From worried mum, of Ryde, name withheld:

The rising trend of youth violence, gang and knife crime is directly linked to failings in our education system.

My son has special education needs (SEN) and was formally diagnosed with ADHD at the late age of 14. At primary school he was an above-average student but did not cope with the transition to high school and began slowly to unravel.

The high school followed a pattern of detentions, exclusions and twilight school provision along with various attempts to off-roll him to other schools.

The school did not, however, look to see whether he had a barrier to learning, a hidden disability.

Why did they do that? Children with SEN are costly, they require specialist support and quite simply schools do not have the money as they are being forced to make cuts.

So, what happens is that many schools seem to follow a standard path hoping the kid goes somewhere else and in some cases that kid goes straight into the den of thieves.

My son went on to commit 22 offences in an eight-week period — a costly crime spree.

He was encouraged to steal items in exchange for drugs and asked to steal bikes by adults over from the mainland.

He ended up with a 12-month youth rehabilitation order, two of his cohorts, aged just 14 and 15, served custodial sentences — both unsurprisingly were not in mainstream school.

What is even more unintelligent is the pattern of offending is known. There’s a well-established link between ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder and offending with a disproportionate amount of youngsters with ADHD serving a custodial sentence — around 30 per cent compared to around five per cent of the population.

Having ADHD is not an excuse but offers an explanation and, therefore, this is the positive bit, it affords us with an opportunity for early meaningful and life-changing intervention but sadly this is not happening.

The headlines are now full of tragic stories of violent and meaningless teenage deaths but we have allowed this to happen in order to balance the books.

Exclusion are of little benefit as a tool to correct behaviour but do push children into gangs, crime and violence. What savings are worth paying for in children’s lives?