Schools get extra pounds 22m to tackle violence

TEACHERS WILL receive more personal security training with the help of an extra pounds 22m to be announced by the Government today. Ministers said the money will also be used to install more closed-circuit televisions and security devices in schools.

Today, the Department for Education and Employment will announce grants to local education authorities in England for improving school security. The Education minister Jacqui Smith said: "Pupils and staff deserve to be able to learn, teach and work in safe and secure environments."

The grants follow similar allocations in each of the last three years, following a string of tragedies that included the stabbing of the head teacher Philip Lawrence as he protected a 13-year-old pupil outside a school in west London in 1995, and the Dunblane shootings and the knife attack on a nursery class, in which the nursery nurse Lisa Potts was injured, in 1996.

Most of the previous allocations have been spent on physical security - including fencing and closed-circuit TV cameras. Ms Smith said that schools could also spend the extra money on "awareness training and personal safety techniques".

One education authority has already take advantage of grants to set up its own course, offering staff a diploma in security awareness.