The figures show that nearly 1,000 police officers operate in schools across the UK, with these officers most likely to be based in areas with higher numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals.
Analysis by the Runnymede Trust shows that of the 979 police officers operating in UK schools, half are based in London.
The report, Over-policed and underprotected: police in schools, also found there were plans to increase the number of school officers by 7%.
Research suggests that police officers are not only more likely to reside in schools in areas with higher numbers of students eligible for free school meals, but that this correlates with higher numbers of black and ethnic students minorities
The role of school police officers, often referred to as SSOs, ranges from being a point of contact for teachers to more intensive interventions such as stopping, searching and monitoring children suspected of gang membership .
While police forces say SSOs help protect children, campaigners and experts warn the growing prevalence of police officers in British schools poses a “serious safeguarding risk” to students of colour.
School officers have faced increasing scrutiny in recent years, particularly after a black teenage girl, known as Child Q, was searched by Metropolitan Police officers at a Hackney school in 2020 after she was wrongly accused of possessing cannabis. Four Met officers are being investigated for serious misconduct in the incident.
In 2021, The Guardian revealed that more than 650 police officers were working in British schools, many of them assigned to posts in areas of high deprivation. The Runnymede Trust figure includes school-based police staff who may not have the SSO job title, which may account for some of the increase in this figure.
Dr Shabana Begum, head of research at the Runnymede Trust, said the normalized presence of police officers in schools was “deeply concerning” and there was “no doubt about the highly racialized and damaging impact it can have to have too much power in the school environment.” “.
Begum added: “As a mother of teenage children and someone who taught Child Q’s at a neighboring school, I find this school’s negligence inexcusable. But unfortunately, this is the predictable result when schools and the police are integrated in such an intimate and incomprehensible way. We know that Child Q is not alone and that similar accounts happen every day in the UK disproportionately involving young and black children.”
Bindmans lawyer Rachel Harger, who is working on the law firm’s actions against the police and the State Department, said: “This latest data gives us an opportunity to urgently consider what we really want the role to be from schools to our communities in juxtaposition. How many of our working-class and racialized children now live in public schools, spaces where they are increasingly subject to surveillance.”
He added that it is already through [counter-terrorism strategy] Prevention officers or police, “racialized children are under constant surveillance in an educational environment that should be a safe and nurturing learning environment where all children have the freedom to learn from mistakes, not just a privileged few in the grammar and private schools”.
“The increasing prevalence of police officers in our schools should be considered a serious safeguarding risk, particularly for racialized children who often feel unable to discuss or disclose information to teaching staff for fear of criminalization precisely because many have already experienced over-policing in their wider communities.”
Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, whose research focuses on racism in education and policing, said: “These figures show that the police presence in schools is much larger than many thought. This is deeply troubling given the growing evidence that school policing has a negative impact on school environments, fueling the stigmatization of schools, creating a culture of low expectations, and risking the ‘escalation of minor disciplinary issues in criminal justice matters, especially for minoritized antecedents’.