The well-trodden route to exclusion

Exclusion is an emotive issue for pupils. School children from south London recently sent a powerful message by subverting maps on the London Underground, portraying the route running from school to prison, with stops on the journey including “being sent out of class”, “exclusion”, and “youth offending”. Stations such as “empathy”, “success” and “support” were firmly closed.

The concern is increasingly shared by teachers and policy-makers, with former children’s minister, Edward Timpson currently conducting a review of school exclusions.

This scrutiny is long overdue. Department for Education (DfE) figures show there has been a steady rise in both the number and proportion of exclusions. At the same time, children are falling out of mainstream schools more generally, with a rise in the number of children being home-educated and in those attending special schools. Exclusion should be looked at in this wider context where mainstream education isn’t working for significant numbers of pupils.