The Knife Angel sculpture, made from over 100,000 seized blades. Photo credit: Ian Livesey.

19 July 2024

By Rachel Seabrook

Throughout the Labour Party’s 2024 general election campaign, tackling antisocial behaviour and youth violence were central themes. Amongst other commitments, Labour pledged to put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and community support officers on the beat and crack down on knife crime, including by introducing mandatory action plans for young people carrying knives, and bringing in tougher sanctions for the possession and sale of machetes, zombie knives and swords. (more…)

22 June 2022

By Kathryn Riley

‘You must shun (this girl) .. avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, shut her out of your converse… (she) is a liar’.  So pronounced Mr Brocklehurst, proprietor of Lowood School. His venom was directed against Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s novel.

Some time ago, I interviewed young people who had been excluded from school. They drew pictures of how they felt. One image has long haunted me. At the center is a small child looking distraught. The caption around the drawing reads:

      You’re thick..  You’re stupid..  You don’t belong here..  Get out of my school… (more…)

Wendelin_Jacober / Pixabay

10 June 2021

By Claire Cameron, Jo Van Herwegen, Mark Mon-Williams and Aase Villadsen

“Covid 19 constitutes the greatest crisis that high-income countries have seen in many generations,” says UNICEF in its recent analysis. And children “are among those at greatest risk of seeing their living standards fall and their personal well-being decline”.

This, in turn, threatens to broaden the group of children at risk of exclusion – not just for misbehaviour, but because they have needs that are not being met. The danger is that, in the pandemic’s aftermath, we focus on ‘catch up’ learning for the relatively advantaged, and neglect the long-term health, wellbeing, and competency benefits of inclusive education for all students – especially those who are poor and ‘near poor’.

Now is the time to think how we can organise structures, services, and systems in every school so that all (more…)