Police were called into schools to tackle violent incidents more than 7,000 times in the last year, according to figures released by the Conservatives today.

Only two thirds of England’s police forces responded to the Conservatives’ freedom of information request, so the actual number is likely to be even higher.

The party asked England’s 39 police forces how many times they were called on to school premises for an attempted or actual violent crime.Twenty five gave data, nine cited exemptions and five have not yet responded.

Unsurprisingly, the highest number of incidents (2,698) was in the Metropolitan Police area.

The Tories claimed that head teachers were being undermined, as their decisions to exclude children were overruled by appeals panels in a quarter of cases. Two fifths of these pupils are then returned to the same school.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, said: “The number of violent incidents in schools that lead to police being called is very worrying.

“Teachers, parents and children are all too aware of the threat of violence in schools, and the corrosive effect it has on creating a safe learning environment.

“There will always be the odd occasion when teachers need to call on the police for support with a serious incident but at the moment they do not have sufficient powers to nip discipline problems in the bud.

“We want to give teachers more authority to remove disruptive and violent children from the classroom and to tackle problems of bad behaviour before they spiral out of control.”

Statistics released last month showed that more than 1,000 children aged under five were suspended for violence last year.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt teaching union, said: “Any violent incident in schools is of course a cause for concern. These figures, however, raise more questions than they answer.

“They are not a complete picture across all police forces and fail to take account of the variations in police response policies.

“In recent years schools have had increasing powers devolved to them to tackle pupil indiscipline. The real issue of concern is that still too many fail to use them.”

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “While Michael Gove's initial reading of the figures could look worrying, he should dig deeper into the reasons why schools phone the police.

“An important reason is that police/school liaison has improved tremendously since the problems with security experienced by schools a decade ago. The second is that, as our own survey showed, there are a minority of pupils whose behaviour has become much worse.”

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