Nearly 11,000 youngsters as young as four have been suspended

Thousands of children as young as four have been suspended for attacking teachers, as shocking statistics reveal record violence in classrooms.

Soaring numbers of reception-age children – the youngest year group in schools – have been sent home for out-of-control behaviour, according to a Mail on Sunday investigation.

As well as launching attacks on teachers, children aged just four and five have also been suspended for fighting with fellow students, bullying, and even sexual wrongdoing and bringing weapons to school.

There were almost 11,000 suspensions involving children in reception in England in the 2023-24 academic year, almost double the 5,993 recorded in official figures two years before.

The data, released by the Department for Education under a Freedom of Information request, included 4,500 suspensions for attacking teachers and another 2,367 for attacking a fellow student.

Again, figures – which are the latest available – had almost doubled in just two years, highlighting the rapidly declining level of conduct among the very youngest in the school system.

More and more children were also suspended for persistently disrupting classes, with numbers increasing from 1357 to 2427, while an additional 808 were sent home for making threats and for verbal abuse, increasing from 531.

In the past three years, there have also been 51 cases where reception pupils were sent home for having a weapon, 39 where they were suspended for sexual misconduct and even 14 suspensions for racism.

The figures also show that expulsions among four and five-year-olds have hit record levels, with 124 permanently excluded, almost twice the previous figure of 67.

The mushrooming violence and bad conduct back up concerns expressed by numerous teachers over how increasingly ill-prepared today’s school starters are, with children starting school without being toilet-trained and addicted to screens.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he believed that ‘many children are arriving in reception who struggle with communication and self-regulation, which can result in very challenging behaviour’.

One teacher, who works at a school in the North West but wishes to remain nameless, said: ‘We have a reception class of 25, but six are still in nappies.

‘The kids are dirty. Their clothes are filthy. It is lazy parenting. And these parents are letting them get addicted to screens too.’

Christopher McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, also blamed poor parenting and said ‘compulsory classes in parenting for some mums and dads may be the only way forward’.

It’s obvious that their parents are the source of this conduct, and violent children generally come from violent homes, and that hitting or even punching is the norm, so it’s not surprising that numerous children lack the social skills that are needed to exist, but instead they are smug, confrontational, entitled, unreasonable, slothful and lacking self-discipline, but also the liberal experiment of teachers treating pupils like they are friends and no discipline for bad behaviour failed spectacularly. No surprise there then.

Poor or absent parenting is failing these young children before they even start out in their young lives. Years ago, young children wouldn’t be able to start reception class until they were out of nappies, so where is the parenting? And I’ve witnessed that some parents don’t even bother to talk to their children; they’re too occupied looking at their phone screens.

Gentle parenting was never a good thing. Tough love is the way to go. I received it, and it did me no harm, and it seeded good values from an early age.

The trouble is that teachers have no authority to discipline children these days, and this is what happens, but they simply suspend the child, who is usually happy to be out of school – it’s like giving out candy to a child.