To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many attacks on school teachers there were in schools in each education and library board area of Northern Ireland in each of the last five years. (135352)

The Department does not collect the information requested.

However, from the 2002-03 school year, statistics on the reasons for suspension have been gathered annually from each education and library board and relate to the number of individual suspensions, not to the number of pupils suspended.

The following table details the number of suspensions¹ for physical attacks on staff, in each education and library board, in the 2002-03—2004-05 school years.

¹ The count of occasions is based on each incidence of suspension, where an incident is defined as a count from the first day a pupil was suspended until the last day suspended. Prior to 2004-05, the count of occasions was based on each record of suspension identified by the education and library boards, and in some instances longer periods of suspension may have had more than one record. This change is due to an improvement in the data collection systems for suspensions in the education and library boards, which has enabled better analysis of the data. As a result, the number of occasions pupils were suspended in 2004-05 has decreased from previous years. However, care should be taken when comparing the number of occasions in 2004-05 with the number of occasions in previous years.

Reasons for expulsion were first collected in 2003-04. The numbers involved are relatively small and are not disaggregated between education and library boards because of the risk that a school/pupil may be identifiable.

The following table shows the total number of pupils expelled for physical attacks on staff for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years.

The suspension and expulsions statistics for 2005-06 school year are currently being analysed by our statistics branch and will be placed on the DE website when this has been completed.