School exclusions are too often a hugely divisive topic. Attempting to take the issue on, especially with any nuance, can feel rather like walking into a battlefield, with the lines already drawn between advocates for zero exclusions those in favour of zero tolerance. Potshots fly all over the place.
But as is often the case with spiky policy debates such as this, if you take the question to the general public, you will find a far more subtle view.
This is exactly what we did in our new in-depth research on the subject, polling teachers, parents and young people themselves, alongside conducting focus groups with all three groups.
We found that views on this issue are complex, and even sometimes appear contradictory, but are rooted in the essential practicality of everyday life.
Crucially, we found a deep and fixed belief that all children should be in good quality education. This might sound like a basic observation, but it isn’t. As Public First research found last year, there has been a seismic shift in the baseline level of support parents have for the idea that every day matters in school.
We cannot, and must not, assume that faith in the system is an unlimited resource. It’s broken. Anyone trying to build it back needs to recognise it must be nurtured.
For all the groups we spoke to, the topline debate was an abstraction. All groups (especially teachers) viewed exclusions as a grim necessity, an important tool for schools to have.
But the big concern was around the idea that more support was needed throughout the system, in areas that will be familiar to those who think about education regularly: more SEND support, far greater mental health support, earlier intervention, and more scaffolding around the lives of those struggling.
So many of the issues we see in education policy bring us back to the same theme: the need for more active intervention between schools, support systems and families.
We must rethink AP as a bridge rather than a barrier
It also points towards a needed shift in how we talk and think about what happens after an exclusion.
Some 40 per cent of teachers and pupils said the UK does a bad job at supporting excluded pupils after they leave school. Moreover, there is a clear preference for continuity of education; over half of the public told us that the most imortant thing AP does is that ‘It allows young people to continue their education’.
This points towards the fact that a new look at AP is comfortably as important as continuing the never-ending debate about exclusions. If this is the main take-away from our research, I would be delighted.
With that in mind, we think this ‘Cinderella sector’ could have three areas for renewed focus.
The first and most obvious would be far more attention paid to what’s happening in AP. Exclusion should not mean a worse standard of education. Different, certainly, but with the same high standards we’ve come to expect in mainstream.
Second, there is clearly also a capacity crisis. We heard from parents and teachers about children who had nowhere to go after being removed from mainstream settings as the result of a sanction or additional needs. They either missed education or were simply ‘held’ in a school.
This helps nobody – not the wider system, not the school, and certainly not young people and their families.
Finally, if continuity of education is what parents want, we need to think about how to turn exclusion from a one-way exit from mainstream into a revolving door, with a clearly signposted and supported pathway back in.
Challenging behaviour can be a short-term issue, so we need to be thinking about what shorter-term routes back into mainstream can look like.
Labour have inherited a system of high standards and good results. They have also inherited a crisis of belonging and wellbeing in the school system.
Their challenge is to bridge this divide: to uphold the progress in educational outcomes while tackling the crises of wellbeing and inclusion that threaten the foundation of trust in the system.
This means, among other things, investing in early intervention and rethinking AP as a bridge rather than a barrier, and engaging with the realities faced by schools and families every day.
Get it right, and these two pillars of belonging and standards can hold up the system. As it stands, the collapse of one is set to threaten the other.
Read the full report, ‘Nothing happens in isolation’ here
