School exclusion rates in England are rising, disproportionately impacting students with special needs, from disadvantaged backgrounds, or ethnic minorities. Exclusions often result from minor misbehaviors but have severe consequences, linking to issues like knife crime and drug trafficking. Vulnerable students feel their voices are disregarded in schools, where a zero-tolerance approach dominates over understanding the trauma many experience. Alternative approaches that train former excluded students to mentor current ones and address underlying needs through relationship-building may be more effective than exclusionary practices at reengaging students in learning and achieving social justice through education.

1. School exclusions and knife crime:
why we should be listening more to
vulnerable children
October 25, 2019 4.44pm BST
Author Simon Edwards
Exclusion rates in English state funded schools are once again on the rise,
alongside concerns about the impact of exclusion on the well-being of children
and also on public safety. The highest level of exclusion rates are experienced by
vulnerable students who have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, and
are from disadvantaged and ethnic minority backgrounds. As a new report from
a committee of MPs suggests, exclusions are too often used for minor
misbehaviours and leave these individuals with nowhere to go. The report also
lays bare the links between school exclusion and other societal issues such as
knife crime and so-called county lines drug trafficking.
Disengagement with secondary education is known to be linked to childhood
trauma, poor educational outcomes, and an increased likelihood of not being in
employment, educational or training. The system isn’t working. And as a
qualified youth worker and secondary school teacher working with
marginalised students and their parents for the last 20 years, it’s clear to me
that the use of exclusion not only impacts these vulnerable students’ chances of
gaining good qualifications but also silences their voice and any influence it may
have on making meaningful changes to the organisations they attend.
Read more: School exclusions are on the up – but training teachers
in trauma could help
Ironically, a 2016 Department for Education paper claimed that “education is
the hallmark of a civilised society, the engine of social justice and economic
growth”. Yet, in England, there were 7,900 permanent exclusions in the 2017-
18 period, a 70% increase since 2012-13.
If education is the engine for social justice perhaps we need to ask who justice
is for, as it doesn’t seem to apply to those who are most vulnerable to exclusion.
Indeed, wider issues that impact student behaviour such as adverse childhood
experiences and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are largely
overlooked in favour of zero-tolerance responses to behaviour issues that also
place significant blame on poor parenting.
Discrimination and exclusion
Exclusion can be justified, according to Department for Education guidance, if
allowing a disruptive student to remain in school affects the well-being or
learning of their peers. However, the guidance also states schools are not

2. allowed to discriminate against students on the basis of protected
characteristics (for example, disability or race) and they must treat vulnerable
students fairly. Exclusion can take a number of legal forms, but there are also
illegal practices, such as encouraging parents to take their child out of school or
off-rolling, where schools use alternative provision and take students off their
register.
According to an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report, off-rolling
has become increasingly prevalent prior to GCSE exams in order to game
performance league tables. However, the increase in exclusions also coincides
with wider complex issues such as teacher retention, funding cuts for support
services in schools, increasing pressure to meet GCSE performance targets and
capacity problems that limit spaces available in state funded alternative
provisions.
When former education secretary Damian Hinds called for more perspectives
from students and parents on exclusion, particularly from students who had
special needs, were from ethnic minority groups and/or who were on free
school meals, it coincided with wider calls for their voices to be heard.
A study by education psychologist Shaalan Farouk recently explored such
student experiences. Here, their lived experiences are understood as a valid
form of evidence that can provide valuable insights into their worlds. It created
a starting point from which the practitioner or researcher can work
collaboratively with them to meet now identified needs. Kim, one of Farouk’s
students, provided an insight on how children’s views are often disregarded:
The only thing I think I was doing wrong was thinking I wasn’t doing
anything wrong, cos to me, what’s wrong with speaking up? But you are not
supposed to. Like, you are arguing, I am arguing, you are a teacher I learn
from you. Because, since I was young I was taught to speak my mind and
when I was ten [at primary school] they liked that, it shows intellect and
intuition, but they don’t like that a high [secondary] school. It’s yes sir, no sir,
three bags full sir, its get your grades and get out.
Alternative approaches
One piece of research I recently carried out took a similar approach. A group of
former excluded students (now in their 20s) who had attended an alternative
school provision that I managed were trained with their parents to become
researchers. They drew on their own experiences of exclusion to guide
interviews with ten permanently excluded students (who also had special
needs) and their parents.
The findings indicated a spiral of disillusionment, educational disengagement,
fractured relationships between each other and teachers. This emerged as the
students encountered a series of life events such as adverse childhood
experiences, SEND and family break-up that coincided with the educational
processes in schools. These students had a form of agency but their behaviours
were to some extent – and in line with Hannah Arendt’s ideas in The Human

3. Condition – conditioned to act by the conditions under which they existed,
often compounded by zero-tolerance approaches to behaviour in schools.
Of the ten students supported in the project, four had encountered county lines
issues. One male student’s parents told me that they believed his issues with
anger had started when he was five – the time they separated. Following
exclusion from mainstream school he became frustrated at a Pupil Referral Unit
he was attending, which culminated in violent outbursts and further fixed-term
exclusions from the unit. He had also recently become involved in drug dealing
and was suspected of being involved in county lines. Yet, although he was
consistently excluded he said: “I miss learning what I want to learn.”
Part of our project involved training the researchers to act as mentors using
informal discussion and activities such as cooking with students and parents to
explore their current and future goals. These activities also helped students and
their parents understand each other’s perspectives of school and their own
developmental needs. Mentors then helped them develop the confidence and
skills (making phone calls, internet searches, contacting forums and legal
services) to access resources they needed and to re-engage with their education.
This was only a small study but it sits within a growing field of mentoring
projects that consider the voices of marginalised and often stigmatised groups,
working with them to address their needs. This doesn’t dismiss the need for
students and parents to understand the pressures placed on teachers in schools,
or that behaviour boundaries are needed to support the well-being of students.
But perhaps a more relational approach that takes their perspectives into
account, to address some of the issues they encounter in school, might be more
productive than off-rolling and zero-tolerance approaches, which have little
impact on increasing student attainment.
Until these issues are addressed by developing approaches that listen to and
also act upon the voices of those for whom education is not working, we have a
long way to go until education in England can be heralded as the engine for
social justice and the hallmark of a civilised society.