Behaviour lessons

The appalling violence and misbehaviour in Scotland’s schools finally reached BBC Scotland primetime news on Tuesday, thanks to Aberdeen teachers and their campaign.

Undoubtedly education managers and authorities could do a lot more to contain the problem, protect staff and allow well behaved pupils to continue their work undisturbed, but the root causes are more difficult to fix.

A November 2023 Scottish Government report on the problem said “participants in the interviews and focus groups focused on societal factors such as poverty and deprivation, and challenges associated with home and family life such as trauma and adverse childhood experiences and parenting, as the root causes of disruptive behaviour”,

Poverty and deprivation are factors but don’t explain why, in countries with real, desperate poverty, including Scotland in the eary 20th century, pupil behaviour is and was not an issue and education seen as vital by parents and children.

The answer lies in the second part of my quote: simple bad parenting, and social changes in the last 30 years.

The number of single parent families in the UK rose six-fold from 570,000 in 1971 to almost three million now and the number of families with both parents working full-time to fund the real terms doubling of housing cost, plus child care has also risen.

I don't know the answer, but I do know that until we honestly identify the problem and cause there will be no solution, and not only will we have generation of rootless, unemployable, depressed young people, nobody will want to join a once highly sought and valued profession: teaching.

Allan Sutherland Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire