Chamber and committees

Violence towards anyone is unacceptable and the safety of our children, young people and staff at school is paramount.

Since May 2023, we have responded to schools’ concerns about relationships and behaviour in a number of ways. This includes the publication of new guidance on gender-based violence in March 2024, updating our guidance on mobile phones and anti-bullying, and providing £900k to local authorities to support training of support staff.

In August 2024, we published a joint relationships and behaviour in schools action plan with COSLA. The action plan sets out 20 actions to be taken over the next three years at both national and local level to help support schools to improve relationships and behaviour. This includes a number of actions under the theme of reducing violence and harm in schools.

In addition, through implementation of the Violence Prevention Framework for Scotland, we have invested over £4m in the last two years to help prevent and reduce violence across Scotland. In 2024-25, £2m of this investment is being used to support delivery of prevention activity focussed specially towards young people in collaboration with a range of partners. This includes:

• £156,000 to support the delivery of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), a peer mentoring programme , delivered in schools and supported by Education Scotland.
• £337,000, to support Medics Against Violence who run a number of violence prevention programmes, including a secondary school programme carried out by volunteer medics, centred around educating young people about the impacts and consequences of violence and how to keep themselves and their peers safe, and;
• £56,000, to support the Police Scotland Youth Volunteers Programme, aimed at young people aged 13-18, which provides the opportunity to engage positively within their local community.
• £297,000 to support The No Knives, Better Lives engagement programme through Youthlink Scotland, which is focussed on preventing the incidence of violence including knife carrying amongst young people and provides resources, training and support to local partners.
• The creation and launch of the Quit Fighting for Likes campaign, for practitioners to use to have conversations with young people, to help them explore the harm caused through the filming and sharing of violent incidents on social media.