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Khan and crime commissioners tie knife crime to school exclusion


London’s mayor and seven police and crime commissioners have linked a wave of youth violence to increasing school exclusions as government officials clash over the causes of a spree of stabbings of young people.

The claims highlight the tension within government as violent crime has become increasingly political following a wave of stabbings in England. On Thursday a boy in west London became the 11th teenager to be stabbed to death this year.

The warning, in a letter from Sadiq Khan and the commissioners to prime minister Theresa May, came as Philip Hammond, chancellor, insisted the challenges facing police forces were not confined to money.

Mr Hammond’s assertion contrasted with that of home secretary Sajid Javid, who said on Wednesday that police demands for more money should be “listened to”. Earlier this week Mrs May clashed with police chiefs when she said there was no link between the increase in stabbings and the reduction in police numbers.

Police forces in England and Wales have lost nearly 20,000 officers since the start of austerity cuts in 2010. The number of hospital admissions of youths aged 10 to 19 for stabbing injuries in England increased 55 per cent between 2012-13 and 2017-18, according to the National Health Service. The rise among young people was nearly twice as fast as that among the general population.

Mr Khan and the crime commissioners wrote: “There is growing evidence to show that our vulnerable children are more likely to be excluded or off-rolled from school and additionally that excluded children are at much greater risk of becoming either perpetrators or victims of serious youth violence.”

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The letter said that permanent exclusions from schools were up particularly sharply in Birmingham and London, two of the cities suffering the biggest increases in violence. Official statistics show that the number of permanent exclusions from schools in England rose to 40.6 per day in the 2016/17 academic year from 35.2 per day in 2015/16.

Amanda Spielman, chief inspector of schools, has said there is anecdotal evidence parents are switching to home-schooling children “under duress”, because of pressure from schools reluctant to deal with the most challenging pupils.

The number of children recorded as home-schooled in England rose 19 per cent to 41,808 in 2017/18 from the previous year, according to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

However Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, on Thursday said it had seen “no convincing evidence” that school exclusions “in and of themselves” led to knife crime or gang violence.

“It is just as likely that exclusions are caused by the same underlying factors as violent crime, and therefore affect many of the same young people,” it said.

School exclusions are among several issues that have come under scrutiny as potential contributors to the surge in violent crime. In addition to blaming cuts in funding, senior police officers last year attributed much of the rise to the role of social media in inflaming tensions between gangs.

Mr Hammond on Thursday rejected claims that funding cuts were to blame. He told BBC TV that if all police forces operated at optimal efficiency it would save police time equivalent to having about 11,000 extra officers.

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“I want to see police forces surging officers from other duties into dealing with knife crime, nipping this problem in the bud early,” the chancellor said.

Education analysts believe the links between school exclusions and violent crime are complex because cutbacks in mental-health provision and reduced numbers of youth workers were also significant factors.

Val Gillies, a professor of social policy and criminology at the University of Westminster, said there was a “clear link” because the majority of people in prison had been excluded from school.

But she added that those who were excluded were often already grappling with other problems that made them vulnerable, including poverty and domestic violence that made it hard for them to spend time at home. “It’s all linked,” Prof Gillies said.

Martin Lennon, a policy analyst in the office of the Children’s Commissioner for England, said that, for young people at risk of involvement in crime, school was important because it provided a “support structure”.

“A really key thing for kids that end up in knife crime is that they probably don’t have any consistent trusted adult relationships,” Mr Lennon said. “The school at least has a chance of providing that.”

Additional reporting by Jim Pickard



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