Moving problem schoolchildren to another school?

[Netcurtainnelly]

Why are problem teens like the killer of Harvey Willgoose and Brianna Ghey just moved to another school.

What happened to bring expelled. All your doing is moving the problem around.

Both these pupils had problems and incidents at their previous schools!

Surely if you get expelled that's on the pupils and the parents.

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?

Everything starts at home. There's a real lack of parental accountability here.
Teenagers got expelled for a reason that's it.

Theirs and their parents problem.
Absolutely no discipline at home no doubt and no respect for anyone even their parents.

In alot of countries people value an education and wouldn't do anything to warrant being expelled.
It's a disgrace really.
School wasn't easy but I can't imagine being expelled. Shameful.

Dealing with these extreme cases is incredibly difficult and expensive. And Labour want to make it even harder by reducing our ability to suspend. If you want an actual solution to the problem of extreme behaviour in schools we need to massively increase funding for early intervention, social workers, youth workers and pastoral support in schools. But nobody wants to pay more tax.

This could well be a correlation as opposed to a cause.

Oh, and we need sufficient special schools and PRUs for kids who genuinely cannot cope with mainstream. Which is also very expensive.

It’s actually likely causation but the op has it backwards. Kids don’t become violent because they’ve been expelled - they’re expelled because they are violent.

This 100%

"If the kids get expelled, it's the family's problem to deal with."

A family members child got permanently excluded (primary age) because of her disability. She is now at special school and doing well there. What happened in school didn't happen at home. It wasn't her family's fault.

I think managed moves need to be much more carefully managed.

There needs to be far more PRU and the youth justice system needs more funding.

I sit on exclusion panels and generally there arent enough PRU places so the child will be offered a part time online place. Which isnt going to have the same transformative effect.

I see people who are given a mentor through the youth justice system and they get 1 session. One session isnt going to help.

They do often have sen but its late diagnosed and unsupported. Again much earlier intervention and access to sen school would help.

I do think that there is both correlation and causation going on. Pupils who are excluded are violent or persistentantly disruptive pupils so more likely to be violent again, but leaving them roaming the streets isnt going to change their direction and doing so might escalate their involvement in criminal activity.

I think they should just be expelled. An online alternative offered if no pupil referral units. (Oak Academy is probably easiest - they could provide physical workbooks of the worksheets). Is it ideal for an unmotivated student? No. But if they’ve done something to got themselves expelled tough luck really - just will have to hope a spot at a referral unit comes up or if they can convince a head to take them on/ they’ve changed etc.
I’m sure parents would take more responsibility in ensuring good behaviour if this was the alternative.

I think you have no idea of the home lives for many student who are permanently excluded or on a managed move. Some parents are feckless, but the majority aren’t. And even for those who are, it isn’t the child’s fault. Writing off a child at 12 is not an acceptable way for society to behave imo.

OP I get that you are angry but your judgement are informed and your solutions aren’t solutions.

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

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?

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.

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 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.

How else do you suggest they are dealt with

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?

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

He was bringing weapons into school
Harvey mentioned that the boy had a knife on him that day in school but he wasn't searched.
Yes I think it could have been predicted.

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.

"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

Surely you see how totally stupid this sounds!!