Children as young as 4 suspended for bringing guns into class | UK | News

Pupils as young as four are among thousands of young people being suspended from school for gun-related incidents.

Some cases involve children using school objects such as scissors and dinner knives as weapons.

But there are also more serious examples of students bringing Stanley knives, BB guns and even stun guns into school to threaten or attack classmates and teachers.

Tips also found cases of children using aerosol cans and lighters as makeshift flamethrowers, or of violent students turning school equipment such as staplers and hockey sticks into makeshift weapons.

Christopher McGovern, a spokesman for the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Some schools are like war zones and have to resort to being scanned by airport security when pupils arrive in the morning.

“It’s no surprise that so many teachers are leaving the profession. It’s only a matter of time before we have another fatality.”

In the 2023 school year, 686 students were expelled and another 14,289 suspended due to gun issues, according to the Department of Education.

This was a big increase from last year, when there were 541 gun expulsions and 7,763 suspensions.

The group most likely to have problems with such incidents was Year 9, where children turn 14, but there were 20 cases linked to the Reception class, where children can be as young as four.

The issue of knives in schools came to prominence in 1995 when headteacher Philip Lawrence, 48, was stabbed to death outside St George’s School in Maida Vale, north-west London, while helping a boy who was being attacked.

A government spokesman said: “We will implement standards and tackle the root causes of poor behavior, including investing more than £50 million in funding for specialist support in schools in areas where serious violence impacts children most.”