Improving relationships and behaviour in schools: ensuring safe and consistent environments for all. Joint action plan 2024 - 2027: 2nd Annual Progress Report

Theme 5: Reducing violence and harm in schools

Action 15: Identify supports for schools for situations where children and young people are not responsive to authoritative approaches and consequences.

Fostering a positive, inclusive and safe school environment provides guidance on staged intervention approaches for supporting positive relationships and behaviour. This guidance confirms that escalation may be required if approaches to responding to behaviour are unsuccessful, or if a child or young person’s behaviour is worsening, indicating additional support or responses are required. This would mean progressing through the school’s Staged Intervention Approach.

Education Scotland continue to facilitate a National Social Emotional and Behavioural Needs Network for Local Authority Leads and Head teachers working with children and young people who are receiving all or part of their education in an alternative setting. The Network is a place to share practice in areas such as referral pathways, interventions, supports, and relevant professional learning. The Network meets 3-4 times a year and members have contributed to each of the national guidance working groups.

As set out in Action 3, The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) published a new report ‘Transforming support for children and young people with communication needs in Scotland: A partnership approach.’ This paper has been shared with relevant networks and is being used as a framework for local discussion about transformation and financial resource agreements.

In January 2026, the Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists (ASPEP) published a position paper ‘How can education psychologists in Scotland support school improvement in relationships and behaviour’. The purpose of the paper is to provide clarity and exemplification as to the difference applied educational psychology can make to both individual children and improvement activity specific to relationships and behaviour at an individual, school and local authority level. Educational Psychology Services across Scotland are being asked to promote the added value that applied psychology can make to children, parents and carers, schools, school staff and Education Services, when Educational Psychology Services have capacity to collaborate in this area. Service size, capacity and delivery models vary at a local level.

Action 16: Support schools' development of clear protocols for both preventing and responding to violent incidents and incidents involving a weapon, including risk assessments, relevant to age and stage of child or young person.

New guidance on risk assessments for violent, aggressive and dangerous behaviour was published in June 2025. The guidance was developed by a sub-group comprising members of SAGRABIS and Education Scotland’s Social, Emotional and Behaviour Needs Network. It provides clarity to local authorities and educational settings on appropriately using risk assessment processes to mitigate or minimise violent, aggressive, and dangerous behaviours exhibited by children and young people at school. The implementation of the guidance was supported by a national webinar run by Education Scotland in September 2025.

In December 2025, the Scottish Government began its planned review of Included, Engaged, Involved Part 3: a relationships and rights-based approach to physical intervention in Scottish schools, one year on from its introduction. The review is seeking feedback on the effectiveness of the guidance and how well it has been embedded across Scotland. The review will also consider the available restraint and seclusion data. The review report is expected to be published by March 2026.

Action 17: Develop evidence-based on factors underlying violence, and develop teaching resources to support children and young people.

The Scottish Government uses three key approaches to tackling youth violence. First, it has education programmes on the danger and the unacceptability of violence. Secondly, there are effective consequences when offences are committed. Thirdly, it has a focus on school and community engagement with young people to make sure we create responsible citizens in Scotland.

The Violence Prevention Framework sets out the Scottish Government’s vision to prevent violence across Scotland, and when it does occur, to reduce its harm. While the Framework has a broader scope than schools, a number of activities carried out by funded partners to support its implementation directly relate to schools. The second and latest annual progress report on implementation of the Violence Prevention Framework was published in December 2025. This highlighted a number of relevant activities over 2024/25 including:

• in partnership with No Knives Better Lives, the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) co-delivered six national training sessions reaching over 120 professionals from education, policing, social work, and criminal justice covering weapons and violence; social media and relationships and positive masculinity
• the SVRU delivered a series of targeted training sessions to frontline professionals across Scotland, enhancing their ability to respond to youth violence and weapon-related issues using evidence-informed approaches. This included an in-person development day for 90 school-based police officers, focusing on best practice in youth engagement and violence prevention
• No Knives Better Lives (NKBL) launched its Better Lives Toolkit and accompanying e-learning course, Better Lives: Understanding Violence Prevention and Knife Carrying. Designed for a wide range of professionals—including teachers, youth workers, housing and social workers, campus and community police officers, and volunteers—the toolkit supports informed, confident engagement with young people on violence prevention
• the SVRU, in partnership with NKBLs and Medics Against Violence, reran its Quit Fighting for Likes campaign in April 2025. The Snapchat campaign was run for a second time, and this resulted in over 15,000 unique visits to the website weekly during the three-week run
• all local authorities are engaging with the Mentors in Violence Prevention Programme (MVP), with 234 Local Authority schools confirmed as delivering MVP, an increase of 23 from last session. This equates to 6,458 mentors (senior phase pupils) have delivered a minimum of 8,611 MVP lessons to younger pupils. In 60% of schools, staff are delivering additional lessons to supplement peer delivery
• through the Medics Against Violence School Academy, nearly 5,000 young people have been reached with vital education around violence prevention

In recognition that issues relating to violence is a cross-portfolio issue, over 2025 two summits regarding violence among young people took place. On 13 January 2025, the First Minister and Ministers from the Education and Justice Portfolios, and a number of cross-party MSP’s, heard first-hand from a group of young people and their families who had been directly involved and affected by violence. On 12 June 2025 a further meeting was held to discuss the vital role of youth work in the Scottish Government’s response to tackling youth violence, where those attending heard from experts and grass root organisations.

Views coming from discussions highlighted support for prevention and early intervention approaches, and the need to work in partnership with communities in helping to respond to the changing needs and behaviours of young people. These discussions will continue to inform our response on violence prevention. Actions taken so far include:

• delivering violence and weapons prevention education roadshows in up to ten targeted areas where levels of violence are high, to increase awareness on the realities of weapon carrying
• seeking the voices of at least 1,000 young people to hear their views through a survey and focus groups, on violence and knife crime and what they think would help prevent this
• launching the next phase of the Cashback programme, with increased funding of up to £26m, to be made available from March 2026 for 3-year projects delivering positive futures for young people to help steer them away from crime and its harm
• funding for a new Fearless campaign for young people to address weapon carrying, which was launched on 20^th November 2025