Posted on 02/25/2004 8:06:31 AM PST by MegaSilver
Schoolchildren should be subjected to “airport-style” on-the-spot X-ray searches in order to stem the “growing weapons carrying culture”, a teacher union said today.
The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) called for “zero tolerance” of knives and other weapons on school premises.
The union’s general secretary Eamonn O’Kane said police should conduct the searches in a sample of schools to begin with to prevent street violence spilling over into classrooms and playgrounds.
“Unfortunately, such strategies are necessary now that the increasing use of weapons in crime on the streets is threatening to disturb the relative calm and security of schools,” he said.
He was speaking after Government officials and union representatives gathered for a meeting of the joint Department for Education and Skills/Home Office School Security Working Party, which was requested by NASUWT.
It was first convened after the Dunblane massacre and last met last December.
NASUWT said it had been agreed that a paper would be written for the working party on the extent of the weapons problem in schools.
NASUWT deputy general secretary Chris Keates said sending police into a “few hundred” schools to conduct weapons searches would help the education service to assess the extent of the problem.
The union had organised 46 ballots in individual schools over the last year because members wanted to vote on whether to refuse to teach a violent or disruptive pupil.
Four of those ballots were called over pupils bringing weapons into schools – three involved knives, and the fourth a gun that fired ball bearings, she said.
A DfES spokesman said: “Decisions on an individual school’s security are for headteachers who know their schools best, working with local education authorities and local police but we need also to bear in mind that weapons incidents in schools, while horrifying, are also very rare.”
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