Exclusion criterias ?

[Becky43]

I'm a very concerned mother that feels her child is being unfairly excluded from secondary school. Recently the head teacher was removed and a temporary head teacher has been bought into his school for 1 term to deal with behaviour problems. My child sometimes finds it difficult to keep quiet in class. He is in year 8. The new head teachers said that talking in class is not tolerated & such children are removed from lessons. My son was removed 2 from lesson & then excluded for 1 day. Does anyone know how I can find out more because I am worried that she is trying to permanently exclude such children ?

I think you should focus your attention on encouraging your son to behave.however, permanent exclusion has to meet tight criteria and talking in class won't be enough.

If a class/school reaches beyond a critical point of 'low level disruptive' pupils, it becomes impossible for teachers to teach and for students to learn.

The new Head clearly realises he has to do something about pupils who are continually disrupting the learning of others.

The solution to your son being able to remain in class and remain in school getting an education, is for him to learn to comply with the rules.

I'm sure he's not being expected to sit in complete silence for hour upon hour a la Victorian School.

But no, PXs are only for extreme cases of behaviour, and low level disruption will not qualify.

Surely if your son is being disruptive he should be punished? Have you spoken to the school about your son's behaviour and what action could be taken to remedy the situation?

Ask. There should be fairly clear rules for even temporary exclusions and I suspect the school would value a parent who wanted to be involved in the disciplining of their child. It is your right to find out exactly what he has done and, in fact, I'm surprised that the school hasn't kept you fully informed.

Have to say though, that I don't think talking should be tolerated in class. If your son 'finds it difficult to keep quiet in class' then he is disrupting the learning of other students and preventing the teacher from doing their job. Additionally, he is almost certainly dragging himself down. Students who persistently talk do end up getting classified as troublemakers because of the simple fact that the teacher can't concentrate on the other students/ teaching the lesson because they have to keep on stopping to deal with the difficult child. Hence they tend to slide down the sets as they can't be allowed to prevent other students from doing well and therefore end up doing less well themselves.

Back the school and nip it in the bud now. Be thankful that this has happened in Year 8, so that he can go into the other years and be more focussed on achieving.

They can't and won't permenantly exclude your child for talking in class, but that is behaviour that should be dealt with.

Of course, the only way your son can ensure that he does not get a permenant exclusion is to improve his behaviour. You need to back the school fully in their effort to improve his behaviour in class, and he needs to see that you support them punishing him if needs be.

I suspect that the new head is trying to make his mark and show that bad behaviour will not be tolerated now that he is around, and if that means making an example of a few students, then that's no bad thing if it does the job.

You need to concentrate your efforts on improving your son's behaviour, not worring that the head has an ulterior motive. Assuming he does not have SN, by year 8 he should be more than capable of staying quiet in class.

my son was disruptive in maths and was always asked to leave the class, i asked the school to put him in a class on his own so the other children could learn.
instead he was put in a different class and got nothing but praise it turned out
he just wanted more of a challenge (he has adhd / asd)which is why he was better behaved in a new class that was a year group above him.
perhaps you need to arrange a meeting to discus what is best for your ds and try to find out what the problem is.
it could be the new head is trying to take a tough stance because of past problems in the school and wants to show it can be different, or maybe your ds would do better with a different teacher or more of a challenge.