The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday June 18 2025 #Politics

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Wednesday.

00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined today by

00:08our political correspondent, Rachel Amory. And Rachel, we're going to talk to you about the

00:14front page effectively of today's Scotsman. We've led on new guidance issued by the Scottish

00:20Government around school behaviour. It has been a big ongoing issue over the past couple of years,

00:27we've reported extensively on it. And Jenny Gilruth was at a site visit yesterday to actually

00:35release the guidance. Now there has been some mixed responses, Rachel, to the guidance itself,

00:42but can you walk us through exactly what the guidance tries to help teachers with and tell

00:49them to do and just what some of the reaction has been to it? Yes, I'm sure you've seen the news

00:55reports over quite a while now, which sort of suggests there's escalating levels of classroom

01:00violence and bad behaviour in schools, particularly post-pandemic. Now there's been lots of talk about

01:06what does the government need to do about this? Does the government need to issue some guidance

01:10and step in here? And so that's what we've kind of been waiting for. Yesterday the Education Secretary

01:15Jenny Gilruth was visiting a primary school in Motherwell, where she published this national

01:19guidance for teachers on how to tackle this rising level of classroom violence. Unfortunately,

01:26the reaction from some areas has not been particularly positive. For example, the EIS,

01:32the large teaching union, has suggested that it will change very little because it's not being backed up

01:37with funding. If you look through the document as to what is actually being sort of suggested here,

01:43it is a lot of things that school teachers are probably already doing. It's things like suggesting that a

01:47child has to move seats if they're being badly behaved, for example, and having talks with the

01:54children and with their parents, for example. And when it comes to the most serious, violent,

01:58extreme cases of bad behaviour in schools, some of the suggestions include having a set of bullet

02:04points to remind them of the behaviour they should be should be using instead. So I think there's a lot of

02:09criticism, particularly from opposition parties and teaching unions, that perhaps this is not

02:14as far as they'd hoped it would be, and that it won't actually change very much in the long run,

02:19because it's already things that teachers are doing. It also does sort of set out why children

02:25might behave badly and, for example, might be showing off to friends or looking to get attention,

02:29for example, or maybe just don't understand the impact that their behaviour has. And when we're talking

02:34about experts in children, so teachers and other school staff, it's perhaps stating the obvious to them,

02:41and that's already things that they know. So I think if you look at the full document,

02:45it's perhaps not got a lot of new information for teachers to deal with.

02:50Rachel, I know that the reaction of the unions, they didn't seem wholly against what the Scottish

02:57Government had done, but there was a clear message around funding to actually put practical

03:04steps into action. Did you get that sense? And also, do you think there's anything in this

03:11document that maybe deals with some of the underlying issues that may have caused the spike

03:16in school violence, whether it's the COVID pandemic or otherwise?

03:19Yes, I think the teaching unions, they're not against what's being said, and they agree that things

03:25that are happening in the document should be happening, and it's how things should be approached.

03:30It's more that they want things to go a little bit further, and they also want to see money coming

03:34on the back of it. They're saying that shortages of teachers and school staff is really stretching

03:39their abilities to tackle bad behaviour in classrooms, and so having more permanent teachers,

03:45for example, and find classroom assistance to help is more what they're after at this point,

03:50so they want to see more funding. Unlikely that we're going to see that given the budget for this

03:55year has already been set, it's quite a long time output, we're going to see any updates on that.

04:00Of course, every government department is fighting each other for more and more cash,

04:03so unlikely that we are going to see more money coming in the back of all of this.

04:08Just on the subject of schools as well, Rachel, there's been a lot of debate in the wake of the

04:12Supreme Court gender ruling in April about how schools should approach the allocation of toilets.

04:18It has been one of the talking points that has come out the back. Do they need to provide single

04:25sex spaces? Can some of the schools that don't have single sex spaces stay with what they've already

04:31got? No clear answers necessarily, but there is that, sorry, the human rights campaign group,

04:39Sex Matters, has given the indication that some legal action may be in the pipeline if we're not

04:45seeing action or proper steps taken soon on the back of the judgment.

04:51Yes, if you remember very shortly after the UK Supreme Court judgment, there was also a Scottish

04:55court case which ruled that schools have to provide single sex spaces and toilets for pupils.

05:02This is the case down in the Borders that this came on the back of and a lot of schools are now being

05:06asked whether they have gender-neutral toilets, do they offer single sex toilet facilities, for example,

05:12and a lot are now trying to see what to do. But the thing is that a lot of them are looking to

05:16the government again for guidance. The government are saying that they are waiting for official

05:20guidance from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and so therefore there is kind of

05:24this sort of limbo at the moment where there's not national guidance because they're waiting for this

05:28and schools are kind of left having to deal with this sort of things themselves. Now the Education

05:33Secretary General Ruth, I did ask her about this yesterday, she did make the point this is the

05:37responsibility of councils. It is up to the individual school of states as to how things

05:41like that are managed but I think a lot of parents in women's rights groups are saying that they are

05:48angry at the lack of national guidance here. It's quite interesting that this morning you were saying

05:52that I think it's called a letter before action, it's a legal letter that's been sent to Scottish

05:57ministers from campaigners saying that they will take them back to court if they don't

06:03urgently implement single sex spaces on the basis of biological sex. Now the government has 14 days

06:09to reply to this letter so it's really interesting to see what happens in the back of this and if it

06:14does go down that line on the back. And I know you've also written about Jenny Gilrooth, the Education

06:21Secretary, saying that the Scottish Government is still waiting on official, I guess, rather than the

06:26interim guidance of the EHRC has issued to date about how, you know, governments and councils should

06:33act effectively on the back of the gender court ruling. You can read all the stories that we've

06:37discussed there at scotsman.com. If you ever can't find our politics tab coverage, sorry, there's a tab

06:44in the navigation bar that'll take you straight to all the latest from our politics team. Please follow us

06:50on social media and go out and buy a copy of the paper today. We will have some coverage coinciding

06:57with the first day of the Royal Highland Show, which starts tomorrow and carries on through the

07:01Sunday. Thanks, Rachel. Thanks to everyone else for joining us. Bye-bye.

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