Confiscated toys – in pictures

“This was used as a mascot in the SATs. Trolls have been popular among primary school girls throughout the last three decades and are thought to bring good luck. Apparently it's unlucky to cut their hair” Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"This was donated to me by a head teacher at a grammar school. The tennis ball was covered with lighter fluid, lit and thrown between four boys wearing oven gloves" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"While working in different schools, I became interested in the collections of confiscated objects I came across in teachers' desk drawers. I began to talk to staff about these items and very quickly this turned into a kind of social research project" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"Through the sheer volume of items I was able to collect, it quickly become evident that a lot of teachers were experiencing a high degree of lesson interruption" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"Many of the staff were able to remember individual details about the items; indeed some of them were placed in dated boxes and envelopes with notes attached" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

“These insects were used to scare the girls. The wide range of items I’ve collected reveal the difficulty in keeping pupils ‘on task’” Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"I was covering a large mixed class of boys and girls for a GCSE English lesson and was told that the class needed to get on with personal revision work. Halfway through the lesson, I noticed a group of boys clustered together at the back of the class. When I inquired what method of revision they were employing, I noticed that they were playing cards, which were beautifully crafted (carefully drawn and torn) from the lined paper I had handed out at the beginning of the lesson" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"McDonald's toys feature a lot in my collection of nuisance toys" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

"There are 200 match heads within this ball. The teacher who confiscated this item told me that the boy who made it wanted to throw it across the classroom in the hope that the impact of the ball would cause the match heads to explode" Photograph: Guy Tarrant

Mr T taken from an unknown boy, from a boys' primary school confiscation cabinet Photograph: Guy Tarrant

A noisy "ouzy" machine gun. Emotional, social and behavioural difficulties (ESBD) school consfiscation cabinet #1 Photograph: Guy Tarrant

Trading cards from a boys primary school confiscation cabinet Photograph: Guy Tarrant