to think schools shouldn't expel children

[Dontexpell]

They will just fall further behind with education which means they will be less likely to get a job or go
To college.

AIBU to think it's a silly punishment.

Judging by some of the comments on this thread perhaps there also needs to be a better understanding of why a child might have issues so extreme the school has no choice but to remove them. The pru I attended was for children with behavioural, psychological and emotional issues. please think about what might have caused these issues.

HairyFairy
One of the PRUs DH visited was chock full of kids with neurological damage (not learning disabilities per se, just miswired brains) due to parental drug taking etc.
They were lovely but completely unpredictable
He thought the staff were amazing and the only hope many of those kids had of staying out of prison or secure mental hospitals.

There was absolutely no way that a normal school was the right place for them, ever.

A special school teaches children rather than necessarily teaches subjects. I met a lot of excluded children in my old job and someone of them had horrendous home lives. A lot of excluded children are victims of child abuse. I believe that if Baby P had survived then he would have grown up into a thug.

I feel that when a child has a lot of temporary exclusions it should trigger a child protection plan and the family should be given support by a social worker. Its not always the parents when fault when a child's behaviour is awful, but even good parents need support at times. Both the parent and the child can experience depression.

There a boy at DD xschool, that has had many temp exclusions, due to violent outbursts, he has hit children and staff alike, year 6 and a big lad. Talking to his mother, she said she is constantly phoned to collect him. But she is never told WHY he lost his temper ... (I know from DD he is relentlessly teased for a non linked disability) yet these boys arent dealt with being the cause ... unless schools are prepared to look at triggers,understand the behaviour and put in place help, then he will be that child. My DS plays with him sometimes, and hes never been threatened,he treats this boy fairly with respect ...

When I was in secondary school, a boy threw a chair at my head with such force that the hand that I put up to protect myself had 4/5 fingers broken.

He was expelled and made to go to another school when the new term started. (Suspended until that happened) I felt this was justified.

What about bullying? Should a child who bullies others just be allowed to carry on and carry on until their victims leave the school (or commit suicide)?

Actually this happens quite a lot . But you are not convincing me it is a good thing. At the end of the day, whatever your issues, you don't get to destroy other people's lives or education because of them.

PRUs are incredibly expensive to send a child to for a reason. They're costly due to staffing and support needed. If you want mainstream schools to offer the same, the money is going to have to come from somewhere

I don't think MS schools should provide this but I do think they should be forced to admit they cannot meet a childs needs promptly, before the child starts there preferably or as soon as it becomes apparent they can't. Rather than blustering along pretending they can just to go along with the current thinking.

By far the largest group of pupils who are excluded from school are pupils with SEN. More support and awareness of SEN is just as important as parenting support to address this.
Better training for teachers and TA's and ringfenced funding to meet the needs of pupils with SEN who don't have an EHCP would be a start.

Here's a off the wall idea happy why don't we stop making ECHPs a fight to obtain when a child has additional needs instead

Yes I agree. I'm fully aware of how difficult it is to get a statement /EHCP having been through that process with one of my own dc.

Not all children with SEN need an EHCP. According to government data children with an EHCP are more likely to be temporarily excluded, but children with SEN without an EHCP are more likely to be permanently excluded than any other group.

I don't think MS schools should provide this but I do think they should be forced to admit they cannot meet a childs needs promptly, before the child starts there preferably or as soon as it becomes apparent they can't. Rather than blustering along pretending they can just to go along with the current thinking.

Hard to see how a school can say they can't cope with a child before they get there. As much to the point, MS schools aren't "blustering", they're not allowed to permanently exclude before all other avenues have been exhausted. They don't get a chance to "go along with the current thinking", they are obliged to contain, and I do mean contain pupils who would be better off elsewhere.

This is the government keeping down exclusion rates by making it near- impossible to do so. Exclusion rates fall; hurrah.

Your post does a great disservice to the conditions school are obliged to work in.

A hell of a lot of them are just blustering along when dealing with kids with some types of known additional need like BESD.

It's fairly simple to know before a child attends if a need can be met or not.

A child that throws tables in a school that cannot accomadate the risk of this, would be one example.

As would a child who cannot function in a class bigger than 10 kids attending a school that cannot have such a small class would be another.

Or a child who needs hands reach supervision being in a MS classroom without someone with in hands reach would be another.

It happens lots and lots. And yes it is the schools fault the facility exists to admit a childs known about needs are to great to be met and there are significant amounts of families whose children are not receiving an education because they are stuck in schools that will not accept they cannot meet the needs.

As far as I understand the majority of exclusions are handed out to kids with known AN's

It is doing a great disservice to that child,every other child whose education suffers as a result and the staff who are put at risk by it.

I care rather more about that than any organisational disservice

I think you are absolutely right. A teenage boy who tells teachers every day to fuck off, screams horrible abuse in their faces, refuses point blank to leave classrooms or to work, bullies other children verbally and physically- hitting one over the baack of the head with a rounders bat, and brings a knife and a hammer to school and threatens people with them, clearly should not be expelled. The school needs to manage him better. Well said OP!

They should work more closely with his parents- and ignore the threats of violence and the aggressive behaviour from them
They should assess his special needs with an educational psychologist- who says he does not have any
They should involve CAMHS- who will not work with him without parental consent and the parents won't give it
They should be prepared to be sworn at every day in the most vile language, verbally abused, threatened physically, have things thrown at them and be unable to teach because of him- put up with it every day for 3 years to meet his needs.
Then when they do expel him they should face parents being disgusting and lying in a governor's meeting
Then wait three weeks while parents appeal
Then be reported to OFSTED by the parents
Then the school should be fined £4000 after the Governors and Independant Appeal Panel confirm the school's devision.
Just keep him and let him do it all- great idea!

decision not devision

Gosh Lulu, that sounds bloody awful.

There may well have been some special need not identified with that child and parents in denial about it. Ed Psychs don't always get it right.

When parents refuse CAMHS though I just wonder why. I was desperate for them to work with my DS locally but they are so underfunded they take only the worst cases off the top.

No way should teachers or other school staff have to take this though.

My friend is going through hell at the moment as her son is as you describe. Her is autistic and totally unable to cope in a classroom environment. Even the special school has not worked out. However he hasn't been expelled/excluded. Instead the school and LEA have met with his parents and he is going to have a home teacher three hours per day while they look at schools which can meet his very complex needs. Of course in this case his parents are both working WITH the school and LEA (and doing a lot of crying ).

Teachers shouldn't have to put up with abuse.

I am appalled by the education cuts which means pupils with or even without special needs are being let down. Even worse for the teachers who then have to cope with the fallout.

TalkinPease, why do you say the article you referenced disproved my reference to the fact that other countries don't exclude? I didn't say that no other country excludes; but the article significantly makes no reference to countries in Europe, for instance.

Schools never exclude without good reason.

If only that were true. I have sat on appeal panels: the vast majority of exclusions were upheld, but there was still an ongoing number of cases where schools excluded for essentially petty reasons, or after completely failing to investigate properly.

I remember one where the children concerned were smoking in an area outside the school: the headteacher excluded them permanently for smoking cannabis, but there was absolutely no evidence that they were - she didn't have the cigarettes they were smoking, she didn't take hand swabs (which schools have the power to do), and when challenged about it she just said that that was what she believed. And another where there was a whole horror story about a child throwing a two-litre bottle of water at the front window of an underground train and bringing the underground system to a halt with a security scare - only, when asked, the train company concerned knew nothing whatsoever about it and CCTV showed that all the kid had done was to kick a pebble onto the line.

And then there was the one where a very dyslexic child of 13 had the same totally inadequate statement he had had at age of 7: no-one had thought to reassess his needs when he became disruptive at age 10, or when he had a managed move from his secondary school as he was on the brink of exclusion, and he was excluded from the second school in his second term there. The school seemed astonished at the idea that maybe his behaviour might be a product of unaddressed dyslexia, or indeed that behavioural problems themselves might constitute a learning difficulty which they had a duty to deal with.

Bear in mind that, for all these cases, the appeal panel included a headteacher who was very robust and if anything biased towards the school, but in each case the headteacher concerned was shocked at the decision the school had taken.

And don't get me started on the schools (most frequently academy and church schools) that have a big upturn in exclusions in Year 11 which just happen to be exclusions of the children most likely to make a dent in their GCSE stats ...

It is the end of a long process. It isn't good for them to stay there when the school has not been able to cope.

Alfieisnoisy- this was a teenager perfectly capable of being charming, well-behaved and co-operative as long as he was doing things he wanted to. As soon as a member of staff asked him to not do something, the aggro started- absolute refusal to co-operate, arguing, swearing, threats, verbal abuse, walking out of rooms, rage- towards anyone in his path.

It was learned behaviour- his parents were local bullies and nightmare neighbours who had learned how to get their own way with people by scaring them and behaving so badly people gave in. They did the same thing at the governors meeting and at the appeal meeting. Threatened all kinds of things and left, with him, shouting abuse at the Head and me.

Awful, awful people and unfortunately he will end up the same way because that is what he lives with. Social services were uninterested because the house is clean, the children are clean, there is no material deprivation or neglect.

Lulu
Kids like that are who are best helped by places like my local PRU

a kid in DSs year has been there for 2 terms now (it will be a long haul)
but the days there are long and the focus is on retraining their behaviours
the kid I'm aware of is still a cocky little &&&&
but realising that he'll not have many good options if he does not listen to the PRU people rather than his family

A hell of a lot of them are just blustering along when dealing with kids with some types of known additional need like BESD.

You appear to assume that children coming into secondary school with those behaviours have a statement. I have encountered children who exhibit such behaviours, e.g. the table throwing.

In every case where there was a statement, the child could be accommodated. Where there wasn't, they still had to be taken in.
Often this was at the insistence of parents who refused to have the child tested. As often it was parents struggling to get through the statementing system.

It's not clear from the examples you give that the children had statements. If they had, and the school did not supply what the statement required, then they are at fault. If the child is unstatemented, then the school can only do its best.

notmyname123. Many many years ago now I chaired an exclusion panel where my arm was,twisted up my back by the LA to undermine an exclusion recommended by the head. I was a governor. The boy (about 13) had broken a bottle to threaten staff with it. It was undermined on the basis of procedure. I felt I had no option but did ask for it to be recorded that my decision was based on the advice of professionals and I would not be held responsible in the event of a tragedy. The head had a breakdown about two years after that.

At my dd's school more recently about three four pupils were excluded in Y11. I don't think it was about results, it was about the school maximising its income streams. The school lost it's highest achievers due to not managing behaviour. Half a dozen straight A pupils left for better schools. If the school had dealt with the worst in y8, it might have replaced them with pleasant pupils and not lost the cream for sixth form. Results declined year on year for seven years. The head has now left.

What implications, if any are there for schools who lose pupils? Able pupils who chose to go? Do the LA ask questions or not?

No Sally. The ridculous thing is the LA are more likely to ask about the exclusion of the one terribly badly behaved, disruptive and even dangerous student than about the 6 high ability who left. And then make the school pay about £4000 because of the exclusion.