Letter: Perils on the Net

Sir: As well as lax American gun laws and violent pop culture, a third factor needs to be considered in the Denver and other school shootings, and should in principle be more easily controllable. This is the large size of schools.

Criminological research in the US has consistently shown a close correlation between violence and vandalism by pupils (both inside and outside school) and the number of pupils in a school. No similar research has been done in Britain, but there is little doubt that it would show the same result.

School building programmes in both countries over the past 40 years therefore constitute one of several ways in which government spending has been the problem, not the solution.

F KNOX

London SW4