VIOLENT TERROR IN OUR SCHOOLS

Parents of injured children in call for immediate action | Summit next week will seek to thrash out emergency plan

- SALLY HIND and RUTH SUTER

A SHOCKING rise in violent attacks on support staff in Scotland's schools has been revealed by terrified workers.

One in six say they suffer violence on a daily basis while one in three are assaulted every week - with staff claiming they have been spat on, punched and kicked.

The daily onslaught of abuse has emerged after the Daily Record's Our Kids... Our Future campaign highlighted a series of sickening attacks involving schoolchildren.

Results from the poll - answered by almost 800 GMB members from classroom assistants to janitors and admin staff - come ahead of an emergency summit next week.

GMB Scotland's senior organiser in public services, Keir Greenaway, last night called on Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth to take urgent action to protect staff.

He said: "This survey reveals the sheer scale of the violence and abuse faced by our members working in Scotland's schools.

"The absolute failure of management to protect staff and reassure them that this crisis is being taken seriously, and deliver effective training and reporting procedures, is equally alarming.

"No one should go to work expecting to be punched, kicked, bit and spat on. No one should go to work expecting to suffer verbal abuse.

The GMB survey also revealed widespread feeling among nonteaching staff from early years to high schools that not enough is being done to protect them.

Only one in four said they feel completely safe at work. More than 50 per cent admitted they suffer verbal abuse every week, while 68 per cent said the crisis has worsened since the pandemic.

The survey reveals almost half, 47 per cent, of support staff think managers don't take the issue of violence against workers seriously, while 63 per cent revealed they have had no training in defusing potentially violent situations.