Father calls for knife crime lessons for nine-year-olds

The father of a teenager who was stabbed and killed says he wants to see children as young as nine being educated about knife crime.

Martin Cosser, whose son Charlie died in 2023 after being stabbed in West Sussex, said: "We need that early intervention and we need to be dealing with that at a young age."

It comes as the Home Office announced up to 250 schools would receive support to better understand knife crime in their area and to put local solutions in place.

Sarah Jones, the UK's minister for policing, said the government would "keep pushing to go further and further to get all of the things done that are going to bring the knife crime numbers down".

Jones, who visited the Howard School in Gillingham, Kent, ahead of the announcement, added: "It's certainly true that in primary schools we need to be identifying and thinking about those kids who might be more vulnerable and might be more at risk of getting into crime.

"And certainly the Department for Education is very keen that we do that."

At the school, students told the BBC about their concerns when it came to knife crime.

Daniel said: "It's something I worry about because young people like me are getting influenced by the media and by social media."

While 15-year-old Tobi said he thought some people carried knives "partly because they think that they look cool with it".

"They want to be part of gangs because online people are promoting it as if it's cool, but it's really not because at the end of the day you are just going to end up getting stabbed and you might even die," he added.

The government is investing £1.2m in its Safety In and Around Schools Partnership and of the 250 targeted schools, 50 in high knife-crime concentration areas will be offered intensive support to understand and implement strategies to prevent violence.

Cosser, from Milford in Surrey, said the government initiative was "a start" but that it did not go far enough.

"Money cannot be a reason for not doing this. Lives are being lost. No family should have to live like mine and so many others," he added.

The Home Office said that since the start of this Parliament, knife crime was down by 8%, knife-related hospital admissions for assault with a sharp object were at their lowest level in a decade, and knife homicides had fallen by 27%.

However, it added that the number of people carrying knives continued to rise.

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