In 2010 the Children’s Commissioner for England asked researchers to gather the views of 2000 children and young people and to ask them what makes a school a triumph, challenge or disaster. Eight out of ten of children said their learning had been disrupted by the bad behaviour of a minority of classmates. But despite this high figure nine out of ten said schools should help children rather than exclude them. Only one in seven said their school always got exclusion right. These findings and the concerns they raised led to the first formal inquiry into school exclusions by a Children’s Commissioner for England. A small team supported by an expert panel visited schools across England and listened to formal and written evidence from adults and children.
They asked how children were excluded both on a fixed term and permanently; what systems of escalating sanctions were used; whether exclusion was being used as a first or last resort; how consistent was the approach to exclusion and in whose interests were exclusions being made. They asked what the outcomes of exclusion from school were for those children excluded.
Principal Policy Adviser on Education at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, John Connolly says that the report is in part a celebration of good practice and it highlights types of good practice found. The title of the report comes from the words of a teenager who described himself as ‘a bit of a handful’ but whose school did not give up on him. The report has been criticized by some for being too lenient on ‘troublemakers’ who disrupt classes and interrupt the education of others. These children say some should be removed from mainstream schooling altogether - the rights of one should not dictate the needs of many.
But while the report stresses that all children have a right to an education it does not condemn exclusion but rather affirms that exclusion must be done in line with the existing and clear guidance on it.1 Exclusion should always be a last resort and it must be fair, legal and consistent. It also needs to be done with the child’s interests at heart.
The report points out that while fixed term exclusions can provide both school and the involved child with a ‘breathing space’ to calm down, permanent exclusion ‘has a negative effect on an excludee’s life for far longer than the period immediately after exclusion’.