AN East Lancashire school is today picking up the pieces after a week when youngsters were injured in a mass brawl and police were forced to mount a massive guard to protect pupils and staff.

Everyone in education agrees on the diagnosis: violence in schools is escalating. But, as teaching staff at Moorhead High in Accrington come to terms with what unfolded at their school, what is the cure?

Lancashire County Council -- Moorhead's paymaster -- is urgently examining what it can do to help.

A spokesman for the education authority said: "Aggression in schools is on the increase. It's a social issue, not just a schools issue, but we have to look at our behaviour management."

And Joan Hayselden, acting head at Moorhead, added: "In the past few years children's behaviour has definitely deteriorated. But the roots are in society, not the school."

However, the County Hall spokesman said it was important to keep a perspective on incidents of the magnitude of that which disfigured Moorhead and led to pupils being arrested. "Events like this are a very rare exception and not a regular occurrence," he pointed out.

And he revealed that out of 223 Ofsted inspections in the county last year just seven primary schools and two secondary schools were deemed to need urgent improvements in the way they managed their pupils' behaviour.

However, last week the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Estelle Morris, acknowledged a growing problem when she announced that schools will be told to get tough on pupils who carry weapons or repeatedly bully pupils. At Moorhead, some of the youngsters involved in the mass brawling were reported by eye-witnesses to be carrying chains and lumps of wood, and police found an iron bar in a school hedgerow.

Her prescription for a cure is to send offenders to special units which will try to find out why they are anti-social and even violent.

Meanwhile, appeals panels will be told that headteachers' decisions to permanently exclude persistent bullies and children carrying weapons should not normally be overruled. Simon Jones, divisional secretary in East Lancashire for the National Union of Teachers, said: "The Secretary of State's guidelines will strengthen the arm of schools to deal with the deteriorating behaviour of pupils

"This sort of behaviour disrupts the education of other children and threatens the welfare of pupils and teachers."

Lancashire County Council's cabinet member for education Councillor Alan Whittaker added: "We have all got to work together to tackle this problem. Moorhead, and all our schools, are part of the community and we want to help them."