King James's School, Knaresborough incident: Female member of staff assaulted by teenage girl during disturbance at Yorkshire secondary school

North Yorkshire Police said: “Police were called to King James’s School, King James Road, Knaresborough, at 3.10pm on Monday (20 March 2023) following reports of a disturbance involving a group of youths.

"Officers attended and arrested a teenage girl for an alleged assault on a female member of staff and criminal damage. She has been taken into custody for questioning.

“Two other teenage girls were arrested to prevent a breach of the peace.None of those arrested attend King James’s School.

"Enquiries are ongoing to investigate the full circumstances surrounding the incident. Anyone with information can make a report via the North Yorkshire Police website or by calling 101, option 1. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555111. Please quote reference 12230050161 when providing details.”

The school had two weeks ago contacted parents warning them of the current craze for protests about toilet access organised via the social media app TikTok, in which ‘influencers’ have been encouraging pupils at schools with which they have no connection to disrupt lessons. It is not clear whether today’s incident was linked to the craze.

Headteacher Carl Sugden said in a letter to parents today: “Many pupils saw a police presence at the school at 3.15pm and I want to ensure that parents and carers are correctly informed. A group of young people, who are not connected to King James’s School, came onto the school site with the clear intention of causing trouble.

"Our staff were on hand to stop them, they did not gain access to the building, but unfortunately we needed some police support to remove them. There were a number of police vans on site at the end of school and this caused some disruption to the end of the day. I can assure you that none of our pupils were involved in this poor behaviour and these young people are not known to us. We will now work with the police to follow this up.”