Tasers, knives and a pistol... what pupils take to class in Wild West UK
CHILDREN have been caught with Tasers, knuckledusters and even a pistol in schools amid a huge surge in pupils arming themselves for class.
The number of potentially lethal weapons confiscated by officers from primaries and secondaries more than doubled within three years, according to police data.
It is thought the rise of gang culture may be causing more youngsters to carry weapons – with some of those involved as young as nine.
Politicians and experts said yesterday the figures show something is ‘deeply wrong’ in modern Britain and urged the Government to act immediately. Overall, more than 1,200 weapgang ons have been seized from schools by police since 2015. A large proportion were knives, including one machete.
But the true scale of the issue is likely to be much larger than the latest figures reveal as 23 of the UK’s 43 forces failed to provide information including the Metropolitan Police.
Tory MP Robert Halfon, chairman of the education select committee called on ministers to launch a ‘cross-department inquiry’ into why so many youngsters are arming themselves. He said: ‘There is something going deeply wrong with our country when thousands of weapons are being discovered in this way.
‘Imposing a zero tolerance policy won’t solve the problem, as you have to ask why it’s happening in the first place.
‘It could be broken society, culture, drugs, social media – a number of reasons. I used to bring Sooty and Sweep and conkers into school. And now they are bringing in knives. What on earth is going wrong in our country that this is happening?’
The figures were disclosed following Freedom of Information requests to police forces. It comes four years after Leeds teacher Ann Maguire, 61, was stabbed to death by one of her 15-year-old pupils – Will Cornick – as she taught a class in 2014. The following year, a 14-year-old pupil launched a racist knife attack on supply teacher Vincent Uzomah at a school in Bradford.
The figures for 2015 to 2017 and part of 2018 reveal 1,257 weapons were seized in schools across the UK. Of these, 930 – or 74 per cent – were knives.
For areas where year-on-year comparisons were available, the number of knives seized annually doubled from 132 to 273 in the space of three years – between 2015 and 2017. And when counting all weapons, 186 were seized in 2015 but this had risen to 393 by 2017. Kent police recorded two separate incidents of Tasers being seized – although they did not disclose the ages of the children involved.
Greater Manchester had the highest number of weapons confiscated as 195 incidents were recorded by the police.
The number of incidents doubled from 32 in 2015, to 77 cases in 2017 – and three quarters of the reports involved knives. Other weapons in the region included a 12-year- old with a knuckleduster and a 16-year-old carrying a machete.
Elsewhere, Cambridgeshire police revealed a nine-year-old carried a dagger into school, while a 14-year-old was armed with a pistol. South Wales saw a sharp increase in cases as only one incident was reported in 2015, compared to 14 in 2017.
Police in Scotland produced figures which revealed 126 cases took place between September 2017 and July 2018. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘In the short term, affected schools could be carrying out weapons checks on children, but the long-term answer is to try to instil in them standards of acceptable behaviour.’
A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘Any form of violence in a school is unacceptable. That is why we have put teachers back in charge of discipline and strengthened their powers so they can take action if they suspect a pupil has brought a prohibited item... into school.’