I feel readers will not have been aware, from the report in The Press, that the figures quoted have very little to do with attacks on teachers.

They actually cover all the occasions reported to the local authority when teachers or classroom support staff have intervened to restrain or calm a child and experienced some kind of injury, usually minor.

The biggest single category of injuries is "cuts, bruises and grazes". The information supplied to the newspaper also included the important cautionary note that "the majority of reports are from schools where the children have learning difficulties and the injuries are not intentional" and that the figures included incidents involving children as young as three years old attending nursery classes.

Whilst this is acknowledged in the article, I feel it was not the impression left by the front page headline or by the opening paragraphs of the report.

Last year, the equivalent figures that we supplied under the Freedom of Information Act was 500 incidents over two years. You would not have discovered from the article in The Press that the annual figure has actually declined since last year.

I wonder whether Nick Seaton was made aware of this when he was asked to comment and duly expressed grave concerns about the state of the education system.

The article also implies that there is a particular problem in York, even though this is not substantiated by the two head teachers who comment on the figures, nor by Barbara Regan from the NUT who notes that "in York, it is not a particularly large trend".

In fact, there is no evidence of any kind to suggest that there is a particular problem in York schools. In none of the Ofsted inspection reports over the last 12 months has pupil behaviour been identified as a problem and parents can be entirely reassured that they are not sending their children into a battle zone.

Indeed, the conventional view among teachers is that York is a good place in which to start your career because schools in the city are orderly places in which teachers are able to get on with the business of educating children".

Patrick Scott, Director of Learning, Culture and Children's Services.