Teen charged over knife incident at school

File photo / NZ Herald

A schoolgirl has been charged with assault and threatening to kill after students at Hamilton Girls' High School were threatened with a knife yesterday.

Senior Sergeant Pete Van De Wetering said police were called to the school grounds at about 11.40am

A teacher persuaded a student carrying a knife to drop it and she was held in the principal's office until police arrived.

A 15-year-old girl will appear in Hamilton Youth Court today.

The school went into lockdown for about 15 minutes during yesterday's incident.

The incident comes just three days after a 13-year-old boy stabbed Te Puke High School maths teacher Steve Hose in the back of the neck and in the shoulder and against a backdrop of rising violence against school staff.

Principal Mary-Anne Baxter said that in her 40 years of teaching and the last six as head of the decile 6 school, which has a roll of about 1500 students, she had never seen an incident like this.

She said the situation was saddening and many of the students involved were "quite shaken".

"Of course we work really hard as a school and have a very good pastoral system and yet things like this can still happen," she said.

"The fact that any person who responds to a situation in a violent way like this has to be a concern for us as a society," said Ms Baxter.

Senior Sergeant Pete Van De Wetering praised the school staff for their response to the incident, which he said was "very serious".

He said police were yet to talk with the teacher, who was too upset to be interviewed at the time.

- With NZPA