More than a quarter of secondary school leaders recorded a “weapons incident” in spring 2024, a government survey reveals.
From January to March this year, 27 per cent of secondary school leaders said that there had been a known weapons incident in their school, according to the Department for Education.
The DfE has released the March, April and May 2024 School and College Voice omnibus surveys, which are based on a random sample of teachers and leaders.
When asked specifically about knife crime in May, 53 per cent of secondary school leaders said their school was dealing with knife crime as a safeguarding issue.
This proportion was lower for primary (16 per cent) and special schools (25 per cent), but was increasing across all school phases compared with responses in March.
Of those who had recorded knife crime in March, more than one in 10 leaders said there had been incidents of students using a weapon to cause injury or intimidation.
Here are five other findings from the DfE’s regular teacher surveys:
Behaviour is harming teacher wellbeing
In the May survey, just over half of primary teachers, one in four secondary teachers and 47 per cent of special school teachers said the behaviour of pupils at their school over the previous week had been good or very good.
But more than a quarter of both primary and special-school teachers instead reported that behaviour had been poor or very poor during that week.
This figure rose to almost four in 10 for secondary school teachers.
Across all school phases, four in 10 teachers said that pupil misbehaviour had interrupted all or most of the lessons they had taught in the previous week. This figure dropped to 12 per cent for leaders.
However, a far higher proportion of teachers (78 per cent) and leaders (58 per cent) said pupil misbehaviour had affected their wellbeing to a great extent or to some extent.
This echoes charity Education Support’s annual report, which said that teachers’ mental health and wellbeing were getting worse due to an ”alarming” rise in challenging behaviour.
Few teachers aware of menopause policy
Continuing on the theme of staff wellbeing, less than a quarter of teachers were aware of their school having a policy or action plan regarding the menopause.
Flexible working was viewed as the most useful adjustment for those experiencing symptoms of perimenopause or menopause (28 per cent), followed by in-school support networks (13 per cent) and staff training on the menopause (12 per cent).
More resources needed to support pupils with SEND
In the DfE’s March poll, teachers across all phases reported that the most common barrier to supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) was a lack of available staff and time.
Primary teachers were more likely to say that lacking the right resources was a barrier (50 per cent), while more secondary teachers (60 per cent) reported that class sizes got in the way of supporting pupils with SEND.
More external specialist support was the number one thing that primary and special-school teachers wanted to support pupils with SEND, followed by more training.
In contrast, secondary school teachers called for more internal specialist support.
Mental health support teams positively received
In the April survey, the majority of special-school teachers agreed or strongly agreed that they know how to help pupils with mental health issues to access specialist support outside of school.
A similar proportion (59 per cent) reported the same when asked about access to mental health professionals if they need specialist advice about pupil mental health.
However, fewer primary (44 per cent) and secondary teachers (40 per cent) reported that they knew how to support pupils to access external specialist support, with similar numbers saying they were aware of how to access professionals themselves.
The DfE also asked teachers and leaders about their views on mental health support teams, which the Labour manifesto pledged to expand amid concerns of a ”glacial” national rollout.
In March, most leaders agreed or strongly agreed that the teams had provided better mental health and wellbeing support to their pupils than otherwise would have been available.
About half of leaders agreed or strongly agreed that mental health support teams have improved the overall school approach to promoting positive mental health and wellbeing.
Most leaders use pupil premium to fund tutoring
Around four in 10 leaders said their school would continue to offer tutoring as an academic intervention in the future, after the National Tutoring Programme concluded at the end of 2023-24.
Of those leaders, three-quarters said they would use pupil premium to fund tutoring, while a third said they would use school administrative budgets.
Employed teachers with Qualified Teacher Status were most commonly cited by leaders as delivering their tutoring, followed by teaching assistants.
A quarter of secondary school leaders expected tutoring agencies to deliver tutoring at their school when NTP had concluded, and half said that they would be quite likely or very likely to use undergraduate students for tutoring at their school in the future.
When asked if they knew about the government’s recruitment body the National Institute of Teaching, only a quarter of teachers and about half of leaders said they had heard of it.
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