Figures show that 981 school pupils had weapons confiscated in the last three years. The weapons included axes, a meat cleaver and a cut-throat razor, as well as 36 pupils who had an assortment of guns confiscated. Out of the 981, 80 of the pupils were in primary school, the youngest of whom was an eight year-old who had a knife; 329 of the pupils caught were charged with a criminal offence. The scale of this problem may be much worse as 21 of the UK’s 52 police forces did not supply figures, and data from West Midlands Police (which saw weapons taken from 538 people) was not included because it contained figures for college and university.
The government has attempted to tackle this problem by giving more power to teachers. CEO of XLP, which was founded in response to a school stabbing, Patrick Regan said: ‘It’s crazy that our young people are feeling that scared that they have to carry a weapon. It is so, so dangerous. There is a culture of fear that needs to be broken down. We need to take a look at the bigger picture and why kids are carrying knives in the first place.’ One 18 year-old, part of a young offender’s programme said: ‘I carried a weapon...but only because of the environment I was in. My generation is a bit wild...so it’s a normal thing to carry a weapon because you know everyone else is. It’s making it fair, basically.’ In April a teacher in Leeds was stabbed to death by a pupil. Ann Maguire was killed while 30 students were ‘in the vicinity’. A 15 year-old boy was taken into custody.
