“They never give up on you”

Office of the Children’s Commissioner School Exclusions Inquiry

This report is the result of the first formal Inquiry by a Children’s Commissioner for England using powers in the Children Act 2004. It follows eight months of work by a small team of staff from my office, supported by an expert panel. We travelled throughout England and listened to hours of formal evidence as well as taking account of written evidence submitted by adults and children alike. Why this subject, and why now?

Firstly, in 2010 we asked researchers to gather the views of a representative sample of 2,000 children and young people on what makes school a triumph, a challenge or a disaster. Eight out of 10 said they had experienced disrupted learning caused by the bad behaviour of a minority. Yet nine out of 10 insisted schools should never exclude a child, but should help them deal with their problems. Even more surprising, only one in seven said that their school always got exclusion decisions right. We were struck by their opinions held in spite of having their learning disrupted by peers who were potential candidates for exclusion. They seemed worthy of further investigation.

Our second reason is that, while exclusion is a sanction used in England, it is not used in much of mainland Europe.

This report recognises that exclusion may be a necessary last resort in rare cases, but argues that all exclusions must:

  • be fair and transparent;
  • listen to the views of the child concerned;
  • lead to high quality alternative provision for the child excluded; and
  • be within the law.

Exclusion usually happens because of a child’s behaviour. Schools, Academics and Ministers have recognised such behaviour often originates in troubled home lives which spill over into school. We were keen to know how schools exclude, why, using what systems of escalating sanctions, in whose interests, listening to whose evidence, with what consistency of approach and with what results.

Thirdly, despite our claims of being an equal society that treats children on their merits, some groups of children are far more likely to be excluded from school than others. These are children who are vulnerable because of who they are, and because of the challenges already present in their lives. They are:

  • boys rather than girls;
  • children with some types of special needs;
  • children from some specific ethnic backgrounds, and
  • the children of the poor.

One stark figure should make us all want to confront this scandal. In 2009-10, if you were a Black African-Caribbean boy with special needs and eligible for free school meals you were 168 times more likely to be permanently excluded from a state-funded school than a White girl without special needs from a middle class family.

This figure comes from official government statistics. Exclusions have fallen overall in the last few years, but these stark gaps remain. It is high time, on the basis of equality, natural justice and the inalienable right of every child to an education that we act to close those gaps.

This report celebrates good practice. Its title comes from something a teenager – to quote him, “a bit of a handful” – said to us during our fieldwork. We found schools of all types in a wide range of circumstances all over the country working together and with other agencies. They could prove they had saved the educational and life chances of their communities’ children and young people. Their young citizens knew they were lucky. The adults they worked with were passionate advocates of schools as places of safety and ambition, calm and standards. We have included as many of their stories in this report as space allows.

However, we publish this report as a straightforward challenge to all policymakers, parents, school and sector leaders to practise what the best schools are already doing. Permanent exclusion has a negative effect on an excludee’s life for far longer than the period immediately after exclusion. We knew a minority of schools exclude informally and therefore illegally but for the first time in this Inquiry have this on record. Whilst most schools work far beyond the call of duty to hold on to troubled and vulnerable children, a minority exclude on what seems to the observer to be a whim. And for whatever reasons, many of them explored in this report, we have not sufficiently challenged the failures and brought about the changes required. We must do so now.