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Post by lennie on Jun 25, 2006 0:57:04 GMT -5
The New South Wales Education Department claims it is unaware that four guns were taken onto school property last year. According to The Bureau of Crime Statistics there were more than 1,000 assaults on school property involving youths aged between 11 and 18 in New South Wales.
Mike Ellis, director of safety and security for the Department of Education, says if incidents happen during school hours they are reported to the department,and gun incidents could have happened outside of school hours or near a school.
Mr Ellis says that maybe they could have involved youths who are no longer students. "Sometimes when an incident occurs in the vicinity of a school, even after hours, the records use the school as a point of reference," he said. "If it occurs in street near a school it could be that they use the school as I've said a point of reference."
The Bureau of Crime Statistics says the other weapons used in the assaults included knives, scissors, screwdrivers, clubs, iron bars and pipes.
Don Weatherburn, The Bureau Director, 'says' - the figures should not be blown out of proportion. "There's a couple of points, the first is that we don't know that these involve school students, the second is we don't know that these occurred during school hours," he said. "The third point to bear in mind - that doesn't diminish the significance of those incidents - is that there are 440,000 school students. "Although those figures sound alarming we're not sure what percentage of them involve school kids or occurred in school hours."- he said.
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