Blogs

The edge of the knife

Pastoral issues Pupil wellbeing
A landmark report into knife crime in London shows how the number and violence of incidents are increasing, with more and more young people becoming involved. Karen Sullivan takes a look

In the past few days, within a four-mile radius of where I live in London, there have been four young people fatally stabbed.

This brings the total number of people knifed to death in the UK to 250 this year, and across the country there were 40,147 knife-crime offences in the 12 months to March 2018 – a 16 percentage point increase on the previous year and the highest number since 2011.

I have a 14-year-old son, and I am genuinely concerned about his safety on the streets, where random violence is becoming commonplace and being in the wrong place at the wrong time – wrong, ultimately, meaning something as simple as picking up some chips en route from school, and being caught in the crossfire – can be fatal. Like many parents and educators, I feel an urgent and burning need for this situation to be challenged and addressed.

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