Louise Anaru: Secondary Principals' Association President on children bringing weapons to school

Concern over an increasing number of children bringing weapons to school. 

Figures released under the Official Information Act show 526 students were stood down, suspended, or excluded for using or having a weapon at school last year. 

It's an 80% rise on 2018. 

Secondary Principals' Association President Louise Anaru told Mike Hosking that in a vast majority of cases, children have no intent to use the weapon - but regardless, the matter needs to be treated seriously. 

She says it’s important to get the message out that they can cause harm, and to take a real strong stance on it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In trouble in the old school yard. We've got some

(00:01):
new numbers out this morning. What do we make of them?
Five hundred and twenty six kids were caught bringing weapons
to school last year, which is eighty percent up on
twenty eighteen. So twenty eighteen so seven years. Three hundred
and seventy five of these kids were stood down, forty
were excluded from school. Louise Honor is the principal of
Kantai College, also the president of the Secondary Principal's Association.
Louise Morning, Good Morning, Way. So there's two hundred and

(00:23):
thirty one high schools in this country according to chat GPT,
So you've got five hundred and twenty six kids in
two hundred and thirty one schools. Would most schools have
seen an incident of a weapon in some way, shape
or form. Do you think.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
It's really difficult to know. It's difficult to know. That's
from the data as well. I can speak from my
own experience, Like over the thirty years in education, I've
come across a few situations when a child has brought
a weapon into school. There hasn't been intent to use it.

(00:58):
You know, my hunches is there, it's more about possession
of rather than attempted use. But we just don't notice
from the data, mate, do we.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Have basic what's a weapon? I mean as a sticker
weapon versus a BB gun, versus a knife, all of
the above.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So really it's about if it's just if it's been
used to cause harm, and it could be a range
of things, but again I would think it would be
more around the ones that you've just mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I was going to ask, is it I mean the
way that schools deal with it. If a kid brings
a BB gun and go, oh, look, it's my birthday.
I brought my BB gun, It's like, is that even
a thing? It's like the kids bringing his birthday present.
I brought it. I took a knife Louise to school
when I was a kid, right because my grandparents gave
me a knife and I took it to school. Guys
did look of a knife? I wasn't going to do

(01:53):
anything with it. But it's like, you know, has anything
changed exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And I think that's what we're talking about here. We
really need to get more detailed to make sense of
the data. But in my experience that the situations I've
come across, it's been situations like that, he hasn't been intent,
but I've still taken it really seriously in those contexts
because it's important to get there's the message out that

(02:19):
that can cause harm and to take a real strong
stance on it just because of the risk involved. There
is an intent, but in the worst case scenario, it
can cause serious harm to it to our young people.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Nice to talk to you, Louise go well Louise Anau,
who is the Union principle, but also she works at
Kaitai at the Union head and works at Kai Tai College.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
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