schools excluding pupils illegally, report says

Some schools in England are "acting illegally or unscrupulously" by excluding pupils by unofficial means, a Centre for Social Justice report says.

Some schools encourage parents to remove difficult children, avoiding officially excluding them but providing no support, the think-tank report says.
It also calls for benefit cuts for parents who refuse all help with disruptive children.
The government said it was working to improve education for excluded pupils.
The report, No Excuses: A review of educational exclusion, calls for more transparency in the area of school exclusions.
It says official figures do not provide an accurate picture of exclusions in some schools, as schools can transfer or swap pupils into alternative provision such as pupil referral units (PRUs) and vocational training without officially excluding them.
And while this is legal, there are also practices which enable schools to sidestep their legal duties to provide for pupils, the report says.

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Some schools are taking an 'out of sight, out of mind' approach to challenging pupils, and getting their behaviour 'off their hands'”

End Quote Centre for Social Justice report

One "common practice" involves "teachers informing parents that the school will permanently exclude their child but that if the parents decide to educate their child at home, the child in question will not have a permanent exclusion against its record," says the report.

This was done "with the knowledge that the parents will not provide suitable alternatives for the pupil" and therefore contravenes the school's statutory duties, said CSJ executive director Gavin Poole.
"Some schools are taking an 'out of sight out of mind' approach to challenging pupils, and getting their behaviour ''off their hands'," the report says.
The number of permanent exclusions has dropped in recent years, from 12,300 in 1997/8 to 5,740 in 2009/10, and the number of suspensions (fixed-term exclusions) have also dropped.
But the number of pupils educated in PRUs - units for pupils for whom mainstream education is not considered suitable - almost doubled between 1997 and 2007, the report points out.
"Although the number of permanent exclusions appears to be reducing, it is impossible to be clear of progress, given the uncertainty about the level of unofficial exclusions being used," the CSJ says.
The report also recommends sanctions such as cuts to welfare or child benefit payments for use against parents who refuse all help offered by schools to tackle problem pupils.
Mr Poole added: "In some cases there is a core of parents simply refusing to engage with the school and in their child's education.
"Parents have to face up to the responsibility of parenting."
Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron said that the government was considering cutting benefits for parents of pupils who played truant persistently.
'Staggering' The CSJ also warned of a "climate of fear gripping many pupils who feel unsafe in school".
Its researchers were told of cases where children as young as seven had been found carrying knives to school.
"Often the children said that they had brought the knives in because they were being bullied in school, to scare someone, or because they were being bullied by older children or, in one example, by someone's father, on their way home from school," the CSJ said.
"The extent to which pupils in some of our schools are feeling unsafe and the impact that weapon-carrying street gang activity and conflict is having on their behaviour is staggering."
Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: "We know that children who need to be taken out of mainstream schools are not getting the education they deserve."
He said the government was increasing the autonomy, accountability and diversity of alternative provision to help drive up standards.
Good or outstanding PRUs would be able to apply to become academies, operating outside local authority control, while schools would be given more power and responsibility to provide for excluded pupils, he said.

taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14880542