Would love to pick some brains out there! A friend of mine has a daughter in Year 8 who has just been permanently excluded, and this exclusion has been upheld by the Governing body. Parents want to appeal this decision.
The reason given for the exclusion was "persistent distruptive behaviour", and they outlined a number of examples of this.
While parent doesn't dispute most of these took place, it is clear that this is a very high achieving school, and her daughter struggles academically (School Action Plus for dyslexia), and I think the school are keen to get rid of the child, as her grades affect their results.
The child in question is also deaf in one ear, and parents would like to appeal because they don't believe their daughters disabilities have been taken into account. The decision letter states:
"staff received training how to deal with deafness on an annual basis, but accepted that perhaps not all teachers were aware of X's hearing loss."
Parents believe that the child's misbehaviour in class arose because of her disability as it was likely that she couldn?t hear instructions given to her and was placed in the back of the class when she should have been at the front.
Has anyone got advice about what the exclusion appeal process is like, and what sort of things parents might need to prove?