A German elementary school in Berlin, which contains a pupil population who almost all hail from migrant backgrounds, has been forced to hire security guards because of escalating violence.

The school, which teaches children between the ages of six and twelve, has seen a recent increase in violent incidents both among the pupils and directed at the teachers in the classrooms Berliner Zeitung reports.

Schoeneberg Spreewald Elementary School decided that the attacks were becoming so bad that the only solution was to hire a security company who would be able to intervene and stop the violence.

Doris Unzeit, the headmaster of the school, said there had been 30 major violent incidents reported in the last year alone: “Within the past year, the violence has increased so much that we now had to take this measure,” he said.

Unzeit defended the hiring of the security guard, saying: “this should improve the reputation of the school and ensure that the children can learn here again in peace.”

Many schools in Berlin have a large number of pupils from migrant backgrounds — but with 99 per cent migration-background pupils, Schoeneberg Spreewald Elementary is unusual even by German standards.

Germany: Nearly 40 Per Cent of Under Fives Now 'Migrant Background' https://t.co/uJ3dLvz9ao pic.twitter.com/oEfMyJVcMg — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 21, 2016

Breitbart London reported in 2016 that around 40 percent of children under five years-old in Germany came from migrant backgrounds.

In the same year, the German population grew by 346,000 due to mass migration, as the number of deaths outweighed the number of people born in the country.

Area Manager Masieh Jahn of the Rheinische Sicherheitdienst security company who was hired by the school said: “It’s shocking how violent even elementary school children are” — but added that his staff “can speak German, Turkish and Arabic, which ensures trust in the pupils and parents. We are the watchdogs for them.”

Parents of the children had mixed reactions to the hiring of the security guards. One father said the guards made the school seem like a prison while another was more positive, saying: “There was an incident some time ago when a father of a pupil roughly touched another pupil. I think that does not work. It’s good that there is a security service now.”

One of the more worrying trends in Berlin schools has been violence and harassment directed at Jewish children. Last year a Jewish boy was forced to switch schools because of threats and physical attacks by other pupils from migrant backgrounds.