A London council is going to study potential links between knife crime and school exclusions as part of a wider study of why pupils are removed from schools.

News of Camden Council’s decision comes with national concern mounting about rising levels of knife crime. 

Today, prime minister Theresa May revealed she will be holding a knife-crime summit at Downing Street “in the coming days to bring together ministers, community leaders, agencies and others”. 

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Camden Council is to probe the reasons for exclusions “in a broad way, including looking at any links with knife crime”, a spokesman for the authority told Tes, after committee member Samata Khatoon raised the issue.

“The figures show that our schools are excluding huge numbers of children each year,” Councillor Khaton told the Camden New Journal.

“We want to see if there is a link with exclusions and why knife crime has increased. We wanted to make sure that’s being looked at properly and that there are some sort of early prevention measures in place, especially when pupils move to secondary school. We need to keep track of individual children.”

Concerns about a possible link between school exclusions and knife crime have become prominent in recent months.

Last week, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner suggested exclusions were a factor behind the violence, and London’s deputy mayor for policing and crime has also suggested there is a connection.

But the idea of a link is controversial and many argue that any association is likely to be about correlation rather than causation.

Ministry of Justice analysis published last year concluded: “The low volumes of knife possession offences following exclusions mean any such association could not be a significant driver of youth knife possession offending overall.”

Camden’s’ fixed-term exclusion rate is low for primary school pupils, at only 1 per cent, but rises to 8.6 per cent among those at secondary schools.

The borough had a higher proportion of fixed-term exclusions for physical assault against a pupil than the national level (24 per cent against 17 per cent) but a lower proportion of persistent disruptive behaviour (22 per cent against 28 per cent).

There were 30 permanent exclusions in 2016-17, equivalent to 0.13 per cent of all pupils, higher than the national average of 0.10 per cent.

Camden’s decision to include knife crime in its investigation of exclusions came as West Midlands police and crime commissioner David Jamieson blamed exclusions as a factor in “a serious outbreak of violence” in his region.

Mr Jamieson spoke after three teenagers were stabbed to death within two weeks in Birmingham.

He said: “Many of the children who are getting involved in these crimes have been excluded from their school.

“This is a national emergency, and we must do something about that exclusion of children because those children are on almost an immediate path into crime and into violence.”