Theresa is still angry about the day her four-year-old daughter, Siri, was excluded from nursery. 'I'll never forget when I came in the door and saw two members of staff physically restraining her,' she says. 'The more they held her, the more she kicked - and she was hysterical. I didn't care about her kicking them. I didn't care about anything apart from getting Siri out of there.'
Siri had been attending the nursery at an inner-city children's centre for over a year. According to Theresa, Siri had always been 'oppositional' but, until that day, the nursery had found ways to engage her. But things suddenly changed. 'It was the last term before going to school,' explains Theresa, 'and two of Siri's best friends had already left. She found that hard and became even more oppositional.'
Theresa was grateful for the support offered by Siri's key person during this time. But then she got a call from nursery, saying that Siri was kicking out and that, according to their policy, she would have to stay at home the next day. 'I asked if that meant she was being excluded, and the nursery manager said "yes".'
The Department for Children, Schools and Families keeps no statistics on exclusions in maintained early years settings, saying that the small proportion of four-year-olds excluded from primary schools suggests it is not an exercise they need to burden nurseries with. There were 730 children under five excluded from primary schools in England during 2006/07 (DCSF 2008a). Each one, of course, had an individual story. Anecdotal evidence must suffice to help us understand the impact of exclusion from a maintained nursery.
Three months after Siri's exclusion, another mother, Sarah, got the same call from the same nursery about her four-year-old adopted son, Nathaniel. She was told that he had seriously injured his friend, Tom, with a pair of scissors, and had laughed at his key person when she tried to stop him. Sarah says, 'I was concerned for Tom, but felt that excluding Nat the next day was unhelpful. We never carry consequences into another day at home.' Instead, Sarah offered to take Nat out of nursery for the rest of that day.
On her arrival, she was surprised to find her son had already been excluded very efficiently within the classroom. 'Nat was lying unhappily by himself on the carpet in his group corner, with a practitioner keeping half an eye on him while she read to another child.'
Sarah became even more confused when she saw Tom. 'He was laughing and playing just like nothing had happened. I went and hugged him - our families are good friends - and saw just a little nick on his cheek. I'm not saying it didn't matter - I know Tom must have been frightened, and I'm still sorry about that. But it wasn't the serious injury they'd said it was.'
Some weeks later, Nathaniel was excluded again. 'The nursery cared about Nat and they tried lots of ways to make things better for him,' says Sarah. 'But when it came to it, they had this exclusion policy and they used it. That tainted everything else.'
Sarah felt blamed for Nat's behaviour. 'When I said I was unhappy about the exclusions, I was told they needed to have "a final sanction".'
Theresa was just angry. 'The nursery manager told me that she had to protect her staff from violence. Siri's tiny! All legs and arms. In any case, they knew there was autism and ADHD in the family.'
Being different
The changes in behaviour were also happening at home, putting the families under stress. Both mothers felt let down during difficult times with children whom the nursery knew to be potentially vulnerable. 'Nat was anxious about being different and we knew it was connected to his adoption,' Sarah explains. 'He needed to know he was cared for, safe and accepted, whatever he did. You can't get that message if you're excluded.'
Marilyn James, head of Caverstede Early Years Centre in Peterborough, supports that view. She says, 'There is always a reason behind a young child's difficult behaviour. It's up to us to enable that child.' As the head of an 'outstanding' maintained setting, she was surprised that a children's centre would feel the need for a 'final sanction', and says, 'You can't have a final sanction because there isn't anywhere else for children and families to go. We are the support.'
Julian Grenier, head of Kate Greenaway Nursery School in Islington, London, agrees. 'Incidents that happen at nursery are our responsibility. It's up to us to plan for imaginable situations and to work out what to do following a specific incident.'
Indeed, a random sample of eight outstanding maintained settings said they had no exclusion policies. None of the heads of these settings had ever formally excluded a child. All of them said they worked from principles of inclusion. Of course, the pooled responses from eight settings do not constitute a robust survey. Perhaps it was pure coincidence that they largely agreed on full inclusion; or perhaps full inclusion is a characteristic of excellent provision.
All of them challenged the first setting's avowed need for an exclusion policy. Their practices indicate that strategic planning can help avoid a crisis.
'I always have more than the minimum ratio of 1:13,' says Angela Stanton, head of Alfreton Nursery School in Derbyshire. 'There should be enough adults to shadow someone if a child continues to behave in an unacceptable way.'
Julian Grenier points to simple initiatives, such as keeping story groups to a minimum of eight children. All the heads talked of the need to work closely with other agencies and to focus on the individual child's needs.
Plan for surprises
But these were also priorities for the nursery that excluded Nathaniel and Siri. Nathaniel was assessed quickly by both speech and language and educational psychology services, while Siri's mother was impressed by the nursery's commitment to planning for individual children - until it turned out to have limits.
This inconsistency points to a problem at the heart of the early years commitment to inclusion: a gap between the aim for full inclusion, and the reality when settings and local authorities do not plan for the unexpected.
This tension was noted by Nutbrown and Clough (2006: 45), whose research with 452 early childhood practitioners found that the 'personal willingness on the part of practitioners to include children and their families' was matched, for some, 'with despair and lack of support or knowledge or confidence in their own abilities and, in some cases, in systems and structures which were not supporting inclusive policies.'
It seems you may have to be pretty single-minded to remain true to inclusive ideals. The situation is muddied for less-confident settings and services by the mixed messages from Government. The lack of any statistic on exclusions from maintained nursery provision suggests that they don't happen, but the guidance on school exclusion explicitly covers maintained nursery schools, suggesting that they do (DCSF 2008b).
Some of the heads interviewed wondered aloud whether it was logically possible to formally exclude children from provision that is not statutory. This might be a point worth debating but, for Sarah and Theresa, it's a moot point at best. Whether unacceptable, illogical or untraceable, the time-outs imposed on their children certainly felt like formal exclusions.
There is hope for more consistency. According to Jane Cole, one-time regional adviser on the National Strategies team that developed the Early Years Foundation Stage, the new framework is the Government's message. 'A commitment to inclusion runs deeply through the EYFS,' she says. 'Inclusion is, of course, at the heart of the unique child principle, but it's also threaded through the other EYFS key themes and principles.'
Her enthusiasm for the framework's potential to guarantee inclusive provision for all young children is heartening. It offers hope that, as the EYFS themes and principles become embedded in practice, the reflex to even consider imposing a 'final sanction' will disappear. Perhaps it can ensure that Siri and Nathaniel will be among the last children to be excluded from a maintained nursery setting.
Pat Gordon-Smith is a writer and editor for the early years.
Children's and parents' names have been changed and the nursery setting obscured in order to protect the identity of children and their families
REFERENCES
- DCSF (2008a) Permanent and Fixed Exclusions from Schools and Exclusion Appeals in England 2006/07. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families
- DCSF (2008b) Improving Behaviour and Attendance: Guidance on exclusion from schools and pupil referral units 2008. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families
- Nutbrown, C & Clough, P (2006) Inclusion in the Early Years: Critical analyses and enabling narratives. London: Sage Publications.
