FOI REF: FOI-2023-1400
You asked
Please provide the statistics of all children (under the age of 18) reporting physical abuse/physical bullying/assault such as; hitting, kicking, biting, hair pulling, punching and other forms of physical violence in School/College from when ONS records began.
Please confirm if the Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) Children aged 10-15 year violence year ending 2019 released in March 2020 is the most recent data?
Where is the Annual data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) Children aged 10-15 year violence report for 2020, 2021 and 2022? Has this data been recorded and if so, please provide this data. If this data has not been recorded please confirm why not and confirm when these records will resume.
Please provide information about how many child-on-child incidents of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault have been reported.
Please provide the number/statistics of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault by type (for example are there more incidents reported of hair pulling or kicking?)
Please provide the statistics of the type injuries reported.
Please provide how many of these incidents were reported to Police.
Please provide how many incidents were reported to Local Authorities.
Please provide how many incidents of incidents of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault are estimated to go unreported.
Please provide information relating to incidents of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault that were reported of staff directed towards children.
Please provide information relating to incidents of physical abuse/assault that were reported of children towards staff.
Please provide the above information for children whilst in Education (at School, College) aged 16-18.
Please provide all information about the number of Schools adopting physical skills training to equip staff with the skills and information necessary to deal with incidents of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault.
Please provide all information about the number of Schools adopting physical skills training to equip pupils with the skills and information necessary to deal with incidents of physical abuse/physical bullying/assault.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, we do not collect or hold all the data you have requested. However, some of the data can be found in the following publications/datasets:
- Child physical abuse appendix tables
- Nature of crime, children aged 10 to 15 violence tables
- Crime in England and Wales, Appendix tables (children aged 10 to 15 worksheets)
The data we publish relating to child physical abuse is collected via two main sources, the Children's Crime Survey for England and Wales (CCSEW) and the abuse during childhood module from the adults Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CCSEW is asked of children aged 11 to 15, whilst the abuse during childhood module is asked of adults aged 18 and above about their experiences of abuse before the age of 16.
Please see a breakdown for each of your requests and a link to the most appropriate data source for each (where possible).
Table 2 from the Nature of crime tables provides a breakdown of where violent incidents took place, including in or around a school. This dataset backdates to March 2015.
Yes, this is the most recently published data for the nature of crime tables as these are published using 3 years of data. We have however, published prevalence rates for some crime types (including violence) for the year ending March 2023. Please see Worksheet A11 for trends in prevalence rates for children aged 10 to 15.
As a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, data collection for the Childrens Crime Survey for England and Wales (CCSEW) was paused, meaning data was not collected from late March 2020 to March 2022. Since the reintroduction of the survey, in April 2022, response rates have also notably dropped. As a result, only a reduced set of estimates could be published for the year ending March 2023 data. Further information relating to the challenges faced in measuring crimes against children post-pandemic can be found in this blogpost. These challenges have highlighted the need for alternative modes of interviewing to increase flexibility for children (and hopefully in turn response rates) and provide greater resilience to external events. To overcome these challenges, redevelopment work has been undertaken to move data collection for children's crime statistics online. The new online survey – the Young Persons Safety Survey – is still in its pilot phase so data is not yet available for publication. An update on the progress of this work, however, can be found here.
Table 6 from the Nature of Crime tables (Table 4 in child physical abuse appendix tables) reports offender characteristics for violent incidents reported by children aged 10-15, with breakdowns for the age of the offender. This includes offenders aged under 10, offenders aged 10 to 15 and offenders aged 16 to 19.
We do not collect or hold data on the number of physical abuse incidents by type.
Table 3 from the Nature of Crime tables (Table 12 in child physical abuse appendix tables) reports the injuries sustained in violent incidents experienced by children aged 10-15.
Table 8 from the Nature of Crime tables (Table 15 in child physical abuse appendix tables) reports who violent incidents experienced by children aged 10-15 were reported to, including whether the police were told.
We do not collect or hold this data as Table 8 does not include whether the incident was reported to Local Authorities.
We do not collect or hold data on how many incidents of physical abuse are estimated to go unreported.
Table 11 from the child physical abuse appendix tables reports the relationship of perpetrator to adults who experienced abuse before the age of 16. This includes the category 'person in position of trust or authority' which includes teachers. However, the data does not specifically report incidents of staff directed towards children. Please note, this data comes from the adults Crime Survey and is asking adults about their historic experiences of abuse. It therefore does not provide a measure of recent incidents of child physical abuse.
We do not collect or hold data on cases of physical abuse/assault that were reported of children towards staff.
We do not have data available for children aged 16-18. The CCSEW is only asked to children aged between 10 to 15, and although 16- to 18-year-olds are included in the CSEW interviewing, the base sizes are too small to disaggregate the data to this age group.
13&14. We do not collect or hold data relating to schools adopting physical skills training, either for pupils or staff.
If you have any further crime-related enquiries, the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice can be reached at the following e-mail address: CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk.
The Department for Education (DfE) have also published data on children's experiences of bullying, which may be helpful: Bullying in England, April 2013 to March 2018 (publishing.service.gov.uk). If you have any queries about this data, please contact DfE directly.