The number of violent incidents by pupils in schools across Wales has almost tripled since 2019, a teaching union has said.
The NASUWT requested data from Wales’ councils to find out how many incidents were reported by school employees and found cases had risen from 2,483 in 2019-20 to 6,446 in 2023-24.
“We can clearly see that we have got a crisis in behaviour in our schools, and we are asking the Welsh government to step up and do something about it,” said Neil Butler, its national official for Wales.
The Welsh government said: “Any form of violence or abuse against staff or learners in our schools is completely unacceptable.” It is due to host a national behaviour summit in May with unions.
Mr Butler welcomed the summit but said “talking is not enough”.
“We need an action plan from the Welsh government to deal with this crisis,” he told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.
“The results we got were very shocking but what we do know is that there is chronic under-reporting of violence in schools.”
He blamed the increase in the figures on “many different factors” including mobile phone usage and social media influences, as well as a “change in the ethos” in education towards individual learners, which, while important, was “forgetting about the needs of all… learners collectively”.
“We believe the individual needs of the learner are important but not necessarily catered for within the mainstream sector where learning has to continue without the disruption of poor behaviour and violence,” Mr Butler said.
A separate poll by the union, which is holding the second day of its annual conference in Liverpool, found almost three in five teachers believed social media use had a negative effect on behaviour in schools, fuelling an increase in misogyny and sexism.
Mr Butler said: “Online influences are extremely serious and causing a great deal of damage, and are certainly, I think, another one of the factors that’s driving this poor behaviour.
“And one of the things that we are going to be looking at during the behaviour summit [in May] is whether we should see an end to mobile phones in schools.”
The Welsh government said: “Ensuring learners and staff feel safe and secure in the school environment is of the utmost importance.
“Over 7,000 school staff responded to our recent survey on these issues, ensuring our national behaviour summit in May focuses on what matters to them.”
Experienced teacher Sharron Daly, who is attending the union conference, said “life in schools is more challenging than it has ever been” due to a number of factors, including children having more “complex needs” and “even more behavioural challenges than they ever had before”.
She said there had also been a “huge cultural shift” with online influences, and some children having a “sense of entitlement”, with larger class sizes leading to “lots of low level disruption”.
“An awful lot of young people come to us… without boundaries and expectations at home and then that comes into the classroom,” she said.
The Bridgend teacher said even asking children to “sit down and stop talking” can be challenged by some pupils.
She added that whilst she taught at a “good school” she had experienced verbal abuse.
“It’s not just upsetting for me as a professional, it’s upsetting for the other children in the class to witness that if the adult in the room, the responsible adult in the room, is being verbally abused,” Ms Daly said.
