All schools should have a plan to prevent knife crime

Every school should have a mandatory plan in place to stop knife crime, The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has said.

At the moment, Khan is working closely with Ofsted and headteachers to make it mandatory for schools to develop effective measures to help prevent knife crime and support students and parents in the event of an incident.

In light of this, the mayor brought education leaders together with Ofsted, the Met police, Transport for London as well as parents and young people who have been affected by knife crime, at a special summit in Euston, to help increase efforts, and collaborate on how to best tackle the problem in schools.

It aimed to help forge and strengthen partnerships between the Met police, Transport for London and education leaders, enabling them to develop new ways to tackle these issues and share best practice.

It was also an opportunity to feed into the development of a new downloadable toolkit that will support schools to participate in local anti-knife crime activity, offer guidance on how to identify those at risk and respond to incidents.

The toolkit will support the mayor’s new targeted media campaign, one of his Knife Crime strategy commitments, due to launch in the coming weeks.

Since launching his tough and comprehensive Knife Crime Strategy in June, Khan has been taking steps to help ensure schools are a safe place for students.

All schools across the capital have been informed of how they can receive a knife screening wand. This is coupled with a firm policing response to take weapons off London’s streets through targeted, intelligence-led stop and search, as well as knife sweeps and test purchasing operations as part of the Met’s ‘Operation Sceptre’.

During consultations held by the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) ahead of the Knife Crime Strategy’s publication, schools outlined a number of challenges they face. These include children feeling afraid of the communities they live in, availability of support services and lack of clarity over referral routes into mental health services.