‘Climate of fear’ leads to knives in class

SCHOOLCHILDREN as young as seven are taking knives and other weapons into the classroom, according to new research.

The Centre for Social Justice claims a climate of fear is gripping pupils at some of Britain’s poorest schools and warns there is a “profound failure” in some institutions to deal with disruptive behaviour.

In its report No Excuses: A review of educational exclusion, it also found nine-year-olds in one school turned up regularly wearing local street gang colours.

It states: “The extent to which pupils in some of our schools are feeling unsafe and the impact that weapon-carrying street gang activity and conflict is having on their behaviour is staggering.

“During evidence to the CSJ, the head of a primary referral unit cited a number of examples of 7 to 11-year-olds being sent to the pupil referral unit for having brought knives into their primary school.

“Often the children said that they had brought the knives in because they were being bullied in school, to scare someone, or because they were being bullied by older children or, in one example, by someone’s father, on their way home from school.”

It emerged yesterday that 90 per cent of Scottish teenagers caught with a knife or other weapon escape justice. Government statistics revealed that only one in ten youngsters charged with possessing a weapon is convicted of a crime.