Part of the problem (from my past experience as a primary school governor) is the scarcity of sanctions that can be used against disruptive children. One screaming child refused to come out from under a desk, but no teacher was allowed to touch them to pull them out. So no lesson for anyone.
I’m not surprised there are a lot of risks in doing that for both teacher and child. Times have changed from my school days where bad behaviour might be met by a blackboard rubber being launched at one’s head.
Teachers do need some on site trained support and calm spaces to take kids to.
If the child won’t move, there’s not a lot teachers can do now. I’m not advocating a return to Wackford Squeers, but if children know teachers are impotent - and schools don’t have the money or resources to provide speciality support staff and spaces - then they can and do exploit that.
I only have responses turned on to 'all' for my articles now, and I'm glad I do, because a) get more feedback for your most important stuff and also b) you just get a higher quality of replies that are just complete non sequiturs.
I was involved with this briefly professionally in Scotland. I had a real challenge dealing with what 'exclusion' actually meant. Because in practical terms I thought there was a significant difference between a child out on the streets versus one moved out of the h classroom to a supervisory hub.
Good read.
The defunding of the police is to stop them arming themselves to the back teeth and put in place things like mental health protocols that will enable them to deal with situations better. Rather than their shoot first ask question later policies that has lead to countless needless deaths.
1/ Thanks for this. It's a minefield of an area and it's well put across well. There is of course considerable complexity and related issues that you can't address within that space and focus (ie my raising them isn't a criticism of the piece). As a parent of a child who was on cusp of exclusion..
2/ Before we took out of school and gave made the massive adjustment to homeschool/unschool as there is no setting that would work for him (he has ASD with demand avoidant traits - mainstream didn't work as too much compliance/structure, specialist wouldn't work as would be bored to bits - v bright)
3/ It was massively disruptive at school for him and as you say v much for the others and teachers etc - wasn't working for anyone and right it came to end. Don't hold it against the school, esp when such limited resources to do anything more than they did. But.. the discussion on exclusion would
4/ benefit from integration with both the SEND system crisis and a meaningful exploration of why schools aren't working both for those explode externally and wither internally (ie fight, flight, freeze). What is it about the school environment that is contributing to this - rigidity, pressure etc
5/ rather than assuming schools fundamentally work well, just are poorly resources. We still run largely a Victorian model of schooling, with ever increasing measuring/monitoring and control. This works for many/most, but not all. Until we dig into that, we will be on loop at best, spiral at worst.
I’m a governor of two PRUs, and we’ve seen a huge uptick of exclusions over the past few years. I’m not saying the answer is no exclusions because you’re absolutely right that violent acts merit them, but we need to look at why these incidents are taking place at all - there’s so much unmet need
Yeah - the other germ of truth in the no more exclusions campaign is 'exclusion is a worrying sign', the fact they have gone up is part of the same trend as the dreadful picture on schoolreadiness IMO.
It's not very odd. Presumably, you are paid as a teacher – paywalls are part of what pay journalists, so it can be incredibly irritating to be told "Paywall 🙄" in such a demanding fashion. It was also a gift link for the first 300 clicks, one of which was me two minutes ago.
Not a teacher. Sorry if my eye roll came across as "demanding". Paid a pittance for working in a school. Can't afford every pay wall. Oh well, I'll never know what was written.
To be completely honest, ‘zero exclusions’ is a straw man used by people in edu who want to avoid conversations about things that need to change. The conversation is now both broader and more nuanced than this.
Didn’t you imply it’s not actually what happens in the article though? Perhaps I misread that… I don’t know anyone who takes it seriously as a literal position having been involved in policy and research on it for twenty years.
@thedifferenceed.bsky.social is working on policy and practice questions that centre on what needs to change so fewer children ‘need’ to be excluded. But also what needs to change so fewer self-exclude through non-attendance because they don’t feel safe and don’t feel they belong.
Social issues that sit behind both exclusions and the behaviours that can lead to them has many dimensions. Race, certainly. But also disability and mental health. E.g. we know children excluded in primary school often go on to be identified as having special needs https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/identifying-send-2/
To be clear, I think the article is good in pointing to complexity + to the fact that exclusion as practiced now doesn’t ‘work’ for society, since short of sending a lot of people to prison, you still have to live next door to them. Some kids sadly need to be separated, but that isn’t a ‘solution’.
I was talking to a year head at an inner London secondary school the other day - and they told me that they assess exclusions slowly & carefully - so that in practice almost all of them are a voluntary transfer to another school.
Did you see this? One line that caught my eye was: "It is clear that school exclusions are strongly linked to SEN [special educational needs] status, in a way that is not usually portrayed in media or social media discussions." https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/1/6
Yeah - I couldn't fit in the SEN dimension but I think it's a mite more complex, in that often a SEN diagnosis is the first intervention after a major incident, rather than, as a lot of the literature seems to suppose, it being something that no-one had noticed prior to exclusion.
as an author of one of the studies (and interest in this area) - the 'pipeline' analogy suggests an inevitability between excl & prison (or crime) that just isn't there in reality. increased risk is what we found
2/4
...it's matching many more things that eg male fsm sen and so on. so, 'conceit' is a disservice to the work & as the authors make clear it's v difficult to draw causal conclusions, but what they've done is better than what most do/have done.
Yes, I know. I didn't say that was all they were doing - I gave that as an example of the classic exclusion profile. I really wish that people in this space and its defenders would be a bit more honest with themselves, though.
The study, quite deliberately, controls for everything but the precipitating event that actually led to exclusion. That is the conceit I am talking about. If advocates for reducing exclusions don't think that 'what were these kids actually excluded for' is important variable, ok.
I'm also taken with your point re behaviour/incident -> SEN diagnosis
Is that from DfE data on the timing of SEN diagnosis vs exclusion? if so can you please share a link to it? It might well hold for perm exclusions but IDK about suspensions.
With respect, I suspect your concept of the offence that warrants exclusion being a first criminal offence is wrong. Usually, it's several criminally actionable offences in. (Before you even get to the harm caused to other kids' learning through disruption).
Damn, David, I really did get suckered in by this one, like I had a real 'but David is so sensible - maybe I HAVE missed something and assault isn't so bad' moment of doubt reading that opening sentence.
I honestly reckon you could look at any Y5 or Y6 parents' WhatsApp group and discover multiple theoretically criminal offences from 10 or 11yos. The bar for exclusion is *much* higher than many parents think it is (and is uncomfortably high for other, affected children).
It's, in the spirit of your piece, something I feel genuinely conflicted over. Exclusion feels like the easy option disproportionately harming kids from a rough background, but there comes a point where those kids are significantly harming the others in their class.
Yeah. I think the more useful debate is 'how can we make PRUs and other facilities better' (and to your point, I think we could and should intervene a lot earlier which would also help).
I totally agree with your "it's more complicated than that" stance on the balancing act. But I think you're underselling how much goes on before the decision to exclude is made.
I suspect that the problem child will come from a dysfunctional home.
The violence on the school premises against pupils and teachers cannot be tolerated and exclusions will bethe final step for many schools.
Sort out the home problem and the school problem will reduce.
That will be multi service
IMHO, the real debate ought to be: what should be done with children who either are or might be excluded? For example, should such children receive special funding, such as to ensure they can read and write (a problem for quite a few)? 1/4
Difficult in this connection to separate the rise in exclusions from the crisis in SEN funding - unsurprising, if depressing, that when a school which cannot meet a child's need turns to excluding the drain on funding that is the child in question. 2/4
There are, btw, plenty of technical means of avoiding 'permanent exclusion' (managed move, direction off-site) which achieve much the same effect. Zero permanent exclusions will just mean other, less regulated, processes for removing children to other settings will predominate. 3/4
In the current legislative set-up, 'no more exclusions' really means 'no more local authority involvement in excluded children' and 'low-funding provision commissioned by schools for needy children', at least in the absence of commitment and innovation amongst such schools. 4/4
I was for my sins, a governor of a school, for over a decade. Occasionally, a student was excluded & rarer still expelled. Reluctant to expel but often better for the student (fresh start) & the school. It is a tough one to get right across the board
I'm sorry, your local governments are trying to legislate away school's ability to expel students? Some kids need to be expelled! They have every right to try again at another school, and most democratic U.S. states even have schools of last resort for "problem kids" but you do have to be realistic.
Comments
Teachers do need some on site trained support and calm spaces to take kids to.
The defunding of the police is to stop them arming themselves to the back teeth and put in place things like mental health protocols that will enable them to deal with situations better. Rather than their shoot first ask question later policies that has lead to countless needless deaths.
Oh….
These stats are so important. As is the pipeline point. Thank you for writing this.
For example, see https://www.ippr.org/articles/who-is-losing-learning-solutions
I was talking to a year head at an inner London secondary school the other day - and they told me that they assess exclusions slowly & carefully - so that in practice almost all of them are a voluntary transfer to another school.
If by changing the environment, this fixes
But my question would be - how many of these kids are just slowly being shuffled around the system?
as an author of one of the studies (and interest in this area) - the 'pipeline' analogy suggests an inevitability between excl & prison (or crime) that just isn't there in reality. increased risk is what we found
on the other study - the matching one... 1/4
...it's matching many more things that eg male fsm sen and so on. so, 'conceit' is a disservice to the work & as the authors make clear it's v difficult to draw causal conclusions, but what they've done is better than what most do/have done.
there's also much than can be done to prevent...
...or reduce exclusions/suspension as per this systematic review https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.4073/csr.2018.1
-improve pupil attainment
-improve behaviour management
-mentoring/coaching
-counselling for pupils
that review is being updated (awaiting publication)
I'm also taken with your point re behaviour/incident -> SEN diagnosis
Is that from DfE data on the timing of SEN diagnosis vs exclusion? if so can you please share a link to it? It might well hold for perm exclusions but IDK about suspensions.
The violence on the school premises against pupils and teachers cannot be tolerated and exclusions will bethe final step for many schools.
Sort out the home problem and the school problem will reduce.
That will be multi service
62% of our incarcerated children have been in care.
Less than 1% of children go into care.
It’s the biggest story I never see in journalism …