Exclusion from secondary school

[parentgov1]

Headteachers seem to have to much power to exclude with governors often supporting and Independent Review panels not able to reinstate. Schools and their leadership do not seem to recognise that if you address needs and get education right this may lead to improved behaviour,they focus too much on behaviour policies (often excessively even when not working) and not need/education. Schools don't seem to look at themselves enough to see if they have made mistakes and how provision could be improved instead they blame the child. If they can get it right for the most challenging child and saw it as an opportunity it would benefit the school. Would be interested to hear from other parents with similar concerns.

Do you really think the op's a journalist? I thought she was a mother with a spectacular badly behaved child or an educational liberalist in the bedales genre who thinks no social group, least of all adolescent children need boundaries because they need the freedom to set their own - like I Lord of the Flies. If she's a .journo, she or he can interview me and I'll give the run down on a great school where the boundaries were removed and she can follow its slide into obscurity in the press about how something great went rotten.

I don't think the OP said if they were a man or a woman, I'm not sure why but I assumed they were male, not that it matters.

I find the OP's writing style rather odd and disengaged.

It is too vague and general.

I think this would have gone better if the OP had been a little less general in their descriptions and a more forward in facts.

I completely agree. My daughter has been excluded and they are trying to railroad her into a special measures unit. I agree she can be a stroppy teenager but a teacher has accused her of assault. The teacher in question had asked her to leave the office, refusing to give my daughter her phone back (Like cutting a teenagers arm off). When my daughter didn't move she pushed her with her body, not hands, making contact with her pelvis and legs. My daughter automatically lifted her leg to remove herself from this inappropriate body contact then walked away.
In a kangaroo court style meeting the teachers decided this was a serious incident possibly leading to permanent exclusion unless I agree to place her in a special measures unit indefinitely. I emailed the child protection officer at the school and asked who protects the child against the teachers. No reply.
The teachers have the power to destroy a childs future with their allegations without any independent review. It is hard to find any school to take her when her last reported entry says assault against a teacher.
I currently have no school for my child as I am refusing to place her in a special measures unit.

threads.

Wolfiefan nailed it about 3 posts down.

Mumkins94 - Your account of what happened may be true but it sounds to me like your daughter's self-justification. Pushing someone with your body, making contact with pelvis and legs only, is a very strange and unlikely contortion. From the description it sounds like your daughter kicked the teacher. Even if the teacher did make contact with her, kicking is not justified. Unless you have independent evidence (and NOT from your daughter's friends who will tend to support her version regardless of the truth) you perhaps need to listen to what the school says and address your daughter's behaviour.

Thread from May last year.
Mumkins taking a phone off a teen is not the same as chopping off a body part FFS. Perhaps you should stop minimising your daughter's behaviour as being a stroppy teen and tell her to start doing as she's told. Perhaps if she behaved she wouldn't have the phone taken off her and if she didn't barge into an office, demanding it be returned and probably act in a threatening way then she wouldn't be excluded.

Agree with Wolfiefan.

Just to add a few thoughts to my previous post...

I presume by "special measures unit" you mean a pupil referral unit. These deal with pupils who have been excluded or are unable to attend a normal school for other reasons. It is not some kind of punishment. A PRU takes pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties and should help them to return to mainstream education. They are sometimes referred to as short stay schools as pupils should only be there temporarily.

Unless you are educating your daughter at home you could face prosecution if you continue to refuse to send her to school. Your complaints about the teachers and school will not cut any ice if that happens, nor will your unwillingness to allow your daughter to go to a PRU.

Note that, even on your description, this incident started with the teacher asking your daughter to leave the office and her refusing to do so. That is unacceptable behaviour. If she had left when asked none of this would have happened. And apologies for repeating myself but, whatever the teacher did (and I do not believe your daughter's description which sounds like self-justifying nonsense), kicking the teacher is assault and the school is quite right to take action to protect its staff. You are not helping your daughter by minimising her behaviour.

Schools will not exclude for behaviours that in any other environment would be regarded as unlawful. At work they would result in dismissal for gross misconduct; in society they would be likely to result in a criminal record

And I am glad for that fact. A school is a very artificial environment and kids are asked to put up with things that they would never have to put up with in the workplace (and at a time when they have not yet matured). And in my view it is far too easy for kids to get criminal records in this country. 10 is ridiculously young, in Spain it is 14, 12 should be the absolute minimum.

I am sure there are some incredibly challenging kids (with and without SEN) and it is too hard to exclude. But some parents would have kids excluded for very minor trangressions. I think the balance is about right at present - in my view we often expect kids to behave better than adults do.