity Fund.

Aberlour gave the young people the tools to cope with the pressures of school and family life. The new leadership and the targeted support improved the performance of the school and pupils.

Bullying and violence, or the threat of violence, at school casts a long shadow. I know that the issues I have had with overwhelming anxiety throughout my life are related to my experience at school. The trauma of being on constant high alert, of not knowing whether round the next corner or on the next flight of stairs another group of people would be waiting to kick, trip, push, slap. The actual incidents of violence were more weekly than daily, but the verbal abuse was daily. One day in first year English, we were reading a poem out loud around the class. My line was “I want a yak.” Quick as a flash the guy sitting in front of me said “I always thought you were one.” A new nickname that stuck around to the end of my school days, was born. Had we had Google then, I might have quickly realised that yaks are actually kind of cute, but that’s not the point.

I went through three years of this at secondary school and it wasn’t taken seriously at all. There was one incident where one person ruined my coat with blue ink in class. Apparently there was not enough evidence to take any action against the person sitting behind me whose hands were covered with blue ink.

There was very much a culture that was reinforced in all areas of my life that if you were getting bullied, then it must be your fault. And sometimes the teachers seemed to amplify and reinforce the bullies’ words.

Now every school, every local authority has an anti bullying policy which is on one level reassuring. But policies only mean anything if the schools have the resources to implement them properly.

We do not need a significant part of this generation of young people growing up traumatised by violence and bullying in school. It obviously isn’t good for those involved – whether as perpetrator or victim at the time and or the rest of their lives.

If leaders in education and Government don’t take action to deal with this, they will be setting up all sorts of problems for the future.

When I was going through it, there was nobody speaking up for me. I hope that Willie’s intervention will signal to young people that someone in public life cares. They should also be reassured that when Willie gets an idea in his head, he basically doesn’t give up until something is done on it. His dogged determination whether it’s on childcare, nursery provision, college places, free school meals is well known.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings