UK Schools Logged 8,500 Sexual Offences Against Under-13s Since 2021, Guardian Investigation Finds

Nearly five sexual offences against children aged 12 and under were reported to police at schools in England and Wales every single day between 2021 and 2025, according to a Guardian investigation built on freedom of information requests to police forces.

The total: at least 8,500 sexual offences against under-13s recorded as occurring on or near school premises over that period. Almost 2,000 of those were rapes or attempted rapes, averaging one allegation a day. More than a third of the rape victims were themselves under 13.

Most police reports didn't record the alleged offender's age, but in at least 1,890 of the under-13 cases, the offender was listed as under 18. Close to two-thirds of victims where sex was documented were girls. The data also logged 6,140 separate offences involving indecent images of children, a category the Guardian notes has been inflated by AI-generated deepfakes.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children's commissioner for England, called peer-on-peer abuse in schools "widespread, normalised and too often brushed under the carpet." She added: "We have taken important steps in the last few years. But as these figures show we have a long way to go. This is not simply a school or college issue, it is a societal one."

Andrew Lord, a partner at Leigh Day who represents abuse survivors, didn't pull punches. "This new dataset evidences clearly the horrifying true scale of sexual abuse of children within schools," he said. "Those in authority can no longer claim that they were not aware of how prevalent an issue this is. Parents deserve to know that their children are safe while undertaking their education, and anything short of concrete action to tackle this problem is simply not good enough."

A separate dataset, same direction

A different investigation, run by Teneo International School using its own FOI requests and covered by the Daily Mirror and Brit Brief, tracked recorded sexual offences at schools across all ages, not just under-13s. It found reports rose from 1,789 to 2,066 over three years, a 16% increase. Only 19 of the 35 police forces approached could actually provide the data; the Metropolitan Police, Police Scotland and West Yorkshire Police all cited the cost of retrieving it.

The sharpest local increases were in Nottinghamshire (up 50%, from 78 to 117), Devon & Cornwall (up 49%, from 127 to 189), and Greater Manchester (up 31%). Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Leicestershire and Merseyside also posted increases.

Taryn Jankes, chief marketing officer at Teneo International School, argued the rise shouldn't be read as proof abuse is increasing. "The most honest way to read this is not as proof that more is happening, but that more is being said," she told the Mirror. She credited stronger safeguarding duties and a cultural shift that makes children more willing to come forward, calling increased reporting "a sign that culture is beginning to change," not a crisis.

Better safeguarding training and lower stigma genuinely can push reporting numbers up without the underlying rate of abuse changing. But Jankes runs marketing for the firm that commissioned and published the study, which doesn't disqualify her view, just means it's worth reading as an interested party's framing rather than neutral analysis. Applied to the Guardian's specific finding, nearly 2,000 rape and attempted rape allegations against under-13s over four years is more difficult to frame as a vague reporting-culture shift.

What's still missing

Both investigations ran into the same wall: incomplete police data. Sixteen of 35 forces in the Teneo study couldn't or wouldn't provide figures, citing cost. The Guardian's dataset likely understates the true national total for the same reason. No government minister has announced a formal response to either dataset specifically, though the figures arrive alongside an ongoing separate government inquiry into Muslim grooming gangs, which is starting its investigation in Bradford, Oldham and London, according to Breitbart. That inquiry concerns organized exploitation of mostly teenage girls by adult men, a distinct problem from the peer-on-peer abuse documented in the school data, and the two should not be conflated.

Headteachers, per the Guardian, are hoping phone bans and social media restrictions will curb the image-based offences, which have exploded alongside AI deepfake tools. Whether that's enough, and whether the Department for Education will mandate anything beyond voluntary safeguarding guidance, remains unanswered. Andrew Lord's challenge stands unresolved: authorities now have the numbers.