Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that the problem had been identified in Birmingham, Manchester and London, where gang activity outside schools had started to enter them. Urgent action was needed, he said, before it spread and became a “genuine worry” for parents and pupils.

“There are problems of criminal gangs infiltrating schools,” he told the Commons Education Select Committee.

Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that he had experience of pupils as young as 9 being caught up in drugs. “They were being used as ‘mules’, taking drugs from one place to another. It’s just despicable.”

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company, a charity that works with vulnerable children in southeast London, said that she also knew of nine-year-olds involved in drugs crime. She estimated that one in four secondary school children in the poorest areas of the country were involved with gangs and drug dealing. Adult drug dealers get young people to distribute Class A drugs for them. As a reward they give the young people Class B drugs to distribute for themselves.

“You can end up with 15-year-olds with their own drugs business. They then get younger kids to run for them and to infiltrate primary schools and the lower end of secondary schools,” she said.

“For these children, who have no proper adult support in their lives, it is not a criminal activity. It has become normalised and it is how they survive. The answer is not to bring in the police but to address the causes with better youth services.”

Mr Knight said that there were about ten gangs operating in schools in Birmingham, and many more in London.

“In secondary school settings you may have some of the dealing not necessarily in school but the communication would take place in school,” he said.

“There is also a tiny amount of evidence, but some evidence, of some siblings of those older children in primary school just being used to pass messages, effectively to act as runners.”

The minister’s warning about gangs comes after an incident last September when two inner-city schools in South London were closed on police advice over fears that pupils could be attacked in a drive-by shooting involving two South London gangs, the Ghetto Boys, from Lewisham, and the Peckham Boys.

Police sources said that police received “specific intelligence” that pupils could be attacked by armed gangs lying in wait outside the schools at the end of the day.

The Department for Education and Skills estimates that 100 to 200 organised criminal gangs are active in London, although it is not known how many schools they have infiltrated. “We don’t think it is a widespread issue,” it said.

Headteachers gave warning that schools were not equipped to deal with violent gang rivalries. John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is way beyond what society should expect heads and teachers to have to deal with and yet that is the reality in some schools.”

The Metropolitan Police said that it was working with hundreds of schools. “The underlying issues of youth offending are for all agencies and service providers, not just the police.”

Pauline Newman, the director of children’s services in Greater Manchester, said that she was not aware of gang activity being a significant problem in Manchester schools.

Class trouble

Source: Times database

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