- Children as young as five are taking knives into school
as dramatic new figures reveal that police are being called into classrooms
at least three times a week to seize dangerous weapons.
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- An Observer investigation has uncovered the extraordinary
scale of knife crime in Britain's schools which experts warn is threatening
to spiral out of control.
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- On Friday, hundreds gathered for the funeral of 14-year-old
Luke Walmsley, who was stabbed in the chest in a Lincolnshire school.
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- Yet, far from being an isolated incident, the culture
of carrying knives into schools has become endemic. In one London borough
85 per cent of children admitted to carrying a knife into school when questioned
by police officers.
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- The Observer investigation also found:
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- * In the past 12 months the Metropolitan Police have
been called to schools more than 110 times to deal with incidents involving
pupils brandishing knives;
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- * In Kent a five-year-old boy was suspended after threatening
a peer with a knife in a primary school playground;
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- * The London borough of Bromley has expelled 25 pupils
in the past year for carrying knives or other offensive weapons into classrooms;
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- * Preliminary results of a regional survey have found
almost a fifth of children admitted to carrying a knife into a school in
the past year;
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- * A stop-and search scheme by headteachers in one secondary
school found a third of pupils were carrying a knife in a single year group.
So great were the numbers that any disciplinary action had to be abandoned.
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- Teaching unions last night urged the Government to step
up security in schools. MPs backed a zero-tolerance approach to weapons
in and around schools, while parent-teacher associations reiterated demands
to introduce metal detectors into classrooms.
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- Although the stabbing of Walmsley sent shockwaves throughout
the school system, his death has already been followed by an alarming number
of incidents, including the stabbing of a 14-year-old in a Brighton classroom.
In Gravesend, Kent, a 10-year-old boy was expelled last week for brandishing
a blade. Days later a teenager was sentenced for stabbing a Stevenage schoolboy
in the stomach in the playground. Elsewhere, a 14-year-old girl is soon
to appear in court over a stabbing outside a Belfast secondary.
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- Nowhere is safe, according to the police. The norm of
carrying dangerous weapons means that even in rural Dorset, 10 schoolchildren
were expelled last year for using knives in schools.
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- 'We have children sleeping with knives under their pillows
and then carrying them to school for protection. That is a relatively new
phenomenon,' said Michelle Elliot of charity Kidscape. She spoke moments
after fielding yet another call from a tearful mother whose son had been
threatened at school by a knife-wielding pupil.
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- Concern is now so acute among senior education chiefs
that the Government has started issuing guidelines to help teachers defuse
potentially lethal situations involving knives.
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- Anil Khan (not his real name) hasn't the faintest idea
who he stabbed. The teenager cannot even recall where on his victim's body
he plunged his six-inch blade.
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- 'I just shut my eyes and did it,' said the 17-year-old
as he emulated the sweeping motion of a violent blow onto a defenceless
body. All he remembers with any confidence is the sickening sensation as
the blade sliced through skin and buried itself into soft flesh. Khan dropped
the £4 weapon and fled.
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- 'It was over nothing really, like, "What you looking
at",' said Khan, a grin breaking across his young face. All he knows
for certain is that his victim did not die. And for that the youngster
is desperately lucky. A knife only has to penetrate 2cm through the ribs
to be fatal, according to surgeons.
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- The streets of Newham in east London, where Khan would
nonchalantly carry a lock-knife up his jacket sleeve, are notoriously tough.
Blades are carried as a matter of course. Nearly all of Khan's friends
wander the streets with a weapon.
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- Almost every day a dangerous weapon is confiscated on
Newham's streets - more than 150 since May. Yet it is inside the nearby
schools where the problem remains most profound. Even so there are no,
or very few, searches carried out on pupils.
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- Youngsters readily admit that friends routinely smuggle
knives into schools. A 15-year-old boy was recently stabbed to death in
Newham after a quarrel over £10 during his school lunch hour
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- Peter Nicholson, head of youth offending services in
Newham, says 85 per cent of children have admitted sneaking weapons into
the borough's schools. Mostly they are knives, but lipsticks and mascara
with screw blades, along with sharpened plastic pens, have been found.
And such finds are not confined to the capital. A 15-year-old boy was caught
in a Yorkshire school carrying a flick knife in a lighter.
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- Often weapons are confiscated by teachers without the
police being called. Even in the case of the five-year-old from Kent being
threatened, the father chose not to contact the police. 'If you've found
a bucketload of weapons in your school, you'd think the headteacher would
call the police as much for their safety as anything else, but they don't'
said Peter Cook, a youth offending officer who has dealt with 1,000 youngsters
carrying knives in London.
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- Attempting to control Britain's knife culture is impossible,
say those on the front line. Little can stop children from buying or obtaining
knives. Trading standards officers in Yorkshire complained recently that
knives called 'cat skinners' and 'throat slitters' remained on sale to
children.
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- 'They are affordable and everywhere. They are the classic
weapons of poverty', said Kevin Everard, chief instructor of a government-funded
weapons awareness programme. 'Many kids don't even realise that a knife
is designed to kill. It is not a defensive weapon. When you pull a knife
out and then they do the same, you are in real trouble,' said Everard,
a former policeman.
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- Gruesome images revealing how internal organs spill from
a slashed torso are shown to youngsters arrested with knives. Another features
the stitched skull of a dead 15-year-old girl. Two girls slammed a butcher's
boning knife so hard into her head that the 12in heavy-duty blade snapped.
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- Everard is quick to dispel the myth among schoolchildren
that the legs and arms are safe places to stab someone. Damilola Taylor,
10, died shortly after being stabbed in the leg.
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- 'Our advice is to run when someone pulls a knife,' said
Everard. Sadly, at school, there is often nowhere to hide.
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- - Additional reporting by Jonathon Gray
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1091441,00.html
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