Introduction

Between the 13th and 20th January 2023, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) and Police Scotland ran a survey in a local primary school in Letham to gain views on policing from those under the age of 16 as part of the Community Confidence Action Research Project after receiving approval from Perth and Kinross Council. A second separate survey was conducted between September to November 2022 to gather the views of those aged 16 and over and the key findings are available here.

Working with the primary school to design the approach, questions were made available via the SPA’s Citizen Space platform to those in Primary 4 to Primary 7 and in total there were 95 responses. These questions related to what they would do if they had a general worry/problem (Q2), who they would contact if they were in danger (Q3), if they felt the police would help them if they were in danger (Q4), why they had chosen their answers to the previous questions (Q5) and what they would like to see the police focus on in the area (Q6).

Teachers for Primary 1 to Primary 3 also asked questions of their pupils relating to how they feel about the police and what could make them feel better. It was up to each teacher how they introduced these questions to their classes, and SPA officers received summaries of the responses for each year group.

This paper outlines the key findings of these questions. SPA officers analysed quantitative responses in Microsoft Excel and reviewed qualitative responses for key themes. It should be noted that due to the non-representative nature of the sample the findings of these questions cannot be generalised to the entire Letham population.