Almost one in five (18%) secondary school teachers in England have seen pupils with knives in school, according to a special survey commissioned by Sky News.
Strikingly, despite recent high-profile knife attacks in UK secondary schools, only 15% of the teachers we surveyed said they had received any formal training or guidance on how to deal with pupils with knives.
And in more deprived socio-economic areas, double the number of teachers said they had seen pupils with knives than teachers in more affluent areas, according to our findings.
One former school teacher, who was stabbed by a pupil in 2015, told Sky News he thought that classroom safety has "got worse" since his attack.
"Even if [your survey] showed only 1% of teachers had seen a knife - the consequence of that 1% can be huge," Dr Uzomah said.
