Law needed to address violence in schools - Miles Briggs
Violence in Edinburgh schools is no longer an occasional shock - it is becoming routine. Week after week, we read about classrooms becoming harder places to learn. Parents are rightly alarmed, teachers are stretched to breaking point, and our children and young people are being failed.
At the same time, we continue to allow unrestricted access to smartphones throughout the school day. This is not a neutral decision; it is a safeguarding one. Smartphones expose children to violent and sexual content, bullying, coercion and exploitation. Crucially, every child is affected, whether they own a phone or not. There is no perceivable situation where it could be seen as acceptable to expose children to the safeguarding risks associated with allowing smartphones in schools.
This safeguarding failure is unfolding alongside a sharp rise in violent behaviour in Edinburgh schools. Edinburgh council figures reveal that 14 injuries are recorded every single day as a result of violent incidents, representing a significant year-on-year increase and reflecting a breakdown in behaviour that should alarm every parent and teacher.
Smartphones are not causing violence on their own, but they are making bad behaviour worse. Violence is no longer confined to a moment in the playground or classroom; rather it is filmed, shared and replayed. In a widely reported incident in Fife, a pupil’s violent attack on a school bus was filmed and widely shared on social media, forcing the victim to relive it repeatedly, and even give up her phone for months due to stress. This is the reality of allowing phones into schools.
We know that action works. Schools in Edinburgh, including Portobello and South Queensferry, have introduced pouches that keep devices out of sight during the school day. This came after a 2022 study which showed about a third of pupils in Scottish classrooms admitted to being distracted by phones in almost every lesson. Edinburgh City Council has stated that the policy on phone use has been supported by around 86% of pupils and parents at Portobello High School.
Headteachers are best placed to decide whether an individual needs removing for the safety and wellbeing of both teachers and the vast majority of well-behaved pupil. And this is true not just for Edinburgh, but across the country. Scotland’s largest teaching union, The EIS, has said more than a quarter of its members in Aberdeen were physically assaulted in the past year, with more than a third seeing violence on a daily basis. These statistics underline the scale of the classroom violence epidemic under the SNP after 19 years in Government.
The problem is leadership and a damaging back and forth policy. SNP Ministers say they cannot impose a national ban on smartphones and that responsibility rests with individual councils and headteachers. Headteachers say they need clear backing from the local authority. Edinburgh City Council say they are following government guidance. The end result is no national leadership on this issue.
Without the backing of clear national legislation, headteachers do not feel empowered to act. It’s glaringly obvious that the Scottish Conservatives’ proposal to give headteachers – rather than councils – the power to permanently exclude the most disruptive pupils must be adopted.
That is why I believe it is time for real action and why the Scottish Conservatives will bring forward legislation to deliver a national ban on mobile phones in school and at a UK Government level Kemi Badenoch is leading the calls to restrict access to social media for under-16s, to ensure that pupils are not distracted from their learning, remain focused on their lessons, and prevent our children and young people from being exposed to explicit content online.