SCHOOLS are failing to report incidents of violence and abuse against teachers because they fear getting a bad reputation, a union has warned.

Scottish secondary teachers's leaders said there was a particular problem with headteachers and councils in some areas overlooking incidents which did not result in long-term absences of teachers.

The issue, which will be discussed at the annual congress of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association (SSTA), has prompted calls for a "zero tolerance" approach to incidents of violence.

Seamus Searson, the general secretary of the SSTA, said: "If teachers have more than five days off, for whatever reason, then that is always recorded, but if time off is less than five days that is not always the case.

"Our concern is that violence and abuse against teachers are often not recorded at all because the schools wants to sweep these sort of incidents under the carpet if they possibly can.

"Then, when the unions raise concerns about levels of violence or intimidation, councils will say there is no evidence of these things taking place."

Mr Searson said some schools would not report an issue even if a teacher was punched by a pupil.

He added: "Incidents are going on that are that serious, but schools see it as a failing on their part if they record these things and that is down to headteachers and councils putting pressure on headteachers."

However, Jim Thewliss, general secretary of School Leaders' Scotland, which represents secondary headteachers, said it was "unlikely" incidents would go unreported.

He said: "I would be very surprised if there was any member of staff who reported an incident to their headteacher and the headteacher did not record the incident.

"The statistics show that there has been an increase in levels of violence and reporting of violence has gone up, but I don't get any feeling of headteachers not being able to take a report of an act of violence anything less then very very seriously. The whole notion of staff morale would be destroyed."

A spokesman for council umbrella body Cosla said: "The safety of both staff and pupils is of paramount importance to Scotland’s local authorities and it has to be emphasised that teaching is a very safe profession.

"There are over 50,000 teachers and over 680,000 pupils in school and pre-school and serious incidents of violence are rare, but parents and teachers should be assured that authorities and schools have both reporting methods and policies in place to deal with situations on the odd occasion that they arise."

Meanwhile, the Educational Institute of Scotland has confirmed it intends to press ahead with a ballot of industrial action over growing workload in schools.

The EIS said the "excessive assessment" demands placed on teachers and pupils by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) had to be resolved as soon as possible.

The SQA argues, however, that removing teacher assessments that have led to extra workload will undermine the credibility of their qualifications.