THE "trauma" suffered by children during the pandemic could be partly to blame for the huge rise in violence in Fife schools.

Councillors were told that the "significant increase" in classroom trouble, with local authority employees reporting almost 3,500 physical attacks and threats in 2022-23, can be traced back to Covid and encouraging staff to highlight all incidents.

Shelagh McLean, head of education and children's services, said they have done a "lot of work" on mitigation and were developing separate action plans for staff and pupils.

She added that tackling the issue was a priority: "It's really important that we understand what is happening, why it's happening and where it's happening so that we can provide the right type of support to schools in responding to the incidents that do happen.

"In terms of the reasons for the increase we do understand that it started to increase before Covid but there has been a significant increase since the pandemic, the return to school and normal routine.

Central Fife Times: There were almost 3,500 physical or verbal attacks on employees in Fife schools in 2022-23.There were almost 3,500 physical or verbal attacks on employees in Fife schools in 2022-23. (Image: Newsquest)

"There's a real feeling that's because of the trauma or the adverse childhood experiences that young people have had that have had an impact on them as an individual.

"And we're seeing that across the board, it's not unique to Fife, it's across all of Scottish education.

"We're working collectively with colleagues in trade unions and partner agencies to develop approaches responding to trauma and those adverse childhood experiences that reflect the needs of individual children."

A report to the finance, economy and corporate services scrutiny committee last week said there were 3,743 violence, aggression or threat incidents involving council employees in 2022-23 - more than double the 1,813 incidents in 2018-19.

The vast majority of them, 3,457, took place in education and children's services settings, generally schools, and there were reports of 2,823 physical altercations and 634 incidents of verbal abuse.

Earlier this year a Fife MSP claimed teachers were being 'bitten and punched'.

Back in 2018-19, before Covid, education and children's services had 1,406 incidents, 1,095 physical and 311 that were verbal.

A report to the committee added: "As anticipated after the reduction during the pandemic and reported negative consequences of lockdown, there has been a significant increase in the number of violence, aggression or threat incidents recorded in education and children and families.

"Full reporting has been encouraged to help understand the full picture. Staff are debriefed following incidents to allow control measures to be reviewed."

Head of HR, Sharon McKenzie, informed concerned councillors: "We've been encouraging employees across all services within Fife Council to report incidents and, partially, the increase in incidents are reflecting that.

"We've been pushing that quite strongly. We can't do anything about it if we don't know what's happening."

The committee was told that violent episodes are not increasing across all council services.

In health and social care in 2018-19 there were 266 incidents, by 2022-23 that had gone down to 178.