IMAGINE going to work each morning knowing that two of your colleagues will be attacked in the line of duty before the day is out.

Shockingly, that is the reality for teachers in Southampton.

As we report today, those 385 assaults in the last full academic year left 163 teaching staff with injuries.

Ten incidents were so serious that police were called in.

That the number of attacks is down on the previous year should offer no comfort, nor should the fact that Southampton is no worse than anywhere else in the country.

Thankfully, here in Southampton we have not had to deal with the fall-out from a situation such as the sickening death of Ann Maguire, who was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old pupil at her school in Leeds.

That may be in no small part to initiatives over the past decade to keep knives out of the city’s schools, reported at length by the Daily Echo.

However these figures suggest that more needs to be done.

It would only take one of those 385 incidents to escalate for tragedy to strike.