A £1.2m plan to curb knife crime in schools - is this Harvey Willgoose's legacy in action?
Harvey Willgoose’s mother can’t prove the plans to tackle knife crime in schools were set in motion by her son’s death. “But I hope they were,” she says.
The 91-page ‘Protecting Lives, Building Hope’ report published this week does not mention Harvey’s name, Sheffield, or even refer to South Yorkshire outside of one single statistic.
But Harvey was a 15-year-old boy, stabbed to death, in school, by another 15-year-old boy - how could his murder not have been discussed at the highest levels in Whitehall?
Now, £26m will be ploughed into tackling knife crime, with £1.2m specifically for fighting “the root cause of knife crime in school.”
Caroline told The Star about how announcements like this make her reflect on Harvey’s legacy.
“When I saw the fund, I said to my mum ‘I wonder if this is because of Harvey, are they talking about him when they write these things?’
“I would like to think so.”
Indeed, Harvey’s death dragged knife crime into the spotlight and became an unavoidable conversation for perhaps every household in the city.
The show of unity and grief from Sheffield in February 2025 was immediate. Five days after his murder, hundreds of people marched in a stand against knife crime, reflected in a second march on the anniversary on February 1.
The Willgoose family has campaigned extensively with groups like Anthony Olaseinde’s ‘Always An Alternative’ as well as ‘Binning Knives Saves Lives’ to oppose knife crime.
Caroline campaigns for hardline measures to fight knife crime in schools, but is also fundraising to build a youth club named Harvey’s Hub in his honour.
The family regularly promotes an online petition calling for mandatory bag checks and knife arches in ”every school.”
To date, only The Sheffield College City Campus on Granville Road - next door to All Saint’s Catholic High School - has unveiled a knife arch, but it is not used every day.
The Willgoose family continues to call for strict policies for handling students caught with weapons, ensuring they do not return to class without proper intervention.
How fitting, as a foreword by PM Keir Starmer on page one of the new plan states: “...every young person found carrying a knife [will receive] a meaningful intervention, offering them an alternative path.
“Our ambition to halve knife crime within a decade will not be easy. But it is necessary. We simply cannot allow more young lives to be lost...
“I want to pay tribute to the bravery of all those parents who have lost children and who are now heroically campaigning for change, so that we can ensure a better future for other children.”
However, Caroline knows this will not happen in every school with just £1.2m set aside - but she praises the move as “a step in the right direction.”
Caroline said: “The topic of fighting knife crime in schools has come more to life since Harvey.
“I thought most schools would have come forward to asking me to speak to them. I think there is still a stigma that having someone come in to talk about knife crime is the same as saying you have a knife crime problem.
“I won’t stop until things start changing.”
Locally, another step in the right direction was the arrival of bleed kits - first aid bags designed to stop catastrophic bleeding - in over 30 secondary schools in South Yorkshire.
It is physical reminder of Harvey’s legacy, a piece of sensible, lifesaving gear - but every parent in Sheffield knows exactly why there is one in their school now.