Report
Education Policy, Children and Violence
Eight recommendations for education policymakers to prevent children’s involvement in violence in England and Wales.
Published -
May 1, 2025 Our Education Policy, Children and Violence guidance, provides education policymakers across England and Wales with eight recommendations on how to prevent children’s involvement in violence.
Evidence that underpins the guidance
This guidance report draws on the best available global evidence on how to prevent children’s involvement in violence, including the YEF Toolkit. The YEF Toolkit uses rigorous, independent and systematic methods, drawing on over 2,000 studies to summarise the evidence associated with over 30 different approaches to preventing children’s involvement in violence. Several of these approaches are school, college or AP-based strategies.
The guidance also incorporates primary research conducted by the YEF, including evaluations of violence prevention programmes and large-scale surveys involving 10,000 teenage children and 9,500 teachers. The YEF also commissioned three reviews of practice and policy to inform the specific recommendations in this report (see downloads section for these reviews, and a full description of the evidence underpinning each recommendation in the Evidence to Decision Framework).
A consultative group of headteachers, academics and policy experts from across England and Wales has guided the development of this guidance, applying their knowledge of practice and policy to ensure the recommendations are feasible.
Recommendations
All the recommendations propose changes to the education system in both England and Wales, except for Recommendation 3. This recommendation applies only to England, as it addresses Ofsted’s recently announced reforms, which do not extend to Wales, where inspections are led by Estyn.
1
Amend Pupil Premium guidance in England and Pupil Development Grant guidance in Wales to explicitly encourage schools and AP/EOTAS settings to invest in evidence-based violence reduction.
Why?
- Education settings currently lack sufficient knowledge on how to reduce children’s involvement in violence.
- Violence and the fear of violence can negatively impact educational outcomes.
COST
£0
2
Provide £100m of targeted funding over five years to deliver evidence-based violence reduction activities for children most at risk of
involvement in violence (via SAFE or a new TARGET fund).
Why?
- A lack of funding is preventing education settings from investing in evidence-based violence reduction activities to support the children who are most in need.
- Violence is concentrated in specific areas, so funding should be targeted at
high-violence areas.
COST
£100m
(over 5 years)
3
Amend Ofsted’s proposed inspection toolkits to assess how settings support suspended children and safeguard children from violence.
Why?
- Suspension and exclusion are key risk factors for later involvement in violence. The rates of both are rising, with clear racial disparities persisting.
- Schools are not currently providing enough support to suspended children.
- Education settings are uniquely placed to safeguard children from involvement in violence. However, they often fail to see violence as a safeguarding issue.
COST
£0
4
Extend the Alternative Provision Specialist Taskforce (APST) for five years in England and begin piloting it in Wales (provided the evaluation shows positive results).
Why?
- Children in AP are at greater risk of involvement in violence.
- APST uses co-location to provide evidence-informed support to children who need it most.
COST
£32m over
five years in
England
£1.6m for a
one-year
pilot
in Wales
5
Pilot and scale up a violence against women and girls (VAWG) lead training grant in secondary schools, colleges and AP/EOTAS settings.
Why?
- Far too many children are experiencing relationship violence.
- Relationship violence prevention activities can protect children from involvement in violence.
- Too few children report receiving lessons on topics such as consent, harassment and healthy relationships.
- Teachers currently lack the confidence and expertise to teach children about relationship violence.
COST
£1m for
a pilot in
50
settings
£35m for
full scale
up in
England;
£2m for
full scale
up in
Wales
6
Reform the current National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) to include a focus on protecting children from violence and establish a new NPQ for keeping children safe.
Why?
- Education settings play a key role in safeguarding children from violence.
- Current safeguarding training fails to provide teachers and designated safeguarding leads (DSLs) with the confidence and knowledge to safeguard children who are involved in or impacted by violence.
COST
£0 for NPQ
reforms
To fund DSLs
to complete
the new NPQ
in targeted
settings:
£2m in
England,
£100k in
Wales
7
Scale up impactful attendance improvement interventions and publish a strategy to improve attendance in AP in England and EOTAS in Wales.
Why?
- Absence from education increases a child’s risk of later involvement in violence (particularly for the most vulnerable children).
- Clear racial disparities in attendance rates persist.
- Attendance in AP is significantly worse compared to mainstream schools.
COST
Cost of
attendance
improvement
interventions
to be updated
in Autumn
2025
£0 for an
AP/EOTAS
strategy
8
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the DfE in England and the Welsh Government should publish a joint strategy to improve education received by children in custody across England and Wales.
Why?
- Education in youth custody is unacceptably poor and requires urgent government attention.
- Providing high-quality education could reduce the likelihood of re-offending.
- There are clear racial disparities in the intake of youth custody; poor education, therefore, has an inequitable impact on Black children and Gypsy and Roma Traveller children.
COST
£0