Safety of educational and childcare facilities in 2025, preliminary results, new threats, forecast for 2026

Note: it should be borne in mind that the author lives and works in Russia, so in this article, he considers the situation on the example of his country. Measures to ensure the safety of schools, other educational institutions and places with a mass stay of children that he proposes are developed by him for use in Russia, taking into account the existing law enforcement system and the situation there.

Work is currently nearing completion on an updated version of the Handbook of Crimes and Terrorist Acts in Schools and Other Educational Institutions, which will include some corrections and additions for previous periods, as well as statistics for 2025. Taking into account the opinions and wishes expressed by colleagues, the form for submitting certain statistical data will be supplemented. I will provide more details about the new edition of the Handbook in an accompanying article to its publication.

Some preliminary conclusions about the security situation in schools and other educational and childcare institutions can already be drawn.

1. The negative trend continues.

Even for the incomplete year of 2025, crime rates have increased compared to both 2024 and the average for the most recent period (2020-2024). The increase is observed both in the total number of serious and particularly serious crimes and in incidents with signs of mass murders and terrorist acts.

2. The level of security in educational institutions remains low.

The vast majority of crimes are committed directly on the premises of educational institutions using weapons or explosive devices. This circumstance clearly indicates that the criminals entered the premises of the educational institution unhindered, carried weapons with them, and carried out their planned crime.

3. Using teenagers to carry out terrorist acts.

So far, this phenomenon is more common in Russia. Teenagers, following instructions from anonymous «curators» in messengers and social networks, commit arson or mine energy facilities, transport, cars, and police premises, as well as other law enforcement agencies. There are no exact statistics, but according to Russian media reports, 47 such crimes were committed in the first quarter of 2025. The main motives for committing these crimes are threats of violence, blackmail, and the promise of financial reward.

Although most of these crimes are committed in Russia (although there are isolated cases in other countries), this practice is rapidly spreading to other countries. Terrorist organizations and criminal communities are quick learners and closely monitor such «cutting-edge criminal experience».

Earlier, in my articles on PMC Ryodan and Red Dolphin, I expressed my opinion and made predictions that such crimes would be committed more often, that these cases were only a test and assessment of the possibilities of using teenagers, both individually and in groups, to commit crimes and terrorist acts with the possibility of anonymous, remote control of their actions. Unfortunately, as practice has shown, this experiment has been successful.

4. Dangerous precedents have been set in Nigeria.

In November 2025, within a span of four days, two organized, group, armed attacks on schools were carried out in Nigeria. In both cases, the aim of the attacks was to take hostages.

In the first case, on November 17 in the city of Magha, during an attack on a school, the deputy director was killed and a security guard was wounded, and 25 students were taken hostage.

In the second case, on November 21, in the city of Papiri, there were no deaths or injuries during the attack on the school, but more than 300 students and 12 teachers were taken hostage.

These cities are located in border states, less than 200 kilometers apart. After the first kidnapping, the Nigerian government launched a police operation and tightened security measures. However, this did not prevent the criminals from carrying out an even more daring attack four days later and taking 10 times more hostages.

Similar attacks have been carried out in Nigeria before, but not on such a scale. The last similar case (in terms of the number of people kidnapped) occurred there 11 years ago, in April 2014, when militants from a terrorist group kidnapped 276 high school students, 94 of whom have still not been released.

All this indicates that educational institutions have been and remain an easily accessible target for criminals and terrorists. They perceive children as a resource (a tool) with which they can commit crimes and terrorist acts with impunity, while remaining hundreds and thousands of kilometers away.

Forecast: The current situation clearly shows that the existing system for containing this threat is not working, and no effective system for actively countering it has yet been created. This means that in 2026, we should not expect any positive changes; at best, the situation will remain at its current level.

Author and Editor-in-Chief of the project - Roman Grishin.

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The tragedy in Beslan, 20 years later.

 

20 years ago, on September 3, 2004, one of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century - Beslan - ended with terrible consequences. Then - on September 01, the day of the beginning of the school year, in this small town in the south of Russia, in the Republic of North Ossetia, terrorists seized a secondary school, more than 1100 people were taken hostage, most of whom were children.

The terrorists booby-trapped the school building, where they held hostages for 2.5 days, including many pregnant women and children under the age of 1 year. The criminals held people without water, food and access to medical care.

On September 03, special units started storming the captured school, some of the bombs were defused, but the criminals managed to detonate the other part of them. They were also shooting the hostages chaotically with all kinds of automatic firearms, as well as with hand grenades. Out of 32 terrorists, 31 were killed, 1 was arrested (currently serving a life sentence in prison).

The victims of the terrorist attack were 333 people, including:

- 186 children between the ages of 7 and 17;

- 17 teachers and school staff;

- 111 parents of students and guests of the school;

- 11 members of the assault special forces and police officers;

- 8 emergency services personnel.

This is a terrible tragedy, which in its scale, cruelty and number of victims - shocked the world. I was not interested in the motives of the criminals, I believe that such crimes do not and cannot have any justification, without exception.

Personally for me the tragedy in the school of Beslan became a starting point, it was then that I began to actively study and develop such a direction of applied criminology as “Ensuring the safety of schools and other educational institutions from criminal and terrorist threats”. Unfortunately, the results of my research do not give reason for optimism, because no one has drawn any conclusions from this terrible crime. In the 20 years that have passed since the tragedy, 218 crimes* (not including 2024) falling under the signs of mass murder have occurred in schools, kindergartens, colleges and universities around the world, 17 of them were qualified as terrorist acts, 18 were connected with hostage-taking. The victims of these tragedies were 2,649 people, of whom 933 died and 1,716 were injured, most of them children.

As it is not sad, but the dynamics of such crimes is not decreasing, schools, kindergartens, colleges, universities and other educational institutions, as well as places with mass presence of children, continue to be «easy targets» for criminals and terrorists, which means that no one and nowhere is safe from the repetition of a tragedy like the terrorist act in the school of Beslan, it is only a matter of time. So for now we can only wait.

Is it possible to completely eliminate the risk of a repetition of such crimes? I believe that no, it is impossible. However, it is quite possible to significantly reduce the risk of such tragedies, as well as the scale of their consequences.

Are there effective ways and methods to counter such threats? Yes, there are.

What is needed for this? The presence of two conditions:

1. Recognition of the fact of existence of the threat, that schools, kindergartens, colleges, universities and other educational institutions, as well as places with mass stay of children, are objects of increased danger.

2. Complete change of the existing approach to the system of ensuring the safety of such institutions. It is quite possible to make them safe without turning them into analogs of military bases or prisons. How exactly, is a topic for a separate conversation, which makes sense only after condition № 1 is met.

Author - Roman Grishin

* Statistical data are taken from Handbook of Crimes and Terrorist Acts in schools and other educational institutions

photo taken from the website: Network edition «Alpha news»

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