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As pupils return to school after the summer recess, educational establishments are facing significant challenges in dealing with knife crime, the use of mobile phones and vaping. We look at these challenges along with practical precautions they are taking in our latest blog.
Schools throughout the UK are facing significant challenges in their endeavours to provide the very best education experiences for all pupils. Many schools are still struggling to help students catch-up with lost learning, due to the Covid pandemic. Some teachers are dealing with increased mental health issues amongst their pupils which are contributing to higher absence rates and poor behaviour. And there are widespread staff shortages, high staff turnover rates and significant difficulties in recruiting new staff.
Every school has a clear responsibility to provide a safe, secure environment for both pupils and staff. When children are on the school premises the establishment has a clearly defined duty of care to keep the pupils safe, protect them and school staff from undesirable intruders and effectively deal with any potential risks.
Knife Crime Emergency
It has been reported that police forces received 738 reports of people carrying knives or sharp instruments in schools last year. Schools are facing what as been described as a “knife crime emergency”, with four attacks on teachers or children every week. Sadly, knives and knife attacks have become a significant challenge for many schools, especially those in London where the highest number of incidents have been recorded.
Some schools are taking practical measures to prevent knives from being brought into school. In October 2023 the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, wrote to head teacher to advise them of funding and resources available to help prevent knife crime. He advised educators that metal detecting knife wands were available from the Metropolitan police for all 500 secondary schools in London.
The headteacher of High Tunstall College of Science in Hartlepool, introduced the metal detecting wands at two of the school’s off-site teaching centres in 2023, in response to an incident when police were called to deal with a 14 year old who’d brought a knife, in his bag, to protect himself on his way to school. The head teacher said that the metal detecting wands were an effective deterrent for children, prompting them to not bring anything prohibited into school, including knives and mobile phones.
Schools Banning Mobile Phones
Government ministers have announced plans to ban the use of mobile phones in English schools. While its expected this will be met with resistance from some parents, the Department for Education plan has been welcomed by headteachers.
New guidance is not statutory and schools are able to implement the ban in various ways. These include requiring pupils to leave their phones at home, handing them in on arrival at school, storing mobile phones in inaccessible lockers or simply allowing pupils to retain their phones as long as they are not used or heard.
Six years ago, in the Netherlands, the proposal to ban mobile phones in schools was considered. This came in response to observations that children were glued to their devices and not interacting with each other. Calvin College became one of the first schools in the country to ban mobile phones and now many schools throughout Europe are doing the same.
The benefits of the ban were immediately apparent. Students immediately began to interact and play with each other, there were far fewer interruptions in classes and the culture of the school was transformed. Many students reported how they were less distracted and more able to focus on their studies and social interactions. And incidents of cyberbullying declined as students were spending much less time online.
Vaping in Schools
Many teachers have warned that vaping in schools is causing significant issues with children’s health and behaviour. More than 85% of 4000 surveyed teachers warned that vaping in schools is causing notable problems.
Teachers have reported that it has become commonplace for pupils to miss lessons because they were vaping in the toilets. E-cigarettes have become increasingly popular with young people and around 7% of secondary school pupils vape regularly. One teacher has reported finding children aged just five and six years old using vapes, given to them by their mother.
There are a variety of health risks associated with vaping. Many e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive and harmful and vaping products are available in a wide variety of fruit flavours, specifically designed to appeal to younger consumers. Some of these are known to contain toxic ingredients that are more harmful than nicotine.
Vaping amongst young people has become a public health emergency and the new Government is being prompted to take urgent action to protect youngsters from the dangers.
Terrorism Threat
Sadly, the threat of terrorism in the UK is very real and schools have a heavy responsibility to keep both pupils and staff safe. Not only must schools prevent undesirable intruders from gaining entry they must also establish robust procedures to protect students from radicalisation and extremism.
The Prevent Duty requires all schools and registered childcare providers to “have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. Protecting children from the risk of radicalisation is part of the wider safeguarding duties that apply to all schools.
School staff should receive regular training to recognise the signs of a child being drawn into terrorism. Their training should make them aware of specific groups of children who might be most vulnerable to radicalisation, such as those on the Autistic spectrum.
School Powers to Search and Screen Pupils
The Department for Education has published updated advice on searching, screening and confiscation in schools.
Headteachers and authorised school staff have statutory power to search a pupil or their possessions, if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the pupil may have a prohibited item or anything the school rules define as prohibited. Prohibited items include knives, alcohol, fireworks or any item the school specifies as banned. These might include mobile phones and vapes.
Schools can require pupils to undergo screening by walking through a metal detector arch and / or being scanned with a handheld metal detecting wand. This screening process doesn’t require the school to have any suspicion and and doesn’t require the pupil’s consent. If a pupil refuses to be screened they can be barred from entering the school premises.
In practice, screening every pupil entering a school can be challenging, so a random selection process is typically used. This means the deterrent effect of potentially being screened, via a metal detecting arch or wand, is still effective but pupil throughput can be maintained. However, there is a clear need to ensure truly random selections of pupils to undergo the screening process. Our Random Search Selector devices remove all possibility of bias and potential accusations of prejudice or favouritism, making the random selection process far less burdensome for staff.
Pupils can be searched if the authorised member of staff has reasonable grounds for suspecting a pupil is in possession of a prohibited item. The staff member must make it clear to the student why they are being searched, how and where the search will take place and the pupil must be offered the opportunity to ask questions. The staff member should always attempt to gain cooperation from the pupil before conducting the search.
An appropriate location must be used to conduct searches and these must always be carried out by authorised members of staff who are the same sex as the pupil being searched. Also, another member of staff should always be present, to act as a witness. Under some limited circumstances, such as perceived urgency, a search might be carried out by a staff member who is not the same sex as the subject.
Strip searches on school premises can only ever be carried out by police officers under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. School staff are required to maintain their duty of care responsibility toward the pupil and should aim to ensure pupil wellbeing at all times.
Security Screening Solutions
Here are a few useful links to relevant security screening products in our store.
For more information on Schools Face Challenging Duty of Care Responsibilities talk to Insight Security