Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what contribution her Department is making to Government steps to reduce the incidence of serious youth violence.

The Department for Education is working with the Home Office on a series of measures to reduce the incidence of serious youth violence.

In January 2016, the Home Office published its Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation approach. Among its priorities, this publication describes action to protect locations where vulnerable young people can be targeted, including pupil referral units and residential children’s care homes. New regulations and guidance, introduced in 2015, make it clear that homes can prevent a child leaving the home where there is an immediate risk to their safety – which would include where a gang was seeking to lure a child away for involvement in gang activities. The Department for Education has also undertaken a stock-take of frontline practice in relation to missing children, which will inform and help to shape ongoing work to strengthen and improve practice with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

The Ending Gang Violence and Exploitation publication also states that the Department for Education continues to focus on action to improve school attendance. Regular attendance plays a vital role in keeping young people away from gang involvement and other crime and antisocial behaviour. The Department has, from September 2015, reduced the threshold for ‘persistent absence’ from 15% to 10%, emphasising the message that attending school should be a priority for every pupil.

In March 2016, the Home Office published its Modern Crime Prevention Strategy, outlining measures to strengthen the Government’s response to knife crime. This publication notes that the Home Office is working with the Department for Education to deliver prevention messages in schools; teaching school pupils to recognise and challenge unhealthy and exploitative relationships, to prevent them from being abused or from engaging in abuse themselves. We are working with the Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Association to train teaching staff in areas that seek help, to help them to teach young people to recognise and avoid exploitation and abuse.

The Modern Crime Prevention Strategy also highlights that the Department for Education will work with the Home Office on how best to raise awareness in school age children about the risks of carrying knives, and the role schools can play to build resilience in children and young people so they do not give in to peer pressure to carry knives.