The truth about violence in US schools is not straightforward. Perceptions of war zones are profoundly wrong. A student is 100 times more likely to be killed outside his front door than in school. And in school, he or she is 10 times more likely to be killed in a gang or drug-related incident than a mass shooting. The United States suffered an epidemic of violence in the decade from about 1983 to 1993. Arrest rates of young people for homicide and other violent crimes skyrocketed, with three factors contributing significantly: gangs, drugs and guns. Since then, arrests and victims' reports of violence have declined, returning in 1999 to rates only slightly higher than those in 1983.

In a study published last week, "Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2000", researchers from the US departments of justice and education said violent crime in schools dropped between 1992 and 1998 - from 48 crimes per 1,000 students to 43 per 1,000. Yet several other leading indicators of violence remain high. Young people tell surveys that their own involvement in violence has not declined at all. Arrest rates for aggravated assault remain quite high. Some estimates of gang membership indicate that this problem remains close to levels at the peak of the epidemic. But today's youth violence is less lethal, largely because of a decline in the use of firearms. Homicides at school are declining. Violent confrontations are less likely to result in killing or serious injury, and the police are less likely to be called. And yet violent behaviour is just as prevalent today as it was during the violence epidemic. Some 10 to 15 per cent of high school seniors reveal in confidential surveys that they have committed at least one act of serious violence in the past year. This prevalence rate has been slowly yet steadily rising since 1980.

Of the 177 students age five to 19 who were killed at school in the five years to June 1999, the vast majority of the homicides (84 per cent) involved firearms. During that period, school-associated homicides remained at less than 1 per cent of all homicides among students, but the frequency of homicides involving more than one victim increased.

The three school years from August 1995 through to June 1998 saw an average of five multiple-victim homicides or homicide-suicides per year. An average of one such event occurred in each of the three years from August 1992 through July 1995.

The National Crime Victimisation Survey found that between 1992 and 1998, the rate of serious violent crimes at school remained relatively stable at about eight to 13 per 1,000 students. However, recent findings regarding students carrying weapons (a gun, knife, or club, for example) at school are encouraging. In 1999 a survey found that about 7 per cent of all high school students reported carrying a weapon on school property within the last 30 days, down from 12 per cent in 1993.