Two in five teachers have reported that a pupil has physically assaulted a teacher or another staff member, according to a survey.

According to a poll carried out for the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), 43 per cent of teachers said they knew of a school staff member who had been physically assaulted.

However, the vast majority of teachers (89 per cent) still feel safe in school, the poll carried out by Teacher Tapp for YEF found, as new guidance is launched today to protect students from violence.

The findings, based on a survey of 9,600 teachers in England, come alongside YEF guidance on reducing pupils’ vulnerability to violence by making effective support more accessible in schools.

It was developed in consultation with school, college and alternative provision leaders, as well as the children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza and the Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver.

The findings come after calls for more to be done to support schools to tackle the “scourge of youth violence”.

Knife-crime education programmes ‘lack robust evidence’

The think tank has produced a series of recommendations for schools, including warnings to “cautiously consider unproven strategies and avoid harmful approaches”.

It found that tactics such as knife-crime education programmes are commonly used in schools, but “currently lack robust evidence to support their effectiveness”.

A small number of teachers (15 per cent) reported that a child had brought in a weapon to school.

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• Need to know: Knife crime and schools

According to YEF research carried out last year, almost half of secondary schools (47 per cent) reported that their school is delivering knife crime education assemblies or lessons.

And it said approaches such as prison awareness programmes, although only used in a minority (1 per cent) of schools, could actually increase the likelihood of students becoming involved in crime, according to its previous research.

The Home Office has previously suggested that teachers should take more responsibility for tackling knife crime.

Pupil behaviour getting worse, warn teachers

Other recommendations that could reduce youth violence include sports and mentoring programmes, “both of which have been shown to reduce violence, improve behaviour and develop social skills”, the report said.

YEF also found that lessons focused explicitly on dating and relationship violence are effective, reducing violence by 17 per cent.

Government data has shown the increasingly detrimental impact that poor pupil behaviour has on teacher wellbeing.

Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of teachers (76 per cent) told YEF that pupil misbehaviour stopped or interrupted teaching last year.