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School violence was the first topic on this week’s BBC Debate Night programme. As one of the panellists on the show, I wasn’t surprised, because this has become one of the most serious, pressing, and challenging issues in Scottish education.

The most recent addition to the ever-increasing evidence pile has come from Channel 4, which used FOI requests to access information on violent incidents that had been reported to the Health and Safety Executive. The research found that “there were 490 injuries to school staff reported in Scotland with ‘violence’ listed as the cause”, which is a higher rate than that recorded in Wales or any English region. The data confirmed that the majority of these incidents – around two-thirds – happened in primary schools.

But this really is just the latest contribution to an increasingly concerning national picture. Pretty much every newspaper and broadcaster in the country has covered school violence in some shape or form, and The Herald has been no exception: nearly two years ago, for example, we reported on shocking new data from the EIS and warned that it must be a wake-up call........

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