Up to 250 schools in high knife crime hotspots will receive specialist training and support to divert children from serious violence.
The government will launch the ‘Safety In & Around Schools Partnership’ to invest £1.2 million to support schools in areas of high knife crime and improve pupils’ safety on their way to and from school, News Cover reports, citing the UK government's official website.
The partnership will train school leaders on knife crime risk and support schools to develop local solutions to improve pupil safety, which could include mentoring support for high-risk pupils and deploying chaperones on school routes.
Schools will be selected using innovative hyperlocal mapping which will identify areas where knife crime is at its highest during school commuting hours. This new national mapping technology, developed by the Home Office, can identify the highest knife crime hotspots down to a precision of 0.1 square kilometres. Using micro-geography, the police can pinpoint the specific streets and times when knife crime occurs.
More intensive and tailored support will be provided to up to 50 of these schools in areas with the highest rates of knife crime to increase schools’ ability to understand the local drivers of violence and take steps to prevent children from getting involved. This includes increased access to local support services, as well as ensuring vulnerable children have a trusted adult they can turn to and develop essential social and emotional skills that can keep them safe.
Children and their experiences will be at the heart of this work; informing schools’ understanding of the times and places where children feel safe, including in and around their schools.
This comes as earlier this week the government launched its plan to halve knife crime within a decade. Titled “Protecting Lives, Building Hope”, it will save lives, transform the futures of young people and protect communities across the country.
To tackle knife crime, the government will support young people so they get the best start in life, stop those at risk from turning to knife crime and police our streets to catch and punish perpetrators.
