Police in Classrooms
Understanding what the police are currently delivering in classrooms and designing an evaluation to test the impact of these lessons.
Evaluation type
Funding round
Targeted projectsActivity Type
Setting
Evaluators
Completed
July 2025| Project | Funding | Region |
|---|---|---|
| National Police Chiefs’ Council | £206,948 (evaluation only) | South West |
What does this project involve?
Police presence in schools aims to keep children safe through building trust, encouraging children to seek help and deterring violence. Police activities in schools can be roughly grouped into two categories: 1) officers delivering educational instruction to children, on topics including drugs, knives and violence, and 2) the wide range of other activities which officers can conduct, including sharing information with staff and being a visible presence (explored in YEF’s Police in Corridors project).
This project aimed to describe the nature of educational sessions which police deliver in secondary school classrooms in England and Wales, then pilot a specific educational intervention (referred to as Police in Classrooms (PiCl)). PiCl involved three weekly PSHE lessons in collaboration between trained police officers and teachers to secondary school children, aged 11–16. The PSHE Association provided curriculum materials and 16 hours of training to officers, covering teaching practice and curriculum content.
Why did YEF fund this project?
Police are present in many schools across England and Wales. Despite the time and resource invested in this approach, as the YEF Toolkit explains, there is very little research on the role police play in schools or the impact on children or violence. There are also risks associated with the presence of police in schools, and so robust evaluation is vital. YEF funded this evaluation to help fill this evidence gap. A Race Equity Associate was involved throughout the evaluation to ensure the research design, materials and terminology were inclusive and accounted for racial and ethnic differences in experience with the police.
The evaluation involved a feasibility and pilot study. The feasibility study aimed to understand how police implement educational instruction in secondary schools across England and Wales, how implementation varies, and perceptions of the approach. This was explored using interviews with police decision-makers, a mapping survey completed by 34 police forces and qualitative work in ten areas (including interviews, focus groups and observations with officers, school staff and children). 74 children from secondary schools across 9 police force areas took part in the feasibility study, running from October 2023 to July 2024.
The pilot study then aimed to explore how PiCl, a specific intervention, could be evaluated further, establishing appropriate outcome measures, acceptability of randomisation, and data collection and analysis methods. A two-arm randomised controlled trial with Avon and Somerset Police and nine schools in the Bristol area was used, with 20 year-groups receiving PiCl, while the control group (22 year-groups) received business as usual. Children’s trust and confidence in police, emotional and behavioural challenges, and involvement in violence, were trialled as outcome measures. 8,500 children took part, and the study ran from September 2023 to July 2024. Of these children, 4121 gave ethnicity information: 67.6% were White, 9.5% were Black, 8.1% were South Asian, 5.2% identified as Other, 3% were East Asian and 0.8% were Arab; 5.8% did not answer.
Key conclusions
| Most forces deliver educational instruction to children in secondary schools, but the nature and content vary across England and Wales. Common topics include sex and healthy relationships, weapons, and exploitation, with instruction once or twice per term. Most officers receive light training in lesson delivery. |
| Teachers and children generally had positive perceptions of police delivering educational instruction. However, Black children were less likely to have positive perceptions than children from other ethnic backgrounds, with opinions differing significantly between children who identified as Black compared to those identifying as White. School staff consider police presence important to rebuild relationships with children who have had past negative experiences. |
| The pilot study recruited nine out of 10 target schools, with two to three year groups in each school randomly assigned to receive the PiCl intervention. One year group from one school dropped out due to scheduling issues. Police data was accessed, but the prevalence of offending and victimisation was low. Challenges in collecting survey data with children (relating to survey format, timing and audience) were encountered. |
| PiCl was delivered as intended, and no evidence of harm was reported by children, school staff or police. The evaluator was able to collect data on how the intervention was delivered and on variability in outcomes, which suggests subgroup analysis by ethnicity could be possible in a future efficacy trial. |
| PiCl is ready for a larger, robust randomised controlled trial. Future evaluation should measure impact on a primary outcome that occurs more frequently than offending or victimisation (such as behavioural difficulties), should improve survey data collection and further explore potential differential effects on Black children. |
What will YEF do next?
The YEF is proceeding with further evaluation of PiCl to full efficacy trial.