A DAD is calling for children caught taking knives into schools to be immediately excluded.

Tom Howell launched a petition calling for the change as he was unhappy with the response by King’s Ford Junior School, in Colchester, after three children took knives into the school.

The pupils’ parents were called and they were sent home after the incident.

But Mr Howell, whose son attends the school, believes the punishment should have been either a temporary or permanent exclusion.

Members of his extended family attend the Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds, where teacher Ann Maguire was stabbed to death.

Mr Howell, of Rayner Road, Colchester, has called on the Department for Education to enforce the exclusion rule in his petition at Change.org.

Read the full story in today's Gazette.