The fight between Bailey Gwynne and the schoolboy who stabbed him to death was “a fairly classic tussle you might see between boys in any school”, the man charged with investigating the incident has told TESS.

However, one life was lost and a 16-year-old was jailed for nine years because of a knife bought for £40 on Amazon.

And now, Andrew Lowe, whose report into the tragic incident was published last week, has issued a stark warning to schools: whatever your intake, however middle class your area, such an incident could happen among your pupils, too.

“This tragedy has revealed these incidents don’t only happen in inner cities and troubled neighbourhoods,” he told TESS.

“My message would be this: it is you in the schools, who think this has nothing to do with you, that need to listen.”

Mr Lowe said that the recommendations in his report - including the need to make it easier for pupils to report information about pupils with weapons to staff - were relevant to all schools (see box, below).

Bailey’s school, Cults Academy in Aberdeen, might at one time have considered itself immune from such an incident - its pupils achieve some of the best grades in Scotland and in 2008 it was Sunday Times state school of the year. But the unthinkable happened, said Mr Lowe, and had pupils reported that Bailey’s killer carried weapons in school, the incident would have been “potentially predictable and avoidable”.

Assailant a ‘quiet boy’

Those who knew the attacker had seen him “as a quiet boy who felt empowered by having this [knife] in his pocket” and did not see him as a threat, said the former director of social work, who is the chair of child and adult protection for Renfrewshire.

He added: “A school is a community, and pupils and teachers and auxiliary staff all have a duty to each other to make sure school is safe. One of the things about this tragedy was that people knew this young man carried weapons, but did not think it necessary to inform teachers.”

Figures on knife incidents in schools collected since Bailey died also demonstrate that it was not an isolated incident, he said.

When the report into the killing was published last Tuesday, police revealed that they had attended 15 knife-related incidents in Aberdeen city schools in the 10 months between Bailey’s death in October 2015 and August of this year. TESS has learnt that, over the same period, police attended schools in Aberdeenshire 16 times owing to incidents with knives, and on 10 occasions in schools in Moray (see graphic, below).

Incident was ‘handled well’

Mr Lowe said in his report that the stabbing was “handled well by all agencies” and could not have been predicted or avoided on the day. Bailey was stabbed at school by a fellow pupil on 28 October 2015 following “an unplanned, spontaneous conflict” that emerged rapidly out of “unexceptional banter”, said the report.

His killer, who is aged 16 and cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for nine years in April after being found guilty of culpable homicide at the High Court in Aberdeen.

Andy Smith, president of School Leaders Scotland and headteacher of Carluke High in South Lanarkshire, said no headteacher would be complacent in the wake of the tragedy. Heads across the country would be looking at their practices to see if there was anything that they could do to “tighten things up”.

He added: “The number one principle is always make sure young people feel safe and protected, and a headteacher will do anything they can do to ensure that happens.

“While these tragic circumstances happen rarely, they are a reminder that we need to ensure that young people in our care are looked after as best as they possibly can be.”