House of Commons - Behaviour and Discipline in Schools

Behaviour and Discipline in Schools - Education Committee Contents

7 Managing exclusions

89. A school can exclude a child for a fixed period of time only in response to breaches of the school's behaviour policy, including for persistent disruptive behaviour. The exclusion should be for the shortest time possible and a child cannot be given fixed period exclusions which total more than 45 days in one year. A school should set (and mark) work for a pupil on the first day of an exclusion. By the sixth day of a fixed term exclusion, full-time alternative education should be arranged by the school. As Sir Alan Steer concludes, "the requirement to make [Day 6 provision for excluded pupils] has been a challenge for schools".[166]In the same report, Sir Alan also criticised the use of repeat fixed term exclusions as a way of avoiding permanent exclusion and recommended that "DCSF, for its part, should consider how to support and challenge local authorities with disproportionately high exclusions and DCSF guidance should particularly address the issue of repeat fixed-period exclusions".[167]

90. A school will usually only permanently exclude a child as a last resort, after trying to improve the child's behaviour through other means. Schools can exclude a child if the pupil has seriously broken school rules or if, by allowing the pupil to stay in school, it would seriously harm their education or welfare, or the education or welfare of other pupils. However, there are exceptional circumstances in which a head teacher may decide permanently to exclude a pupil for a one-off offence. For permanent exclusions, it falls to the local authority to provide full-time alternative education provision on the sixth day of the exclusion. The 'six day' requirement on local authorities for permanent exclusions was reduced from fifteen days in 2007, increasing the pressure on local authorities to have appropriate and responsive services available for permanently excluded pupils.[168]

91. Data from the Department for Education, released in July 2010, shows that there were an estimated 6,550 permanent exclusions from primary, secondary and all special schools in 2008-9, representing 0.09% of pupils in schools. Compared to 2007-08, the number of permanent exclusions has decreased by 19.4%. This decrease is attributed in part to local authorities' and schools' attempts to reduce the need for permanent exclusion by employing alternatives such as 'managed moves'[169] between schools. In 2008-9, there were 307,810 fixed period exclusions from state-funded secondary schools and 39,510 from primary, compared with 324,180 and 43,290 respectively in the previous year. It is important to note that all data refers to cases of exclusion, rather than the number of pupils excluded, as some pupils are excluded more than once during the year. The most common reason for exclusion was persistent disruptive behaviour.[170]

92. Pupils with special educational needs feature heavily in exclusion statistics. Just over one in five pupils (or 1.7 million school-age children in England) are identified as having special educational needs. In theory those in need of the most intensive support are given a statement of SEN. The proportion of statemented pupils currently stands at 2.7% (a decrease from 3% since 2003), whilst the proportion of non-statemented pupils with SEN has increased from 14% in 2003 to 18.2% in 2010.[171] Pupils with SEN (both with and without statements) are more than eight times more likely to be permanently excluded than those pupils with no SEN. In 2008-09, 24 in every 10,000 pupils with statements of SEN and 30 in every 10,000 pupils with SEN but without statements were permanently excluded from school, compared to three in every 10,000 pupils with no identified SEN. For fixed period exclusions, the rate for pupils with statements was 19.1%, 14.2% for pupils with SEN without statements, and 2.2% for pupils with no SEN.[172]

93. As Professor Pam Maras—Honorary General Secretary of the British Psychological Society—told us, "schools find it very difficult to interpret SEN policies in relation to behaviour, because, of course, behaviour is also dealt with through disciplinary action".[173] Young Minds, a charity which aims to support the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children, also pointed out that "many children who have a special educational need, particularly those who are said to have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD), will also have mental health problems".[174]

94. Aside from pupils with SEN, other groups of pupils also feature prominently in exclusion statistics:

The permanent exclusion rate for boys was approximately 3.5 times higher than that for girls. The fixed period exclusion rate for boys was almost three times higher than for girls
Children who are eligible for free school meals are approximately three times more likely to receive either a permanent or fixed period exclusion than children who are not eligible for free school meals
Black Caribbean pupils are 3 times more likely to be permanently excluded than the school population as a whole.

This, however, clearly does not isolate race or low income as drivers of bad behaviour per se.

95. Evidence from the British Psychological Society outlined a range of other risk factors which can influence the behaviour of young people. These include:

Age-related factors (for example teenagers tend to become more 'negative' around the ages of 13 to 15 when they are required to make important decisions about their education, including GCSEs, which will affect their future educational and employment opportunities)
Life events, such as school change, educational stress and life worries
Changes in adolescence, including neurological changes which are likely to impact on emotions and behaviour
Correlations between school culture characterised by perceptions of low teacher and classmate support, pupil conflict, unfair school rules and disciplinary practices, and low pupil autonomy and low attachment to learning and peer approval of deviance.[175]

Early identification of and intervention with pupils at risk of exclusion

96. The Ministerial foreword to the 2008 White Paper Back on Track reported that "school leaders and other education professionals have told us that we need to do more to intervene early to support and challenge those young people who are starting to cause difficulties in school".[176]Evidence to our inquiry demonstrated widespread support for early interventions which can tackle the reasons for bad behaviour as opposed to relying on exclusion once behaviours have escalated, although it should be noted that some witnesses advocated retaining exclusion as an "ultimate sanction" to aid teachers in enforcing good behaviour.[177]

97. YoungMinds drew our attention to research undertaken by Action for Children and the New Economics Foundation[178] which found that providing more effective early interventions could save the UK economy £486 billion over twenty years by tackling problems early on rather than firefighting with expensive interventions once behaviours had escalated.[179]However, as Demos highlighted, "there is frequently a lack of funding for spending on early intervention. Early intervention approaches tend to be tied to short term, specific ring-fenced funding from the Department which ceases after a few years, and jeopardises the stability of these interventions […] Those schools that have adopted early intervention programmes on a long-term basis have had to look for alternative sources of funding, not available to all schools, or fund programmes from other budgets".[180] Demos added that "preventative programmes and interventions are not a legally binding element of local authority spending, unlike provision for excluded pupils which is an obligation under the Education Act 2003. For these reasons the legal impetus on local authorities is retrospective, rather than proactive, when it comes to tackling disengagement".[181]The Committee also noted that schools do not always see early intervention as a legitimate and essential priority when it comes to allocating their budgets.

98. As with any preventative programme, there are always challenges in proving what does and does not happen as a result of investment in interventions. The lack of any solid evidence base showing the effectiveness of early interventions in managing the behaviours that may lead to exclusion is a problem in this respect. As Sue Bainbridge told us, National Strategies has tried to encourage schools to track the effectiveness of interventions through improved data analysis.[182] The Government should actively pick up the work begun by National Strategies in encouraging schools to track the effectiveness of interventions to manage behaviour.

99. Sure Start children's centres were praised by some witnesses for providing effective early interventions.[183] Sure Start and other intervention programmes will in future be funded from a single Early Intervention Grant, worth £2.212 billion in 2011-12 and £2.297 billion in 2012-13.[184] The Early Intervention Grant is earmarked to fund Sure Start Children's Centres, an entitlement to free early education for disadvantaged two year olds, short breaks for disabled children, as well as services for young people currently funded through the Department for Education, a range of interventions provided by local authorities targeted at supporting vulnerable young people to engage in education and training, and interventions to prevent young people from taking part in risky behaviour such as crime and substance abuse. The Grant replaces a number of former funding streams; but the amount to be allocated through the Grant in 2011-12 will be 10.9% lower than the aggregated funding streams for the various intervention programmes in 2010-11.[185]

100. The effectiveness of Sure Start as a means of early intervention has been challenged by a recent research study by the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring, based at the University of Durham. The Centre's findings were based upon surveys of the development of 117,000 children starting primary school in England over eight years; and it concluded that there was no evidence that early years initiatives, such as Sure Start, had improved basic levels of development in early reading, vocabulary and mathematics.[186] This is a disappointing conclusion, as early intervention through improving parenting, which Sure Start has the potential to offer, could make a big difference in improving children's readiness for school and in reducing misbehaviour in consequence. We welcome Government plans to extend free nursery care to disadvantaged 2-year-olds, and we urge the Government to improve its efforts to look for the most effective, evidence-based forms of early intervention, taking into account the work of the Rt Hon Frank Field MP and Graham Allen MP in their reports.

101. Alongside its plans for investment in Sure Start Children's Centres, the Government also announced in December 2010 that there would be "important new investment through Department of Health budgets to provide 4,200 extra health visitors".[187] It is not yet clear whether this will be additional funding or whether these health visitors will be funded from the existing allocation to Sure Start. The Government should clarify how the proposed 4,200 new health visitors will be funded and whether this initiative is also expected to be funded from the Early Intervention Grant.

102. With regard to forms of intervention other than Sure Start, the National Association of Social Workers in Education (NASWE) pointed to the specific role for local authority education welfare services (EWS) in securing appropriate early interventions for pupils and their families, where schools do not have authority to intervene:

The EWS […] works with young people who are very vulnerable but do not yet meet thresholds for other statutory interventions; this will include young people who are neglected, at risk of criminal behaviour, harming themselves through reckless behaviour, early parenthood, substance misuse and mental health difficulties.[188]

Bill Gribble, a behaviour consultant, stressed the value of education welfare services, telling us that "when I was a head teacher, the education welfare officer was my eyes and ears in the community—and certainly my eyes and ears for early warnings of problems with particularly vulnerable children either coming into the area or developing within the area".[189]

103. A major part of the education welfare service's role is to address school attendance issues. NASWE and other witnesses observed that the factors which can predispose poor school attendance—such as poverty and mental or physical ill-health—are equally applicable in predicting poor behaviour.[190]The Association of School and College Leaders also commented that poor attendance can trigger a "vicious circle" as absence creates "a discontinuity in the learning experience […] and this can lead to them being uninterested and then disruptive".[191]

104. As we noted earlier in this Report, strong engagement with parents and carers is vital in managing behaviour. Andrew Winton, Manager of Voice for Young People at the London Borough of Havering, pointed out that parents of pupils not attending school "are some of the most difficult to engage".[192] NASWE added that "where parents and young people are unwilling to engage, the EWS may be the only agency where thresholds for statutory intervention have been reached and do not rely entirely on consensual engagement by the young person or their parents".[193]

105. The Department for Education does not provide specific earmarked funding for education welfare services. Local authorities fund services from a combination of formula grant and council tax, and it is for local authorities to decide how much they can spend on these services. As Andrew Winton advised us, in some local authorities cuts to education welfare services are "huge" (50-80% in some areas).[194] Mr Winton added that there are risks in devolving such a service to schools, adding "a while ago, there was the opportunity for it to be devolved to schools and, where it was devolved to schools, it was unsuccessful. Where staff were based in schools but were managed centrally under a professional management structure, that worked well".[195]

106. Given the important role that education welfare services can play in identifying and intervening at an early stage with pupils at risk of poor behaviour and their families, we are concerned at the prospect that local authorities will make significant cuts to these services. We believe that the value of education welfare services—which prevent the need for later, more expensive interventions—may be under-estimated. The Government should bear in mind, in a climate of increased devolution of responsibility to schools for managing behaviour, evidence which suggests that responsibility for the central co-ordination of education welfare services should rest with local authorities rather than with schools, if the services are to function well.

Alternative provision

107. Under section 19 of the Education Act 1996, local authorities have a duty to provide suitable education for children of compulsory school age who cannot attend school - for medical reasons for example, or because they have been excluded. Around 135,000 pupils a year, mostly of secondary age, spend some time in alternative provision. Alternative provision provided by schools and local authorities can range from pupil referral units (PRUs) and further education colleges to voluntary or private sector projects. About one third of placements are in PRUs, with the rest in other forms of alternative provision. The 2008 White Paper Back on Track observed that "it costs around £4,000 a year to educate a pupil in a mainstream school, but about £15,000 a year for a full-time placement in a Pupil Referral Unit, where most permanently excluded pupils are educated".[196] Schools can also arrange alternative provision for their pupils as part of their wider strategies for reducing exclusions. Schools and local authorities must ensure that any education which they commission from outside bodies is of high quality, and ensure that robust systems are in place for monitoring the provision.

108. In oral evidence to the Committee, Sir Alan Steer described the situation regarding alternative provision as "hard to describe as anything but scandalous", with "excellent provision in certain places [and in other places] children who are out of school, receiving as little as one hour a week of home tuition, week after week, month after month.[197] On the latter point, the Schools White Paper announces plans to require all local authorities to provide full-time education for all children in alternative provision from September 2011.[198] Whilst this is a welcome development—particularly in ensuring good attendance and continuity of a pupil's education—it does not address one of the major problems arising from our evidence: that of providing appropriate provision which is flexible to the needs of pupils.

109. Sir Alan Steer was not alone in criticising standards of alternative provision. The National Association of Head Teachers said that "a wide variety of pupil referral units existed, but all were facing similar barriers in providing a good education for their children and young people. Some with inadequate accommodation, pupils of different ages with diverse needs arriving in an unplanned way, limited numbers of specialist staff to enable a broad curriculum to be delivered and too often there were difficulties in reintegrating pupils into mainstream schools".[199]The challenging task PRUs face was described by the National Children's Bureau, which said:

Although it is of course the primary purpose of PRUs to offer an educational intervention to these young people, our research confirms that their welfare and mental health needs must also be identified and addressed—often in the context of difficult and complex family situations. PRUs must be equipped to offer and/or broker the different types of support these children need in order to increase the likelihood of successful reintegration into mainstream education and, over time, improve their life chances.[200]

110. Where PRUs have been allowed to innovate and respond to need as they see fit, excellent results have been achieved. One good example, which we visited, is New Woodlands School in Lewisham. Although formally a special school for children with social, emotional and behavioural needs, in practice New Woodlands operates as a Pupil Referral Unit for children without statements of special educational needs referred from mainstream schools in the London Borough of Lewisham, offering short-term spells of alternative provision: anything from six weeks to several months. Only a successful application for a "power to innovate" under the Education Act 2002 had enabled New Woodlands School to offer places to children without statements of special educational needs, and we were told that while other institutions might have the same philosophy, they were constrained by law from offering the flexibility of provision for children without a statement of SEN.[201]

111. The Government's view is that local authorities currently see their own pupil referral units as the default provider for alternative provision and that they fail to capitalise on expertise from third sector and other providers.[202] The Schools White Paper set out an intention therefore to "increase the autonomy, accountability and diversity of alternative provision", for instance by opening up the market to more providers, including those in the third sector. The White Paper included a commitment to bring forward legislation which would give pupil referral units (PRUs) the same self-governing powers as community schools including powers over staffing and finance. It also announced that the forthcoming Education Bill would include provisions enabling PRUs to become Academies.[203]

112. Opening up the market may make it harder for commissioners to compare the quality of a wider range of alternative provision. The White Paper recognised that currently there is no "common or transparent measure of […] quality"[204]for third sector organisations, which could make it difficult for these organisations to prove their worth to commissioners. The White Paper announced therefore that the Government would consider introducing a quality mark, or tighter regulation for alternative provision, subject to a review of alternative provision by Ofsted.[205] Demos told us that "the quality assurance of alternative provision needs to happen on the same basis as quality assurance for schools", and it recommended that "Ofsted should be charged with inspecting alternative provision regardless of sector (in other words, voluntary and community sector and private sector provision should be inspected by Ofsted in the same way that PRUs are)".[206] Furthermore, Demos identified a need for greater dissemination or "evidence-based practice" to advise the development of new alternative provision.[207]

113. The Government believes that, through greater devolution of commissioning and procurement of alternative provision from local authorities to schools, the alternative provision market will attract a wider range of providers.[208]Although welcome in some respects, many witnesses alluded to major cuts being made to local authority youth services—some of which contribute to the spectrum of alternative provision upon which schools rely—as a barrier to this policy. Leicestershire County Council told us that cuts were a major threat, with serious repercussions for behaviour both in and outside of school. The council and its partners were also sceptical of the ability of the third sector and volunteers to fill the void left behind as services are withdrawn, meaning simply that services may not be available for schools to commission in future.[209]

114. The measures outlined in the Schools White Paper to allow greater freedom for pupil referral units to innovate, and proposals to facilitate access to the alternative provision market to a more diverse range of providers, are welcome in principle. However, in the current economic climate, the alternative provider market may come under pressure from cuts in local authority budgets—particularly in Youth Services. The Government may be being optimistic in expecting that significant numbers of new providers will enter the market for alternative provision. A situation cannot be allowed to arise where any pupil is left without good quality provision.

Behaviour and Attendance Partnerships (BAPs)

115. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 introduced a statutory requirement for all secondary schools, including academies, to be part of a local Behaviour and Attendance Partnership (BAP) - that is, for schools to co-operate with at least one other relevant partner with a view to promoting good behaviour. Prior to the Act, such partnerships were voluntary. Most secondary schools now operate in a behavioural partnership which allows them to share expertise and resources and operate protocols such as 'managed moves', whereby one head teacher may ask another to admit a pupil in order to prevent exclusion. Evidence from our witnesses confirmed that "working in partnership with other schools, local services and the wider community to draw on local expertise and resources [is] of critical importance in addressing challenging behaviour, including exclusions".[210]However, the Coalition Government has since revoked the commencement order bringing in the requirement for schools to form BAPs.[211] This met with mixed reactions from our witnesses.

116. During our visit to Leicester City Council, local partners were confident that there existed an established culture of less challenged schools supporting those with greater challenges in terms of pupil behaviour. Therefore, the removal of the requirement to form BAPs was expected to have little impact on local partnership working. This was reflected by head teacher witnesses to our inquiry, who told us that "even if you require people to participate in partnerships, they can be there in spirit but not in body and vice versa, so required partnership working tends to produce no better effects than voluntary [...] partnership working".[212] This is of little concern in areas where partnerships are already well embedded, as in Leicester. However, our evidence shows that the quality and effectiveness of partnerships varies considerably across the country. As the Association of School and College Leaders stated, "in some places partnerships are still at a low level of effectiveness, particularly when some schools remain outside the group".[213] This accounts for the opinion of the NASUWT—echoed by several of our witnesses[214]—that "the Coalition Government's decision to revoke the requirement for such partnerships is therefore a regrettable and retrograde step that will harm developments to encourage cross-community support for schools in managing behaviour".[215]

117. Sue Bainbridge, representing National Strategies, highlighted some of the risks of revoking the requirement for schools to form BAPs, telling us that "some partnerships will use it as an excuse now for schools to drop out. At the end of the day, schools will work with schools that they can benefit from. [...] We may find that [some schools] are not as welcome into the partnership, because they negatively contribute to the number of excluded pupils without doing their bit to contribute in a positive way—to offer services and support to schools".[216] The NASUWT claimed that "evidence from academy schools to date demonstrates that academies are far less likely to collaborate with other local schools, were more likely to exclude pupils[217] and less likely to admit pupils excluded from other schools".[218]If this is so, it would suggest that schools performing well—whether academies or not—may be reluctant to participate in arrangements which could depress their standing in league tables or force them to accept 'problematic' pupils. In oral evidence, the Minister for Schools pointed out that local authorities' Fair Access Protocols[219]should prevent all children who had been excluded in an area going into one particular school.[220]However, as Dr Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers contended, "the Secretary of State repeatedly says that academies and free schools have to abide by the admissions code, but my question back to him all the time is, 'Who will enforce it?' If it is not enforced, schools will play by other rules in order to get an intake that maximises their position in the league tables".[221]

118. The Schools White Paper proposes the piloting of a new approach to managing permanent exclusions whereby schools will be held accountable for the pupils they exclude. Schools would be free to exclude but would then be responsible for finding and funding alternative provision themselves. This is likely to act as a disincentive to exclusion but may encourage schools to work in partnership with others to arrange managed moves and other preventative interventions, as well as pooling budgets. However, Dr John Dunford highlighted the drawbacks of an approach which puts increased pressure on schools to avoid exclusion at all costs, telling us that "at a time of difficult funding, [...] it would be very difficult for schools to afford good provision on an individual basis for excluded children full time".[222] The Minister for Schools explained that the new Pupil Premium would help schools buy services for individual pupils.[223]The level of the Pupil Premium has been set at £430 per pupil per year, in addition to the underlying school budget allocation per pupil.[224] However, as Dr John Dunford observed, with the cost of a placement in a pupil referral unit being £15,000,[225] "the cost of dealing with this is much more than the money that [schools] will get".[226]

119. We recommend that there should be a 'trigger' for an assessment of need, which may include special educational need, based on exclusion, for example a number of fixed period exclusions or a permanent exclusion. Not only would this ensure that children with undiagnosed special educational needs do not 'fall through the net': it would provide information of use to a future provider in meeting the needs of the excluded child.

120. Schools need to work in partnership with each other in order to prevent and manage exclusions effectively, whether by operating effective managed move protocols or by securing appropriate interventions to tackle challenging behaviour. The proposed pilot to pass responsibility to schools for securing alternative education for permanently excluded pupils may act as a disincentive to exclude; and it may also provide an incentive for schools to work in partnerships to address the behaviour which leads to exclusion and provide alternative education for excluded pupils. We support greater freedoms for schools to commission their own alternative provision and decide how best to spend money to support good behaviour, as long as they are accompanied by robust quality assurance. However, the Government should clarify how schools will be funded to meet the total costs of providing full time provision for permanently excluded pupils, whether through the Pupil Premium or other funding streams.

121. The Government has decided to remove the requirement for schools to be part of a Behaviour and Attendance Partnership (BAP). However, the Government should monitor areas where voluntary partnerships do not exist or are not operating effectively. The Government should be prepared to reverse its decision on BAPs if voluntary partnership working fails to deliver behavioural improvements.

166 Sir Alan Steer, Learning Behaviour: Lessons Learned, 2009, p4 Back

167 Sir Alan Steer, Learning Behaviour: Lessons Learned, 2009, p4 Back

168 http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/behaviour/exclusion/2008guidance/part2a/ Back

169 A head teacher may ask the head teacher of another school to admit a pupil who is at risk of exclusion. This is intended to give the pupil a 'fresh start' at the new school. Managed moves must be carried out only with the full knowledge and co-operation of all parties involved, including parents, governors and the local authority, and with the pupil's best interests at heart Back

170 Source: Statistical First Release: Permanent and Fixed Period Exclusions from Schools and Exclusion Appeals in England, 2008/9, Department for Education, 29 July 2010 Back

171 The Special Educational Needs and Disability Review, Ofsted, 14 September 2010, Summary Back

172 Source: Statistical First Release: Permanent and Fixed Period Exclusions from Schools and Exclusion Appeals in England, 2008/9, Department for Education, 29 July 2010 Back

173 Q 23 Back

174 Ev 153 Back

175 Ev 99 Back

176 DCSF, Back on Track: a strategy for modernising alternative provision for young people, May 2008, p 1 Back

177 Q 217 [Daisy Christodoulou] Back