'Permanent exclusion serves no useful purpose and should be abolished', says report by thintank Civitas
Thousands of badly behaved pupils have been offloaded into further education colleges and other alternative provision by schools under political pressure to reduce permanent exclusions , a thinktank claims today.
An apparent drop in exclusions is a "statistical illusion" that glosses over the increasing use of off-site provision for pupils who are disruptive or struggle in mainstream classrooms, the authors of the Civitas report write. Such "managed moves" and referrals often constitute effective exclusion but do not show up in official figures, they claim.
In July, Department for Education (DfE) statistics showed that permanent exclusions in English primary, secondary and special schools fell by more than 19% in 2009 compared with the previous year, dropping from 8,130 to 6,550. In 1997-98, some 12,300 pupils were expelled.
The authors of the report, Tom Ogg and Emily Kaill, said the 16 London local authority coordinators of alternative provision they interviewed gave a clear picture of referrals and managed moves growing substantially since 2000, with the majority agreeing that this shift was related to political pressure from the previous government.
The study also found that low-achieving pupils who were unlikely to boost their school's league table scores were more likely to be transferred. It added: "The school is thereby free of any bad behaviour of those pupils, and anything that those pupils achieve in alternative provision is regarded as a 'bonus' for that school.
"Conversely, the incentives for schools to hang on to intelligent students, no matter how bad their behaviour, is strong. This is hardly a just state of affairs, but the fundamental source of this problem is the pressure on schools to achieve high examination results." The report argues that permanent exclusion should be abolished, with pupils remaining on the rolls of mainstream schools even if the school believed it could no longer cater for them. In such instances, the government should give additional funding for specialist provision. Pupils and parents should have the right to choose that specialist provision, which could be a course in mechanics, a sports based-curriculum, or an academic route at an FE college.
The current law is "deeply unfair" to excluded pupils and gives them no right to influence what happens to them when they are effectively excluded, the authors said. "The problem is that mainstream schools are able implicitly to threaten to permanently exclude the student, or subject the student to a referral, if their parents do not agree to the move.
"This leaves the potential for unscrupulous headteachers to make use of referrals and managed moves to get rid of challenging students without the need for a permanent exclusion."
The report said: "Permanent exclusion, we find, serves no useful purpose and... we believe it should be abolished in favour of a new system of transfers to alternative provision."
A DfE spokesman said: "For the minority of pupils that do behave badly, it's down to headteachers to decide on the best solution for their school and the individual. The government is committed to backing headteachers' powers to exclude. Ministers are currently reviewing the exclusion process and will announce decisions in due course."