A TEENAGER has been charged after an assault on a teacher in a Fife school last month.

Police Scotland have confirmed that the female teacher was assaulted on September 25 and a 15 year-old boy has now been charged and a report submitted to the Children's Reporter.

It has been reported that the member of staff was allegedly stabbed in the neck with a sharpened pencil.

Fife Council Education Manager, Gordon Wardrope, said they take the safety of all children and staff seriously.

"Our schools have a range of measures and procedures which support the wellbeing of all in the school community," he said. " Where incidents do occur these are dealt with timeously by the school.

"On the rare occasion that there are more serious incidents, schools work in partnership with Fife Police to respond appropriately.”

Teaching Union EIS Fife's publicity officer David Farmer said the growing number of violent incidents in Fife schools was "very troubling".

He said: "Since the council moved to an online reporting system around two years ago, reports of incidents have gone up so we would say there is a positive aspect to it in that is has made it easier for people to report these incidents.

"If you ask teachers in Fife what was the biggest concern to them, many of them would talk about behaviour. Fife EIS is aware that the number of violent incidents has increased and that is very troubling."

Mr Farmer said that while they supported Fife Council in their efforts to use restorative processes to deal with incidents, he said this did not work with some of the offenders and called for tougher consequences for these children.

"If you don't have some kind of consequence, you cannot encourage kids to be responsible," he added.

"The vast majority of kids in Fife schools are responsible but there are increasingly a number of incidents that are very troubling.

"Our concern is really that something really bad is going to happen."