Schools in areas of high crime in the West Midlands are taking part in a Home Office-backed scheme.
Children are being helped by adult chaperones on their way to and from school in high-crime inner city areas.
The £1.2m project is being piloted in the West Midlands with support from the Home Office and the Police and Crime Commissioner.
Participating schools were selected on police intelligence about criminal activity in their neighbourhoods.
Among the schools taking part in the scheme – called Step Together – is The Ark Boulton Academy, a secondary school in the inner-city Sparkhill area of Birmingham.
The chaperones come from groups who already have a presence in the areas they operate in, as well as a relationship with the schools.
In Sparkhill, they come from the youth development programme, Make A Difference. They do an hour pre-school and several post-school, as well as a day’s work in-between.
The Ark Boulton Academy was chosen, along with more than a dozen others in the West Midlands police force area, because there have been problems with anti-social behaviour and gang crime nearby.
At the beginning and end of the day a small group of adults gather at the school gates to act as chaperones for the children as they walk between home and school. Others are stationed in nearby parks.
The school’s head teacher, Danny Richards, hopes the scheme will provide pupils with added reassurance about their safety.
The West Midlands has been blighted by attacks on teenagers in the hours after school in recent years.
The scheme is being assessed and new schools will join the pilot this term.
The project is based on a successful scheme which helped reduce crime in the US city of Chicago. If it is a success, it is hoped chaperones could become a more common sight elsewhere in England and Wales.
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