Scots school support staff 'terrified' and 'exhausted' amid daily attacks from pupils

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Scots school support staff are at higher risk than teachers of violence from pupils - and bear the brunt of attacks by students on education staff.

Support staff work one-to-one with pupils, and an investigation has revealed pupil support assistants (PSAs) suffer physical and verbal attacks on a daily basis within Scots schools.Interviews with PSAs from schools across Edinburgh have shed light on the underpaid and undervalued workforce, with many working second jobs and accessing food banks to support their families due to their meagre salaries.

One PSA at a special school said: "One of these days, someone is going to get killed. "With the amount of kids using things as weapons and the amount of folk getting knocked unconscious, today might be the day someone gets a bad blow to the head and doesn't recover." Unison Scotland’s 2024 violence at work report found that 40,306 violent incidents were reported by Councils from April 2021 to March 2024.Of those, 77 per cent - over 31,000 - came from schools and nurseries.

The majority of those incidents were experienced by school support staff. Katrina Baird, service conditions officer for Edinburgh Unison, said: “These are only the recorded figures.