The Forgotten children report; asking the wrong questions then misunderstanding the answers

This is my first blog – I have never felt the need as there are a great many excellent voices in education blogging, and someone generally says the kind of thing I would have said, only better. But there aren’t that many headteachers blogging, that I can see, so I thought I’d wade in over the above report, particularly section 2, ‘What’s going wrong in mainstream schools?’.

For some brief context, I am head of a secondary academy in an inner-city. Pretty par for the course intake; 50% PPG, 35% EAL, sig. above national average for SEN, (both EHCPs and students at SEN support (K)). Not the most challenging intake in the country by any means, but a good many students in challenging and sometimes chaotic circumstances.

Over the last four years, I have permanently excluded four students – all boys. Lowish for where the school is. On the other hand, we are at the high end for fixed period exclusions – we use them, especially lower down the school, to try to snap students out of behaviours they’ve brought with them to secondary school which are going to make their, and others people’s, lives difficult – especially defiance and aggression. We use a wide range of other strategies too, of course.

Finally, we’re pretty strict. I don’t use the terms ‘no excuses’ or ‘zero tolerance’ as I think they’re unhelpful, but we’re a fully paid up member of the fussy-about-uniform, walk-between-lessons-quietly-and-calmly brigade. Having said that, as I know this is a divisive subject at the moment (I believe there’s been a progressive vs traditionalist debate raging in some quarters, for some time. Not sure that’s helpful, but there it is), I can assure those of you whose hackles may rise at the description that we love our kids, are oversubscribed and parents generally a happy and supportive bunch.

Anyway, we’ve been having this debate about exclusions with our local authority for a while, and the report this morning I felt stumbled in a couple of places and I wanted to give my perspective, and share a couple of examples. This is not to say, in fairness, that there are not things to be concerned about nationally, and of course AP has been decimated under this government, and, indeed, the last.

The argument I have with the local authority, who have been on a push to get exclusions down for a few years now, is that it’s the wrong part of the problem to be looking at. You wouldn’t go into a hospital and tell surgoens to lower the number of operations they perform. If someone needs an operation, they are likely to be most displeased when told the leg will just have to go gangrenous because the boss wants them to lower operations. What you do is say you want to tackle this worrying gangrene outbreak, but, of course, if Mrs Smith in ward three needs and operation, then carry on. The focus should be on continuing to improve student behaviour, not lowering exclusions.

And it leads to real problems. Last year I sat on an Independent Review Panel for a neighbouring school. An IRP is the stage of appeal if the decision to permanently exclude is upheld by the school’s governors. The IRP panel comprises a governor of a different school, a headteacher of a different school, and a lay-person. We receive a huge amount of paperwork and hear representations on behalf of the student, and then the school.

The student in question had been excluded, as most students are, for persistent disruptive behaviour. This means the school feels they have exhausted the strategies available to them to support the student in modifying their disruptive behaviour, including a very clear ‘last chance’ meeting, normally in front of governors, but the student has continued to seriously disrupt learning. It’s never an easy thing to do, but the time does sadly come with some students where the school must permanently exclude or completely undermine its own authority.

So the case for persistent disruptive behaviour seemed strong – repeated instances, over three years, of swearing at staff, truanting lessons, intimidating other students, physical aggression towards staff etc. The school also seemed to have done their bit. Referrals to external agencies to check for an undiagnosed SEN, full learning mentor support, tutor report, head of year report, SLT report, sanctions, rewards for good conduct, offered counselling, Pastoral Support Plan and all the rest. The only thing that didn’t make sense to me was that, over the course of these several years, the young man had received no fixed period exclusions. When I asked the head about this, his reply was ‘I agree with the local authority – there’s no need to exclude.’

Except there is. And was. And had this young man’s behaviour led to fixed period exclusions in Year 7, when students are often most able to change their habits, then things may have been different. And this is where the pressure that this report will invariably bring on headteachers will lead – they’ll feel they need to get exclusions down, won’t exclude even though they may feel it’s the right thing to do, and the consequences of that is far worse.

The reports authors also made a couple of silly errors – the most glaring of which was this:

‘Pupils with SEN support are almost seven times more likely to be permanently excluded than pupils with no SEN.’

Well of course they are. One of the first things a school will do when a student is persistently disruptive is to put them on the SEN register as ‘K’ (receiving support) for SEMH (Social, Emotional and Mental Health). The biggest reason for permanent exclusion is persistent disruptive behaviour – so these are the minority of students for whom, normally some years later, the school’s support was unsuccessful, and obviously means you’d expect the data to be heavily skewed towards those on SEN support.

The second one I had issue with isn’t just ignorant, but irresponsible:

‘While it would be reasonable of schools to take a zero-tolerance approach to drugs or weapons, a school culture which is intolerant of minor infractions of school policies on haircuts or uniform will create an environment where pupils are punished needlessly where there should be flexibility and a degree of discretion.’

Thanks a lot, well meaning but poorly informed members of the select committee, for undermining important  and difficult work that schools do. What you are saying, just to make it very clear, is have rules, but don’t always enforce them. Do you have any idea how damaging that is? How confusing? How patronising? Schools work incredibly hard to create consistency, to make school a predictably, safe place. The absolute foundation of that safety is getting past one of the most easy things to take root in students’ minds; that the teachers are capricious, that they play favourites, that their mood decides their actions. And that means if you turn up in the wrong uniform, there’s a consequence.

Of course, the report’s authors had rather given the game away with the title of the section: ‘What’s going wrong in mainstream schools?’. Not necessarily anything, that’s a value statement which your report does not prove – all it does is expose the problems with select committee reports.