School funding for knife crime prevention drops by a third

Department for Education funding for schools to support pupils at risk of knife crime and serious violence has dropped by a third over the past three years, Tes can reveal.

The figures show how schools are being left to resolve these problems on their own, one academy trust leader has warned.

A headteachers’ union leader has called the decrease “concerning”, while shadow education secretary Laura Trott said it was “appalling”.

Where does DfE funding go?

The DfE funds a range of programmes aimed at “improving pupil engagement and reducing risk factors associated with serious violence, including knife crime”.

It allocated £10.2 million to such schemes in 2025-26, down from £14.6 million in 2024-25 and £15.3 million the previous year, data obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests reveals.

The SAFE (Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed) taskforces programme is the best-funded at £7.1 million in 2025-26, down from £10.1 million the year before.

The DfE said SAFE aims to improve engagement and attendance among pupils at risk of serious violence.

It is delivered through multi‑agency partnerships across 10 areas: Birmingham, Haringey, Lambeth, Leeds, Manchester, Newham, Sheffield, Southwark (via Ark Schools multi-academy trust), Bradford (via Exceed Academies Trust) and Liverpool (via All Saints Multi Academy Trust).

Funding is also provided to the Alternative Provision Specialist Taskforce (APST) to “strengthen support for pupils” in 22 alternative provision (AP) settings “who are at higher risk of involvement in serious violence”.

Reducing risks linked to serious violence

DfE investment in the programme has halved in the past four years. In 2022-23, the DfE committed £6.4 million to the APST, falling to £3.1 million in 2025-26.

Settings in receipt of funds are located in London, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Doncaster, Leeds, Salford and Nottingham.

The DfE also committed £100,000 to the Safety In and Around Schools Partnership programme, which began this year and which will receive £300,000 from 2025-26 to 2027-28.

Its purpose is to help schools and AP settings reduce risk factors linked to serious violence, it said.

Sufian Sadiq, chief talent and transformation officer at Chiltern Learning Trust, said funds should be distributed “far more evenly”.

He told Tes: “Serious violence does not observe those boundaries.”

Increased spending on knife crime schemes

A 2024 report by Chiltern, the University of Northampton and the Institute for Public Safety, Crime and Justice found that 17 per cent of nearly 1,200 pupils surveyed in Luton and Bedfordshire had been affected by serious violence or knew someone who had.

“None of those schools sat inside a funded area”, Mr Sadiq said.

Targeting areas with the most incidents is “understandable”, but this “builds a system that arrives after the harm rather than before it”, he added.

Mr Sadiq said efforts to work with the government on tackling youth knife crime were “best described as consultative rather than conclusive”.

“The pattern we see is that school leaders are invited to describe the problem and then left to resolve it locally”, he said.

He said he has tried to engage multiple government departments on the issue, but has simply been passed around.

Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, spending on knife crime and serious violence schemes increased from £3.2 million to £15.3 million - a rise of over 380 per cent - before falling over the following two years.

Funding reduction an ‘appalling decision’

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott said the drop was “an appalling decision when we know children as young as seven are bringing knives into school”, and showed the government was “not serious about solving this problem”.

She cited the murder at school of 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose as evidence of the risks when pupils who have previously brought weapons are readmitted without “proper prevention measures”, warning that the government is “leaving schools to deal with this alone”.

“Lucy Powell must urgently get a grip to keep children and parents safe”, she said.

Ms Trott previously called for an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to include a “presumption” that pupils bringing weapons to school would be permanently excluded, but this did not go through.

In an interview with Tes, Ms Trott said that heads face too much “pushback” on exclusions, saying she has spoken with a leader who had to “fight” to exclude a pupil who’d brought in a knife.

Policing in schools

Alongside reductions in funding, some police forces are cutting the number of dedicated school safety officers (SSOs).

An SSO’s role can include presenting assemblies on issues like knife crime and drugs, conducting small group work, helping out with patrols at the end of the school day and discussing active crime reports with school safeguarding leads.

Tes sent FOI requests to the seven biggest police forces in England to ask how many officers are designated as SSOs and received responses from four.

The Metropolitan Police, England’s largest police force, removed all designated SSOs this year, having previously had more than 300 since 2017.

A spokesperson told Tes that the force had “changed the way the Met works with schools to improve our presence within the community where children are most likely to become victims of crime”.

They added: “In making this decision last year, we determined that schools are inherently safe places for young people and that officer time was best spent safeguarding them in the mornings and afternoons as they made their way to and from school.”

Numbers also fell in West Yorkshire Police, from 62 officers in 2024 to 60 in 2025 and 55 this year.

Merseyside Police had 27 designated officers in 2024, rising to 31 last year, but falling again to 27 this year.

Thames Valley Police was the only force to increase its police presence, with 19 officers, up from 18 and 16 in the previous two years.

‘Rationale’ of reduced funding questioned

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is concerning that DfE spending on schemes designed to reduce the risk of pupils being involved in serious violence has decreased by a third over the past four years.

“We do not know the rationale for these decisions.”

Mr Di’Iasio said that some pupils are in “very real danger” of being perpetrators or victims of violent crime “with tragic consequences”, and schools work hard to safeguard and educate the risks and consequences of involvement.

While schools are “predominantly safe places”, Mr Di’Iasio added that incidents do “sometimes take place” on premises.

“Schools greatly value working in partnership with the police, but we are aware that police resources are often under enormous strain, as are those of schools”, he said.

Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza told Tes that “many” school leaders told her in her 2025 census that they wanted greater support from the police.

She said: “The government must make sure schools have access to the right specialist support they need so that children at risk can get help early through a joined-up response across services. Keeping children safe is everyone’s responsibility, and no school should be left to tackle serious violence on its own.”

The DfE has been contacted for comment.