School staff attack figures rise

Attacks on staff in Borders schools have increased by 60% over the last three years.

Figures released by Scottish Borders Council show that violent incidents - both physical and verbal - have risen from 85 in 2005 to 136 in 2008.

More than half of the attacks concerned additional needs assistants.

The council has a new strategy to deal with such abuse and has stressed that a small number of pupils is responsible for a large percentage of incidents.

At a meeting of the council's education executive, teachers' representative Kay Miller said the number of incidents could actually be under reported.

She said some teachers were unwilling to fill in reporting forms after such attacks and felt not enough was being done to prevent them happening again.

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