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Police perform a stop and search in Harrow, London.
Police perform a stop and search in Harrow, London. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Police perform a stop and search in Harrow, London. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Stop and search in schools would be a terrible indictment of society

This article is more than 5 years old

Forget Tory MP Robert Halfon’s proposal: the means to reduce knife crime are already there – they just need proper funding

Conservative MP Robert Halfon’s suggestion that stop and search procedures are used in schools raises questions not only about the statutory responsibilities of schools and colleges (and their limits) but also about the role of education in a much broader context. The chair of the education select committee’s remarks follows hot on the heels of a recent Ofsted report researching knife crime in education.

It has been widely acknowledged that the roots of youth violence are complex and varied, and the solutions must be equally far-reaching and multilayered. Education does have a role to play in addressing some causal factors that lead young people into harmful behaviours and in preventing those already at risk from further harm, either to themselves or others. One element of this is, indeed, to build relationships with the police and to work collaboratively to ensure that when stop and search procedures are necessary in public spaces, they are conducted in ways that are safe and non-confrontational.

This, however, is a far cry from stop and search becoming an accepted and expected part of the educational experience of teenagers. What a terrible indictment of our society that we can only safeguard the children in our care if police officers routinely carry out searches in schools and colleges that could result in criminal conviction.

Halfon’s proposal to have special constables trained to work specifically with young people, and very much be part of the school community, is the ideal that the current safer schools officers struggle to achieve because they are often stretched across a number of schools with little capacity to build relationships in any of them. We don’t need a completely new initiative, we need the current policy to work more effectively. This will require a higher level of resourcing, and much more direct input from school and college leaders, and, more importantly, their students.

At the heart of this wicked problem is money: the market forces that drive the drugs trade, the illusion of easy cash for kids who have none, the economic deprivation in those areas in which knife crime is most prevalent and the years of sustained cuts to the very public services that support the most vulnerable young people. If we are serious about reducing knife crime then we have to be willing to invest, to commit resources and expertise.

For the education sector this means increasing the base rate of funding as a matter of urgency so that school and college leaders such as myself can spend less time working through endless rounds of cost-saving measures and instead focus our energies where they should be: on providing a high-quality, enriching and progressive education for all children and young people. I am hopeful that this will be the outcome of the spending review later this year. In the very short term the government must commit ringfenced funding to schools and colleges in high-risk areas to allow for the deep work that we are capable of doing to happen immediately.

At Leyton sixth form college we do some important work with Waltham Forest Citizens, part of the charity Citizens UK, and use community organising and leadership training to give young people the power to find solutions, but ringfenced funding would allow us to go further. We could employ dedicated youth workers to provide intensive support to our most vulnerable students, and extend our emergency first aid and urban awareness provision. We could also develop creative projects with the police to allow officers and young people to work together towards a shared goal, to sustain our Theatre in Education programme, which deals specifically with issues related to youth crime, and to build our peer-mentoring capacity. None of these vital interventions can happen without investment.

Gill Burbridge is the principal of Leyton sixth form college, London

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