School arson - an investigation

By Lizzy Lambley
BBC Newsround

The BBC's Newsround team investigate arson attacks on schools

Each year around 840 UK schools are victims of arson attacks mostly by children connected with the school.

For the first time, BBC's Newsround programme is to take the form of a half hour documentary to highlight the issue.

"We start fires and that mostly because it's boring. Um..it's nice innit, the heat and stuff."

It's a typical explanation from a kid who starts fire. But what many school children don't realise is that whether it's accidental through play or deliberate, they are committing the crime of arson and it doesn't take much before a blaze can be out of control and deadly.

Every week 20 schools suffer an arson attack and it's almost always children starting the blazes. Last year 1,315 young people were found guilty of deliberately starting fires. Most of them were boys.

Simon and Mike didn't think lighting the loo roll would burn part of their school down, cause thousands of pounds worth of damage and destroy irreplaceable course work.

Criminal record

They were also ostracised by their friends, given a criminal record and expelled from the school they actually enjoyed going to.

Their story is not unusual. Most deliberate fires started in UK schools are started by a child with some connection to the school.

Toilets and cloakrooms are the most likely places for fires to start. Many of the attacks aren't planned.

"Children can start fires for a whole range of reasons" according to psychologist Jack Kennedy, an expert in child arson.

"I guess it ranges from revenge, anger fear, a whole diversity of emotions."

Motivations

Sometimes the fires are started by groups, typically from very disadvantaged backgrounds but sometimes it is individual children and those, says Kennedy, are more worrying.

"Their motivations tend to be more deep rooted or more complex for us to understand.

Many of them would start fires because they are bored, and because there is nothing to do in the communities. It's a great thing to do to start a fire, it's an exciting thing to do and see the effect of it.

"Many do it solitary and they are often engaging with the fire as if it is their friend. They feel they have some sort of control, mastery over it. Perhaps control they don't have in other parts of their lives. They can place themselves in really vulnerable situations because of it.

Most of this Warwickshire school was destroyed by fire

" Local authorities have been setting up arson task forces to look at ways of combating the problem. The key message is prevention, educating children about the dangers of playing with fire.

The Arson Task Force in Merseyside has started putting fire fighters in schools.

In Leicester a special anti arson CCTV van tours the suburbs. Cleveland's Arson Task Force carry out school audits to try to protect vulnerable parts of the building from fire attacks.

But while the initiatives have helped reduce the problem of arson, there is still a long way to go.

Another factor is increasing the risk of death or serious injury. "Until recently two-thirds of school fires were out of school hours" says Ian Rawlings from West Midlands Arson Task Force. "Those figures have now changed. It's actually half of all school fires are happening during school hours."

Sprinklers

Fire and rescue teams up and down the country believe schools should be equipped with sprinklers but there is no law to force that to happen.

Pupils at Temple Meadow Primary school in the West Midlands were so worried about school fires in their area they wrote to the local council to ask for sprinklers. They were told they'd be too expensive to fit.

Weeks later the school suffered an arson attack. Today rebuilding work is well under way at the school but the new block is being built without a sprinkler system.

Around 90,000 children have their education disrupted because of arson attacks and it costs the economy billions of pounds.

But perhaps most worryingly in the words of Ian Rawlings: "It's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt or, worse than that, someone gets killed."

Newsround Investigates - Arson is on BBC One on Monday 8 May at 1700BST