Daily Mail - 23.08.2019

Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 

Head: Emma Leigh-Bennett Going in: Police prepare to raid the house in Swindon at dawn on Wednesday

Arrest: The

suspected

ringleader of

the county

lines gang is

led away in

handcuffs

is our number one priority. As a school we

have invested and continue to invest an

incredible amount of time and resources,

in particular training and software, to

ensure that our safeguarding processes,

procedures and systems at the school keep

our children, our staff and our families

safe.’ She said she was fully aware of the

challenges faced in the area and had been

networking with very senior members of

the Wiltshire Police.

Mrs Leigh-Bennett added: ‘The school

works tirelessly to be alert to information

about drugs in our community.

‘The safeguarding leads are quick in their

response to share it with those that must

and need to know.’ Experts’ advice to par-

ents is that if their children start becoming

more withdrawn, secretive about their pos-

sessions and start acquiring cash and

expensive clothes without explanation,

it could be a sign they are being exploited

by gangs.

[email protected]

Children

of FOUR

carrying

knives in

lessons

Daily Mail Reporter

CHILDREN as young as four were among more

than 1,000 caught carrying knives in schools

last year.

Weapons seized by police included machetes,

hunting knives, a samurai sword and a high-

lighter pen with a blade in place of its nib.

Figures obtained under freedom of infor-

mation laws show a total of 1,144 knife posses-

sion offences in schools where the suspect

was a child in England, Wales and Scotland.

The number of offences more than doubled

in five years – with 372 incidents in 2014 com-

pared with 968 last year in the 36 forces in

England and Wales which provided compara-

ble statistics to Channel  News.

Police were called to a school in Wales by

teachers worried a four-year-old had a knife.

In Manchester, an 11-year-old who replaced a

highlighter pen nib with a blade told another

pupil: ‘Listen to me or else I’ll stab you.’

Former teacher David Simmons, who set up

Gi i Pli t idth h i S id td Wd d

I

h

p

‘Problem schools

can’t tackle alone’

the Changing Lives in Harlow charity, said he

was once confronted by a six-year-old bran-

dishing a knife while working at a school in

north London.

‘He was threatening other staff members

and saying he was going to stab them so I’ve

gone over trying to calm him down,’ he said.

‘He’s then said he’s going to stab me and kill

me. You just wouldn’t have thought a six-

year-old would be doing that.’

At Archbishop Ilsley Catholic School in

Acocks Green, Birmingham, teachers are try-

ing to prevent knife crime by carrying out

random checks on pupils at the school gates.

Head teacher Helen Burrows said the checks

were brought in to teach children about the

wider world. She added: ‘It could happen at

any school at any time. It’s a national issue. A

child bringing a knife into school is not

acceptable but we would always look at what

we could do to support that child.’

Steven George, of the National Association

of Headteachers, said referring a child to the

police isn’t always the best option. He added:

‘Schools are being asked to do more than

ever before on a range of issues that extend

beyond the school gates. It’s a problem

schools definitely cannot tackle alone.’

y lines gang recruited

pils from one school