Moving problem schoolchildren to another school?

Sometimes schools matter int heir approach. A boy in my son’s year had been expelled from two secondary schools. He excelled at my son’s school (still had Benchley problems but they managed them differently I’m assuming) he ended up securing an apprenticeship at Mercedes when he left !

It's extremely complex and it isn't all down to failures of parents or failures of systems.

In many countries, fuelled by social media, there are increasing levels of anger, aggression and violence where solutions to disagreements, disputes or feeling wronged or marginalised are to exert aggression or violence on others.

Just thinking of some of the DC I know involved in serious violent offending, they include those with parents who are teachers, youth workers, medics and even solicitors. And no that doesn't automatically mean stellar parenting but it certainly isn't the impoverished, uneducated, drug-using, child neglect or abuse backgrounds that many people assume the DC must come from.

That hyperbole just doesn’t do the guilt
pull any more. Why have you inferred I believe “some babies are born murderers”?
It is the decisions made by individuals to live such a life, other wise why hasn’t every young person with his schooling and life experience murdered someone?

Of course it’s somebody’s fault - mostly his. But there were opportunities to stop him. There were opportunities to prevent this crime. If you honestly think some babies are born destined to become murderers then I can’t even argue with you - our viewpoints are way too far apart.

All of this.

Please share your powers of being able to mind read anyone, even those you don't know - if you know that no child who doesn't behave impeccably wants to learn.

Also how are you aiming to fund the care bills for all the adults who stayed home with their parents, learnt nothing and suffered trauma and neglect and so are now unable to work or look after themselves. Or do you really believe that if you can't operate as an independent, self sufficient being by 4 or 5 or even 12 or 13 dying on the streets is what you deserve?

There are no easy answers here. The boy who killed Harvey Willgoose should not have been in school. He was obviously dangerous, this was known from many previous incidents. It is a failure of the system that that risk wasn't taken seriously.

But expelling children doesn't solve the problem, in fact it just puts dangerous young people on the streets and the risk is still there. I have worked in a pupil referral unit and trying to keep these young people in education and treat emotional and behavioural issues is extremely difficult and is massively underfunded. A lot of people think these kids don't deserve help and support - most of them have undiagnosed learning difficulties, mental health problems, are in care or already in the youth offending system. They need intensive help on multiple fronts.

We can't just write them off and say it's the parents problem. Most of the parents of the kids I worked with had substance abuse issues or severe mental health conditions or were in prison. A lot of the kids were in local authority care. If we don't do something to address their problems, what then? They end up as antisocial adults, they use drugs, they end up in prison or they have multiple kids that they can't look after, and the cycle perpetuates. They could end up living next door to you. If we don't try and address the problems while they're still children, the problems don't go away - they get worse.

I’m a teacher and my DH worked in a PRU for many years. OP, I understand your sentiment regarding making parents take responsibility for the behaviour of their children. However, I think you’re underestimating the home lives of a lot of these students. Being at home and educated by their parents would not be better for them or society than being at school.

My personal view is that PRU and similar alternative provisions should be expanded, and include any students who are consistently disrupting the learning of others. My experience tells me this would be 3-4 students out of every 30 per class. That’s a lot.

The alternative provisions would need to be individualised enough to find pathways for success (a job, apprenticeship, further education) for each student. Some students wouldn’t make it and would still end up committing crimes and be imprisoned. However, there are enough students on the periphery who would be helped by this kind of provision.

Considering how astronomically expensive this would be to run, there is no way the state could fund a provision like this without help from the private sector. I think that some investment from companies and local businesses could help. E.g. offering work experience hours, charitable donations, volunteers, sponsoring certain provisions etc.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Well as long as those who behave and want to learn are able to?

That's very short-sighted. So we just give up on children and leave them to their parents. What do you think will happen then? Will they suddenly become upstanding citizens? I think what is much more likely is that they will become much worse, become involved in a life of crime because they have no other prospects and have been shunned by those who could give them purpose, support and protection.

"Parents problem. Teach them at home or whatever. If you can't control your child and they are out of hand because of you why should others suffer"

• Can't control child
• Or can't be bothered to control child
• But will be able to teach them at home
• And bothered to teach them at home
• Will stop others suffering as a result of this behaviour

State schools are a clusterfuck of underfunding, this is paralleled by there are too few parent stakeholders upholding expected levels of behaviour. Sadly lots of comps are just crowd control, whilst the teachers deal with the brightest and the most troublesome kids. It’s a nightmare for your average middling child, who will coast along in the background and potentially very achieve little - whilst teachers drag large classes through a scanty version of the curriculum. Why not charge state school parents a fee for accessing schools, that should focus everyone on the qualitative nature of education and its outcomes - as well as the part they play.

Children with speech and language disorders may not be able to cope in mainstream. Boys tend to externalise this into behavioural problems, while girls internalise it as depression and anxiety.

It is not the fault of parents usually, who may not even know what a speech and language disorder is, that

a) the child doesn’t get an early assessment, diagnosis and proper speech therapy
b) the child is put into a mainstream school, where they may not understand the spoken language, cannot read and write, and don’t understand what they are supposed to be doing
c) even if they were assessed and diagnosed early, there are not enough places in additionally resourced units for them
d) the teacher doesn’t understand their SEN and even if they did, don’t have the resources to meet their needs (which includes a class of 10 or less as per c)

1 in 10 children have speech and language difficulties, although its those tending towards severe, who may not be able to cope in mainstream.

Every child facing permanent exclusion should be assessed by an educational psychologist and speech and language therapist, to see if they have undiagnosed SEN. If they have, that is not the fault of the parents or the child.

So still the “It’s got to be somebodys fault!” path? It’s always that they weren’t told that they shouldn’t murder, so not their fault?

There’s schools within secure children’s homes housing those sorts of young people, they are not in mainstream schools

I agree.

@Netcurtainnelly I work in the system. There are huge pressures from the police too as quite often the perm-ex or suspended children just go on to cause mayhem locally.

Makes communities unsafe for others, costs the tax payer and prevents the child ever having a chance.

Maybe more onus on parents, but I don’t know how. (Joint parent/ child classes, statutorily would be a start!)

Adding that the in the very sad death of Harvey, the academy trust safeguarding procedures seriously failed , the report on the failings should be made public and the highly paid CEO must be accountable and resign.

well exactly! OP is not far off the hang the perps and sterilise the parents path by the sounds of it. 'putting it back on the parents' is wildly over-simplistic. If all parents were capable of raising non-violent kids, we wouldn't need social services or police or prisons let alone school exclusions. The reality is not everyone was parented well so not everyone can parent well so putting it back on them will only exacerbate the issue. if the taxpayer paid more and the systems were well-resourced, there would be more support for parents and kids, both victims and perps and the more complex grey areas between. but bad things would still happen and families will suffer because there is no easy solution. so problems get moved around and many people try their best and fail. it's not good enough, no one would say it is, but there's no easy solution.

My son did something stupid with disastrous consequences that resulted in avmanaged move to another school. I nearly died of shame. There absolutely was - and still is - plenty of discipline at home and he has never been allowed free reign to do what he wants. He made a mistake. That mistake cost him his mental health in the short term and longer term, he is still affected by it. Had we been left to it, I have no doubt today he would be a very different young man with a very different future. As it is, he was forced to face it head on, pick up the pieces he had created and deal with it. He left school with 5 GCSEs including maths, English and science despite it looking like failure was going to happen. He now at college and working full time. I am immensely proud.

I was a single parent, working full time. I did sod all wrong. Why should I have had to manage his schooling at the expense of working? Why should my other two children have had to suffer a parent on benefits because their sibling made a poor choice? Or are you suggesting we don't deserve to live well because of an error in judgment a stupid teen made in a split second?

How else do you suggest they are dealt with

I teach in FE. Several of my students have had multiple managed moves. One told me that his normal day was to turn up at school, get put in a taxi to one of a handful of schools in his MAT and sit in isolation there. Madness.

The point is that the killer wasn’t born wanting to murder someone. There was a time in his childhood where it would have been possible to divert him from a life of violence and prison to a much more productive one. That chance was missed. It’s quite important we discuss how to deal with children like him if we want to reduce violence in society.

Edited for grammar.

I'm an LGB Chair, so sit on quite a lot of permanent exclusion panels.

It's more common for a child to be permanently excluded as a result of being in the wrong environment than it is for them to be so awful that they couldn't settle and thrive in a different setting.

More than “two lives ruined” ONE boy is a violent killer who has taken the life of
Harvey Willgoose because he wanted to be a violent and aggressive killer in 9 seconds, and I can’t believe people are complaining about Umar Khan and “he’s got a right to an education too!!” Do you actually think that boy thinks he should have to be a lawful contributing member of society?

There are two things that we need to prioritise

Firstly that children complete school successfully
Secondly we need to treat the being at risk of being involved in offending as a serious child protection issue

I dont think that we could predict the death of Harvey Wildgoose BUT we could predict fairly accurately that the boy who killed him would become involved in offending and for that reason action could and should have taken to reduce that risk