Leeds teacher stabbing: isolated event, shocking tragedy, or both?

When I heard Leeds police describe the fatal stabbing of Ann Maguire as an “isolated event”, I felt myself question the use of words. A tragedy so “profoundly shocking” – as the prime minister described it – is surely of such significance, it can’t be dispatched so lightly, catalogued as an aberration from which the world moves on.

But when the same words were repeated by one of the unions this morning, I wondered if I’d allowed an emotional reaction to Mrs Maguire’s death cloud my judgement. How should we – parents, pupils, teachers and government ministers – respond to such an awful act of violence?

Already this morning there are calls for pupils to be routinely frisked for weapons, or for metal detectors to be installed at school gates up and down the country. As one newspaper put it, the stabbing has “triggered a national debate over security in our schools”. Just as there was in the aftermath of the Dunblane massacre, there are demands for the government to do something, anything, to prevent a recurrence of the Leeds tragedy.

The unions say attacks on teachers are on the rise, with reports that some teachers are even resorting to buying stab-proof vests. Some 550 pupils a year are expelled from schools in England for assaulting a member of staff and last week police revealed that nearly 1,000 children have been caught taking weapons into schools in three years. More than half of teachers have had to endure verbal abuse or threats from pupils.

But those wanting urgent government action should note that schools already have the powers to frisk pupils for weapons. The last Labour administration made it possible for schools to instal airport-style metal detectors, and indeed many have done. The coalition has reinforced that, allowing heads to bar pupils who refuse to pass through a metal detector.

Indeed, in just February this year, the government issued guidance setting out the range of powers available to heads, including the “specific statutory power to search pupils without consent for specific items – knives/ weapons, alcohol, illegal drugs and stolen items”.

The teachers themselves are hardly clamouring for more sanctions. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, says: “We don’t want to lock down all schools where there are no problems or risks.”

So that brings me back to the “isolated event” in Leeds.

This is thought to be the first fatal stabbing of a teacher by a pupil since Philip Lawrence was stabbed to death outside his London school almost two decades ago. Despite my earlier resistance to using the term, it is indeed an isolated tragedy, when you consider that in England alone there are more than 8 million pupils attending well over 24,000 schools.

That doesn’t lessen the impact of Mrs Maguire’s untimely death for her pupils, colleagues, and indeed the rest of the country sharing their pain this morning. But it does perhaps mean that our lawmakers shouldn’t rush to act.

This blog first appeared in the Daily Telegraph.
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