More than 70 new projects have been introduced in Fife schools to improve discipline and behaviour in the past year.
In addition, two schools in the Levenmouth area are piloting a systematic, whole-school approach to preventing disruption.
There has been a 57 per cent rise in reported incidents of violence against staff, up from 414 to 650 in 2001-2002. Primary schools had the largest rise with the number of incidents reported by teaching and non-teaching staff up from 168 to 294.
Helen Law, chair of children’s services, believes the rise is partly due to better procedures for reporting violence with staff being encouraged to log incidents.
“We will continue to encourage rigorous reporting of incidents and would expect a potential further increase next year in the number of reports as schools and staff become confident in using the procedure,” Ms Law said.
* Michael Russell, the SNP’s education spokesman, has tabled a series of parliamentary questions in an attempt to clarify the full scale of the problem.
