The Metropolitan Police’s decision to remove 371 specialist officers from schools is “undermining the trust of young people” in the force, a headteacher has warned. Jessica West, the Principal of Ark Walworth Academy, said shifting trained ‘Safer School Officers’ into wider neighbourhood teams is “catastrophic” and threatened children’s safety.
Since 2009, Safer School Officers had been deployed within designated schools, where they focused on de-escalating peer-on-peer conflict. But the Met scrapped the role in May and assigned each staff member to a specific neighbourhood policing ward instead.
Earlier today Ms West told the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee that her Southwark school, one of the filming locations for popular drama Top Boy, that reducing interaction between students and police officers would have a knock-on effect down the line.
She said: “Children have a right to be safe and to feel safe – those don’t necessarily come in tandem. It was important to have a named officer who would be within schools as a point of contact with a familiar face and uniform.
“If young people don’t see police officers in a trusted environment, don’t feel like that interaction is regular, and they are not specially trained, their sense of community safety is compromised, as is their ability to approach police.
“Removing Safer Schools officers is the single most catastrophic decision in keeping children safe in the last 10 years of my professional experience. I am crushed by it personally and at a loss to explain how it has happened.
“The idea of withdrawing Schools Officers but not recruiting further, alongside all the technical changes, has created a perfect storm which worries me about keeping children safe.”
The London Assembly Committee also heard directly from stakeholders working with young people in the capital, including Omar Alleyne-Lawler of the Hope in Haringey charity.
“The presence of officers in schools is something young people would and have vouched for,” he said. “Young people will feel safe if we demystify, destigmatise and ensure they directly engage with police officers.”
In the past, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) have said their surveys revealed that 93% of Londoners supported the presence of Safer Schools Officers in school buildings. Among young people who were aware of their designated officer, 41% said it made them feel more safe, with just 3% claiming it made them less safe.
But representatives for the Met Police told the committee that the decision was to ensure “children are safe outside of school” as well as within the institution’s four walls – and that there was “no clear evidence” that having officers stationed in schools has a positive impact.
Superintendent Matt Cox told the London Assembly: “This is about embedding the 371 school officers into ward teams as the children and young person specialists and ensuring they deliver for the safety of children in the wider community.
“We are focused on delivering better in our communities for young people. Connectivity is still there for schools – they’re just not embedded there where they are not visible, and work in a different way.”
The role of the Safer Schools Officer has been criticised in the past, with London Assembly members raising concerns about police being used to discipline pupils.
In 2023, Caroline Russell, a Green member of the London Assembly, said police were picking up “disciplinary matters, rather than taking that broader approach to looking at what’s happening within the community and potentially signposting people to other groups and organisations around the Met.”
“If we step into that space there is a very real risk we criminalise children that we wouldn’t have encountered on the streets in that way,” she added.
That same year, a serving Met Police officer who was posted at a school in north London pleaded guilty to child sex offences. Det Ch Supt Caroline Haines, policing lead for Enfield, said PC Hussain Chehab’s offences were “sickening” and he “exploited” young girls “for his own sexual gratification”.
Some organisations, including the Runnymede Trust, have long called for police officers to be withdrawn from schools.
In April, a spokesman for the race equality think tank said: “There is no credible or conclusive evidence that police make schools safer. There is, however, considerable qualitative evidence about the harm caused by police in schools.
“Removing police from schools will serve to address this over-policing of children of colour, and communities of colour more broadly.”
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