wendy
Sr. Member
Joined: 19 Jun 2007
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Our brutal schools: Attacks on pupils are among worst in Britain
By LAURA CLARK
Last updated at 00:41am on 1st December 2007
Classrooms in England are among the world's most violent, according to a major survey.
Four in ten children told researchers they had been injured by a fellow pupil.
England came 36th out of 45 countries and provinces in the league table of school safety.
Nations with better records included Morocco, Russia and Iran. South Africa ranked last.
Opposition politicians said the study - by the National Foundation for Educational Research - suggests that violence on the streets is spilling over into schools.
Victims of abuse: Experts say children who feel unsafe at school tend to fare worse in reading tests. (Posed by models)
A report on the findings for the Government said: "Fewer children in England perceive school to be a safe place than in most other countries.
"Pupils in England appear to identify being injured by another pupil or someone in their class being injured as a more frequent occurrence than in most other countries.
"The proportion of pupils in England agreeing that someone in their class had been injured by another pupil is the second-highest in the survey."
Forty-three per cent of boys said they had been injured in class, as did 35 per cent of girls.
Another 30 per cent of pupils said they had been bullied in the past month, close to the international average.
The proportion of English pupils who said they liked school, 70 per cent, was among the lowest in the surveyed countries.
David Laws, Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: "Parents will be horrified to see that our pupils feel less safe than their counterparts in countries such as Russia and Iran.
"It is a truly shocking state of affairs when the rising levels of violence in our society have also entered into our children's classrooms".
The results were thrown up by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.
Carried out by the National Foundation, the survey focused mainly on reading, but also covered the home and school environment.
More than 4,000 pupils, with an average age of ten, were questioned.
The report warned that children who feel less safe at school tend to score worse marks in reading tests.
England dropped from third to 19th place in the PIRLS league of reading achievement, published earlier this week.
The National Foundation's poll also asked headmasters whether classroom disturbance, cheating, swearing, vandalism, theft and verbal abuse were a problem in their schools.
Their answers showed they had fewer concerns about these issues than teachers in any of the other 45 countries and provinces.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "These findings about children's attitudes to school are based around ten-year-olds' perceptions, which will obviously differ internationally.
"Children's responses were in sharp contrast to that of their headteachers."
A study by the United Nations Children's Fund this year put England last in a table assessing child wellbeing.
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