Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including knife crime prevention as a factor in school Ofsted inspections.

A school’s arrangements for protecting pupils are already a mandatory part of Ofsted inspection. Ofsted’s guidance document, “Inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills”, states that safeguarding action by providers may be needed to protect children from a range of risks including issues that may be specific to a local area or population, for example gang activity and youth violence. The document is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inspecting-safeguarding-in-early-years-education-and-skills-from-september-2015.

Inspectors consider how well lead teachers have created a culture of vigilance and how well schools fulfil their statutory and other responsibilities in keeping children safe.

Ofsted is aware that there may be dimensions to this problem that it needs to understand better in order for inspectors to be able to inspect safeguarding more effectively and it is planning a new research project in the London region to investigate this in more depth.