One of my less impressive claims to fame is I went to the same secondary school as Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth. It is even more banal than it sounds. Our paths never crossed.

When I left Madras College in St Andrews in 1985 she was a baby. But, in the years which separated our attendance there, I don’t imagine much changed in the way of classroom discipline.

We were largely compliant learners at Madras. I don’t recall many teachers’ lips quivering as they faced us.

The worst instance of insubordination I witnessed was in music class when our mild-mannered master suddenly lost the rag and shouted at a boy chatting to a pal behind him to turn around.

The japester pupil rose to his feet, rotated through 360 degrees like a music box marionette, then sat back down again as his classmates applauded. Music class then continued.

Compare and contrast with the experience of the music teacher I interviewed last month. He quit his job after twice being physically attacked by pupils, after being spat on regularly, after having his classroom vandalised and his car keyed – and after watching a pupil fling ­instruments at walls, overturn desks, escape meaningful punishment and, a fortnight later, break the jaw of a female pupil in the year below him.

The teacher was prepared to endure just a year of this bedlam in a Dundee secondary before handing in his notice and getting a job at a local Halfords.

He spoke movingly of his regrets for the blameless pupils he left behind – the ones who rolled their eyes as if to say ‘here we go again’ when the usual suspects began kicking off in class. Even the first years knew the score, he said.

Mayhem

They knew that their ­teacher’s hands were tied and that the ‘restorative practice’ ethos – which holds that disruptive pupils must be reasoned with by way of an informal chat – would see to it that not just this class but future ones too would be subject to mayhem.

They were bright enough to understand that this was affecting their education, that constant ill-discipline in the classroom could impact on their exam grades. Unlike their teacher, they were stuck there, like it or not.

The results for Scotland’s latest batch of unfortunates sitting National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher exams are now in and, if you are a Scottish education secretary, they make dismal reading.

The attainment gap which some SNP First Minister in the dim and distant past pledged to make her top priority to close has become an attainment chasm, widening for the fourth year in a row. Markedly, pupils from more deprived areas have less chance of academic success.

Across the board, fewer pupils are achieving passes in all three exam categories than in previous years. Schools are failing pupils because Scottish Government policy is failing schools.

Though I am not privy to her report cards, I’ve every reason to suppose Ms ­Gilruth shone at Madras College. She progressed from there to Glasgow University, after all. And yet I suspect there is something the average 12-year-old is grasping that she is not.

It is hardly surprising that schools serving more affluent locales such as the one we both attended experience fewer discipline issues than inner city ones with catchment areas rooted in social deprivation.

And while I don’t doubt that many dedicated teachers nobly battle on in these troubled areas, determined to make all the difference they can, nor do I doubt that many others gravitate to more tranquil school environments for the sake of their safety if nothing else. If teachers are essentially toothless in dealing with ­violence and disruption in the classroom, who can blame any of them for avoiding the schools facing the worst of it?

Exhaustion

Which types of schools do you suppose would have most staff absent with stress, or ground down with mental exhaustion, or desperate to leave the profession altogether?

And does anyone suppose that, in these schools, children’s education benefits from the deleterious effect that indiscipline has on their teachers?

Restorative practice – the philosophy that actual ­consequences for appalling behaviour is so last century and a chinwag will do the trick – is central to this failure.

And its pernicious influence goes further than that. According to the Scottish Government’s own figures, 37 per cent of pupils in Scotland were labelled as having additional support needs in 2023 – a rise of more than 10 per cent since 2017.

The percentage is shooting up so quickly educationalists fear that, by 2030, Scotland may be explaining to the rest of the world why half of its pupils need special attention in learning.

In a report this year, Julie Sandilands of the Scottish Union of Education suggested a key reason for the steady increase was the ‘growing trend to see [poor behaviour] as a condition – a vulnerability requiring a therapeutic, analytical approach’.

She added: ‘In some instances this may be the case, but it should not be the go-to, easiest-to-reach one on the shelf. Sometimes it is what it is and should be ­managed as such.’

Do almost 40 per cent of our pupils really have ­additional support needs? The figure in England is 17 per cent, by the way.

Or has the education ­system under the SNP ­completely lost the plot? Teachers must be allowed to take back control – for their sakes and our children’s.

I know the skies are beyond my limit 

Budget airline easyJet is reaching out to my age group and assuring us it is not too late to take on a new challenge.

Join us, it urges. ‘Being cabin crew can be a job for anyone with the skills, no matter their age,’ says spokesman Michael Brown.

I am a veteran of so many easyJet flights I believe I have a head start. ‘Armrests down, tray tables up; Sir, this is an emergency exit – bag in the overhead compartment, please; Madam, either wear that coat or stow it. Not on your lap during take-off…

‘Cheap perfume for sale; Overpriced booze; Scratch-cards, anyone? The captain has switched the fasten ­seatbelt sign on, so either it’s turbulence or he wants the loo clear to go ­himself…’ See? I have all the patter.

But my veteran flier status also tells me the job is ideally suited for younger people with minimal experience of air crew’s lot in life. Drunk passengers, obnoxious ones, screaming babies, oversized and over-fragrant folk squeezing past them in the aisles – and that’s before the plane even moves.

I count the seconds until it’s over. They stay on board and make the return journey with another lot with even more drink in them.

Mr Brown describes the job as ­‘different every day’. Not from where I’m sitting, mate.