Schools should “assess and balance” the risk of a potential strip-search to a pupil’s mental and physical wellbeing before calling the police, according to new government guidance.
The new advice for schools in England has been issued following national outcry over the treatment of a 15-year-old black girl, known as Child Q, who was strip-searched by female police officers in 2020 after she was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis at her school in east London.
The incident prompted days of protests in Hackney after it emerged the child was searched without an appropriate adult present and in the knowledge that she was menstruating. Her parents were not contacted.
