MPs urge for exclusions overhaul to stem knife crime

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime has claimed that improved support for excluded pupils could help stem the rise in knife crime.

The group of MPs have published a new report, Back to school? Breaking the Link between School Exclusions and Knife Crime, which says that too many excluded pupils get only a couple of hours teaching each day, and there is evidence this leaves them at risk of being drawn into knife crime.

Only a third of councils were able to confirm they had space for newly excluded pupils in their pupil referral units (PRUs). Therefore, the report encourages the government to ensure councils give all excluded pupils full-time, high quality education.

Students mentioned in the report highlighted that their schools had not been very good at supporting them when they were on the cusp of trouble, with zero-tolerance policies leading to exclusions for relatively minor offences. Quoted in the paper, one student from Croydon admitted that this has left him more willing to ‘commit more crime’.

In 2017/18, more than 17,500 boys aged 14 in England and Wales carried a knife or weapon, with a third of these having had weapons used against them. Separate statistics for the same year showed permanent exclusions from England's schools stood at 7,900, a 70 per cent increase on 2012.