My Response to the DfE Consultation on Exclusions.

The Department of Education have come up with a consultation about exclusions , calling for evidence.  It ends on 6th May and doesn't take long to do.

The introduction seemed to be trying to get us to  talk about ethnicity issues, but this isn't the bit I know about, so I stuck to the problems I have seen and heard.

This is my response:

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I am writing as a member of the home education (HE) community.  Both locally and nationally through real life contact and online HE groups, I have become increasingly aware of problems for many children within the schooling system where the school is unable to offer a suitable education to the young person for one reason or another, and therefore seeks to either exclude or otherwise deregister the young person, whether or not the family is in full agreement.

The sorts of cases I have seen personally:

*Children/teens with learning differences who have an EHCP but where the school does not honor the plan, so that the pupil does not cope with the school situation and is not in receipt of a suitable education.  The young person is then either excluded or the family are advised to remove the young person themselves.   Austerity appears to be one of the drivers here. Teachers are losing their teaching assistants, and are so pushed that they cannot possibly cope with the extra strain of pupils with differences. There is also no money for any extra equipment for these young people.

*Children/teens with marginal/hidden learning differences, such as auditory processing problems, mild ASD or mild dyslexia. The marginal nature of their differences mean that they cannot get an EHCP but they nonetheless struggle in a schooling environment.  No provision or exceptions are made for them.  They often become depressed, develop eating disorders, self harm, or even become suicidal. They too risk being excluded or deregistered.

*Children/teens with actually fairly significant learning differences, such as pronounced dyslexia , ADHD or autism, but schools and LAs still flatly refuse to assess them for EHCP, despite their obvious problems.  Austerity appears to be the driver here. The same process of exclusion or other deregistration occurs here.

*Children/teens who are bullied by pupils or teachers to the point again of self harm, suicide, etc. Same outcomes for these young people.

*Pupils who cannot reach the grades that the school wants them to reach have also been excluded or deregistered. Schools appear to be so in hock to government funding and LAs via Ofsted, that they will do anything to booster their results and have to therefore get rid, one way or another, of pupils who will not help them meet Ofsted requirements.

*Teachers being so afraid of Ofsted that they either get pupils removed from their class or else put terrible pressure on pupils to perform, which completely destroys the teacher/pupil relationship and most likely actually prevents a suitable education taking place.

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One way or another, the schooling system is at crisis point: any child who does not fit as a perfect round peg in a perfect round hole is in big trouble as there simply isn't the money to cope with them.  Huge numbers of young people are therefore not in receipt of a suitable education.

Something huge therefore has to change.  The quickest fix: we need to be offering better alternative educational provision via Education Other Than At School.  (EOTAS)  to those families who cannot find a suitable alternative place of education, whether this be another school of some sort or Elective Home Education.

If we were to become less focused on having all children in school and  instead made good use of the opportunities afforded by Information Age, EOTAS could be rolled out much more efficiently than is currently the case.

It is currently often extremely difficult to next to impossible to get anything other than a tiny amount of EOTAS provision but if we let go of an obsession with keeping all children in schools for so many hours a year, budgets could follow the pupil far more flexibly than currently the case.

To meet the need described above, as well as the need to offer an appropriate education in the age of Information, we absolutely MUST create a variety of EOTAS provision so that a young person's needs for a genuinely suitable, personalised education can be properly met. These could be along the lines of:

*Virtual schools and colleges, preferably with a real life meeting base within accessible distance around the country . The Red Balloon of the Sky model seems to be working well already in some areas, by way of one example that could be rolled out to good effect.

*Hospital schools could also provide another model that would work for many children who are otherwise excluded or forcibly deregistered but who are not suitable for Pupil Referral Units (PRUs).

*Occasional tutors for individual subjects, either virtually or in real life.