If a school excludes a pupil, should they have to sort out a PRU place?

[TalkinPeace2]

I'm pretty sure that when a school exclues a kid then they just wash their hands of them for that week / fortnight / whatever

But having just seen a known troublemaker walking along the road - his parents are at work during his exclusion presumably - I cannot see how excluding him to roam the streets can do anything but make him worse.

So, would it make sense that if a state funded school of any persuasion wanted to exclude a pupil it has to budget for the PRU place - at least then the child might get one to one support to solve the offending behaviour, rather than save it till they turn 16 and can be sent to prison?

Just a thought

I think the school would then err more on the side of a 'managed move' than risk having to pay for PRU. That's if there even are enough places.

It is the parents' responsibility to make sure he is not seen in any public place during the first 5 days of a temporary exclusion. They can be fined if he is.

If this exclusion is longer than 5 days, then the school should arrange alternative full time education from the 6th day.

noble
who checks up on what the parents are doing - all the kids I know of that have been excluded from the local schools have pretty dysfunctional parents

and what is the definition of "alternative full time education" and who enforces it? - as the parents are not likely to

You might beinterested in this article from TES about a requirement on schools to fund the onwards education of excluded pupils.

Interesting, but it was a proposal back in January. Has anything come of it?
And I cannot see the shiny new Academies and Free Schools liking that one ....

Don't they have truancy officers who check up on random kids wandering around the shops on a school day?

The rules for temporary exclusion are here

I expect if they don't turn up for their alternative education that would be brought up at their reintegration meeting and possibly jeopardize their place at the school?

Rules for permanent exclusion are obviously different.

TalkinPeace2: Yes, the promised pilots have started (in Lancashire, maybe other places too).

But if truancy officers are part of the council / LEA and the schools are academies and the kids may not even live in the same borough / county .....

Again, pilots are great but will probably never be rolled out without extra funding
whereas if schools were FORCED to account for all of their pupils - even the excluded ones - it would help to reduce antisocial behaviour

If a school hs excluded a pupil it is up to the parents to find an alternative. Parents have to have some responsibility.

For temporary exclusions the school doesn't have to find a place, but does have to manage the return to school. For permanent exclusions, well at least around here, the school does have to manage the move, and jump through a large number of hoops including agreement on how the child is to be educated next (which may be through a distance learning course).

I work in a secondary PRU. When the child is permanently excluded then they are found alternative provision, they usually end up with us as a last resort. We then send a bill to the school that has excluded them, so they do have to pay. This is the same for academy schools. We also accommodate children on an intervention basis where they spend maybe 2 days a week at the PRU the rest at school or home, or they could be with us for three weeks. These are all paid for by the excluding school.
Alot of schools now are managing their own intervention and setting up units within the schools to deal with these pupils. This can save alot of money for the school.
Most of our children in the PRU are constantly managed by an Education Welfare Officer and other support systems as they are regularly absent, i presume this would be the same in mainstream school??

debs
useful information - thankyou

but what about temporary exclusions of a week or two?

a child in my DDs class was excluded and sent to a PRU for a couple of weeks -and it appears to have been the best thing that could have happened to him.
He has returned to main school clear headed, focussed and with a lot of his "issues" now well under control

I guess my real point is that EVERY exclusion should be dealt with as a positive intervention opportunity rather than a cop out

debs, is it different when exclusion is permanent such as for carrying or threatening others with knives, or solvent abuse? Just seems strange that a school should fund problems of this sort? Almost tempted to say the parents should have the costs deducted from income, expect that will drive up the posting count on the thread...

What is a PRU place?

Pupil referral unit
a sort of mini secure school for short term visits.
The local council have converted a redundant school down the road from me into a LARGE PRU (100 pupils at the last count)
and it is apparently working wonders with a lot of the kids by providing 1:1 care and attention - often a first for those involved

"I guess my real point is that EVERY exclusion should be dealt with as a positive intervention opportunity rather than a cop out"

I agree.

Sadly, even small children are excluded and their parents offered no help. Nothing. Then the child goes back to school, after watching TV at home for a couple of days, or possibly roaming the streets if parents work. What good can such an exclusion do?

It is made clear to parents in an exclusion letter that they need to ensure that the child is not out and about during the exclusion or they will be fined.

When a child is permanently excluded in our LA, it is down to the LA to find a place for them - usually the PRU in the first instance, then another school. The original school loses the funding for that child, so are under no obligation to find an alternative placement.

All exclusions are followed by a re-admittance meeting to look at support for child and/ or parents - sometimes parents do not attend but most do in my experience. It can be a trigger point for something more - a CAF or other intervention like a CAHMS referral- or just a chance to say don't do it again...

but what if the parents are utterly dysfunctional - or the child is in care?

PERMANENT exclusion is something that schools avoid as they have to go through the paperwork and hoops

my concern is temporary exclusions
and I am surprised that in your area that straightforward exclusion works
round here (the border of two LEAs) the same kids go round and round and round collecting trophies like ASBOs till they end up in prison as the 4X4 (4 kids 4 dads) families do not have the capability to cope - especially with the cuts in Sure Start

in my kids school a child is being regularly excluded for extreme and persistent breaches of the uniform rules (pink hair and stretch earrings)
her Mum (no dad) does not care as she has younger kids to deal with
a PRU week might get to the bottom of the attention seeking / self esteem issues but it costs more money than ignoring her....

Exclusion doesn't often work- I can think of maybe four kids who we have taken following a permanent where we have made a major difference, and can think of more where it hasn't helped at all. In fact, we have permanently excluded 2 kids who were previous permanent exclusions before they came to us.

PRU placement can be very effective but it is very hard to get a respite PRU placement as numbers are often high.

But a temporary exclusion is the school's issue as well as the parents, and it is all about working in partnership however bloody hard it is. for us, exclusion is always the last resort. I have seen it used effectively as a short sharp shock method, but only with a massive amount of support on return.

and yet many of the sponsored academies got their league table improvements by bulk permanent exclusion

and out of interest - how would you deal with the pink hair girl : my kids school are reaching the end of their tether from what I can gather as she is reasonably bright but they get no support from her Mum.

In theory good practice, GetDownNesbitt. - No exclusion letter I've ever received has mentioned anything about a fine, just that excluded child shouldn't be in a public place during school hours.

And we only had one re-admittance meeting. Sometimes heads can be a bit busy, apparently.

Just to say that yes, schools write that pupils should not be in a public place during school hours, however it is not actually illegal for them to be in a public place at any time as they may have good cause, IYSWIM, so it makes it difficult if not impossible to enforce. There is no obligation on the part of the school to make childcare or alternative educational arrangements.

However a solution for schools if parents are not being supportive of the exclusion is to do it internally in school, i.e. make the troublemaker sit in a room with 1:1 supervision and do extra work, staying away from other pupils at all times. Of course, schools need extra manpower for this so many of them won't do it.

It is a problem with no obvious solution, short of insisting on the 1:1 thing actually in school, via legislation of some kind, and putting the onus on schools. Maybe we will see this in the new Children's Act.

Engaging with errant teens if you feel you can, and persuading them school is a good place to be and everybody cares how well they do there, is a very good societal measure, and I would urge anyone who comes across a local teenager in this situation, whose behaviour leaves a lot to be desired, to be civil, pleasant, and show an interest, engaging them in conversation to this end over a period of time, so relationships are built. It won't bring instant results, but the cumulative effect of them being treated as worthy of this kind of attention often takes the edge off some of their nonsense. People are usually afraid of doing this in case they are duffed up or whatever, which is half of the problem, but really this is no more likely to happen than a duffing up as a result of a road rage incident on a hot summer's day, i.e. probably a one in ten thousand chance. The worst that is likely to happen is that they tell you to fuck off, which is hardly a big deal and you can always say "OK then, see you around" and do so.

Lynette, I will have a look at our wording - I think we say something about potentially being fined. We have pursued fines in the past mainly when kids turn up at the school gate despite being excluded. I am shocked at the lack of readmittance interviews though - we do those for every single exclusion.

Re the girl with pink hair, I would have her in isolation - like the internal exclusion BoffinMum describes. This is really difficult at times, though - can be done by SMT but sometimes there is literally no-one available to run stuff like this. And it is not like Waterloo Road where they trot off obediently to 'the cooler'.

Interesting

and without wishing to labour the point but its a not uncommon situation

how long would you keep pink hair in isolation FOR?
bear in mind it gets toned down while she's excluded, she comes back and then re dyes it again and again - it has been going on for four terms .....
the school is doing an amazing job (IMHO) getting her to come in when her hair is normal but does not have the resources to deal with the self esteem issues that are driving the behaviour
and cannot allow her to break the uniform rules SO flagrantly

readmittance interviews make complete sense and should be used as a general learning tool as well as a specific management tool

Personally speaking I think it none of the school's business what hair styles pupils have unless it's about to be caught in a machine in the resistant materials lab, or set on fire. There are much more important things to worry about in life, FFS.

But if one does care about such things, then the school would be a lot more successful if it addressed the root problem rather than the superficial issues. The lass needs a mentor IMO, and more attention of the positive sort. Send her over to me, I'll sort her out.