Gangs: A national emergency

The recent knife crime murders of children have shone a light on an issue many schools have been dealing with for a long time. I speak with headteachers in schools and alternative provision who are desperate for more help for those children most at risk of becoming involved in gangs and knife crime. They are trying to do their best to keep these often very vulnerable children in school while also protecting the safety of staff and pupils.

So how do we do it? First, we need to acknowledge the scale of the problem and the motivating factors behind it. In February, I published Keeping kids safe, a report which suggests that there are tens of thousands of children in England either in a gang or on the periphery of one. Yet only a fraction of these children are known to children’s services, despite many of them being extremely vulnerable.