Safety In and Around Schools Partnership 

A place-based programme aimed at strengthening children’s sense of safety and reducing their vulnerability to violence.

Education, Children and Violence

A practice guidance report for school, college and alternative provision leaders on how to reduce children’s involvement in violence.

Education Policy, Children and Violence

Systems guidance for education policymakers to prevent children’s involvement in violence in England and Wales

Education Practice Insight Creator self-assessment

Assess your practice against our evidence-informed guidance using the Education Practice Insight Creator (EPIC)

Safety In and Around Schools Partnership

The Safety In and Around Schools Partnership is a new, place-based programme aimed at strengthening children’s sense of safety and reducing their vulnerability to violence.  

This exciting initiative - a joint commitment of the Home Office, Department for Education, Ministry of Justice and the Youth Endowment Fund under the Halving Knife Crime Action Plan - responds to the established evidence that proximity to violence negatively affects children’s learning and wellbeing, while schools can offer safe, trusted spaces.  

What will the programme do  

Using spatial analysis of knife crime, particularly offences involving young people during school commuting hours, the programme will identify and engage schools in high knife crime hotspots to understand their current approaches and strengthen their capacity, capability, and collaboration for effective violence prevention.       

Children and their experiences will be at the heart of this work; informing schools’ understanding of the times and places where children feel safe, including in and around their schools.    

How schools will be supported 

The programme will set out to support:   

• An initial long-list of schools identified through innovative hyper-local mapping of knife crime: these schools will be invited to join a network and will be supported to reflect on and develop their violence prevention practice.    
• A smaller selection of schools: these schools will be grouped into localised clusters and will receive more intensive support focused on building capability and prevention practice, strengthening local partnerships, and helping leaders manage contextual knife crime risk in evidence-informed ways.  

Initial timings 

All schools included on the initial longlist will be contacted by the Department for Education in May 2026 and invited to attend an introductory webinar. Following these webinars, schools will be asked to complete their EPIC self-assessment before being formally onboarded to the programme. Delivery will begin in September 2026, with participating schools receiving support over two academic years. 

Useful links