The reported cases of assaults on teachers continue to vary wildly across the country. There was an overall increase of 15 per cent last year in incidents ranging from physical assaults to damage to teachers’ property.
Varying definitions of what constitutes an assault have dogged the statistics which is why the Scottish Executive decided to stop publishing them as “unreliable”. Instead, the results of a new official survey of teachers’ classroom experiences will be published next month.
The latest figures were unearthed by the Tories under a freedom of information request. They show incidents of physical violence against teachers in Moray soared by 452 per cent to 188 and plummeted in Glasgow by 55 per cent to 64 in 2004-05.
