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WQ.389/2024
WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING
BY DEPUTY M.B. ANDREWS OF ST HELIER NORTH
QUESTION SUBMITTED ON MONDAY 4th NOVEMBER 2024
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 11th NOVEMBER 2024
Question
"Will the Minister state, for each of the last five years, the number of assaults, if any, carried out by secondary school students on members of staff and, separately, on other students; and of any such assaults, how many were reported to the police?"
Answer
Schools define their own behaviour recording categories within SIMS (the schools management information system) to suit their needs, which means that it is not easy to report consistently.
In total, there are 193 negative behaviour categories in use across schools, which include lateness, uniform and homework issues, and behaviours in school including interactions with pupils and staff. Some of the categories in use do not lend themselves to answering this question (for example Removal – Break/Lunch Incident) and we would need to review the free text of these entries to determine if an assault had occurred. The volume of incidents over a five year period means that we would not be able to resource this request.
However, we do have consistent recording mechanisms in place to capture the reason for exclusions, which is provided below:
Academic Year | Exclusion instances in Government secondary schools for physical assault against an adult | Exclusion instances in Government secondary schools for physical assault against a pupil |
2019/2020* | 10 | 95 |
2020/2021* | 7 | 150 |
2021/2022 | 14 | 110 |
2022/2023 | 18 | 115 |
2023/2024 | 12 | 152 |
*The 2019/20 and 2020/21 academic years are not comparable with other years due to the impact of Covid on school attendance/school closures.
The Department do not hold records of all assaults that are reported to the police, and there are some identified data quality issues within the incidents data that we are seeking to address.