Positive Relationships: Exclusions - Inside and out

Exclusion rates, which have been rising over the past five years, are affecting the early years as well. According to the Department for Education’s (DfE) January 2017 school census, 14 under-fives have been sent to pupil referral units (PRUs) in England, including four children aged two or under.

While the numbers are still significantly higher for older children, with 13,882 children aged between 11 and 15 placed in PRUs, this has tough consequences for young children and poses wider questions about how early years practitioners can deal with challenging behaviour.

In an interview with The Sunday Timesearlier this month, Education Secretary Damian Hinds said pupils should be excluded only as a ‘last resort’, and has announced a review of exclusions to be led by Edward Timpson, a former children’s minister.

A DfE spokesperson says, ‘Pupil referral units help to ensure every child has access to the right education and support to meet their needs. Referrals for young children can occur when they are too ill to attend their main school, or when there are complex behavioural or emotional needs.

‘Permanent exclusions for young children are extremely rare and should only be used in exceptional circumstances. Statutory guidance to schools is clear that they should consider underlying causes of poor behaviour before issuing an exclusion, and that permanent exclusion should always be a last resort.’

CAUSES

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, says he was ‘very surprised’ to learn under-fives are being excluded.

‘We have the numbers, but there has been little research,’ he says. ‘It is something that should be investigated to discover if there are patterns to the exclusions which could point us at possible causes.’

While children in mainstream schools are funded at a rate of between £3,000 and £4,000 per year, children in PRUs cost a base rate of £10,000 a year, plus per-pupil top-up funding to meet any excess costs.

Bart Shaw, senior associate at education think-tank LKMCo, says this can create a ‘perverse incentive’ to exclude so these children benefit from better resources while, adds Professor Smithers, the school gets better Ofsted results. ‘Exclusions are likely to be higher than stated because one option is to persuade parents to take children out for home schooling, which means they do not show in the school’s statistics,’ he explains. ‘Schools are very data-driven these days and can lose sight of the needs of individual pupils. Moving on an underperforming and disruptive pupil may help the numbers to come out better.’

RISKS

Professor Smithers also believes exclusion should remain a last resort. ‘Excluded children rarely get good grades and are over-represented in the prison population. The risk is that passing children to a PRU will separate them from mainstream education completely, with them eventually getting poor qualifications and having poor prospects.’

NDNA early years adviser Sue Asquith adds that the psychological impact on a child can also be harmful. ‘Exclusion at any age is difficult to deal with, but if it starts as young as two years old I think it is really sad,’ she says.

‘What messages are we sending to the child? Perhaps “no-one likes me” or “I am a failure”. In addition, parents or carers will be getting the messages “my child is out of control” or “my child is faulty”. If you are thinking about excluding a child of any age, it should be the very last option after exhausting every other, including working with parents and perhaps multi-agency teams.’

HOW TO HELP

Ms Asquith says the onus should always be on the practitioner to try to deal with the problem within a setting. ‘If a child has had a meltdown or behavioural outburst, they are communicating that something in their world is out of kilter, they are experiencing something that they are worried, anxious about or afraid of. We need to play detectives and try and unpick what is happening – what is the trigger?

‘As adults we can help them to find the triggers and strategies to help them through these feelings to help their resilience and give them self-regulation strategies to help throughout their life.’

To reduce the likelihood of such young children being excluded, the Pre-school Learning Alliance offers training and advice aiming to change attitudes towards behavioural issues, to take the blame away from the child, looking instead at the functions of behaviour and causative factors that impact young children, including adults’ behaviour.

The Alliance has also:

• developed best practice webinars
• worked with a psychologist on the best methods to address behaviour issues
• published a book for practitioners, Behaviour Matters
• introduced internal HR training on behaviour, encouraging practitioners to understand the root cause of challenging behaviour and respond as appropriate.
  
  

SEND

These initiatives came largely as a response to research the alliance carried out in 2012 into fixed-term and permanent exclusions, following a rise in enquiries from members about the subject.

While 96 per cent of respondents had never permanently excluded a child, those that had said they felt they had no other option because most of these children had significant additional needs which they felt ill-equipped to deal with due to a lack of local support. Meanwhile, the DfE’s school census data shows that children with SEND account for almost half of all types of exclusions.

Michael Freeston, the Pre-school Learning Alliance’s director of quality improvement, says, ‘Our previous research on this issue suggested that the vast majority of practitioners are extremely reluctant to exclude children because they recognise issues relating to behaviour are often the result of wider additional needs that the child has. That is why, while we know exclusion is less of an issue with PVI providers, the alliance provides training and advice for members to equip them with skills and knowledge to make exclusion a real last resort.’

He adds, however, that a lack of funding can leave practitioners unable to deal with some forms of special educational needs. ‘It is sadly not surprising to see exclusion rates rising given central Government’s underfunding of childcare and cuts to local authority budgets,’ he says.

‘The simple fact is that if settings are unable to provide the level of care these vulnerable children need, and parents are struggling to access the support – such as children’s centres – that many councils no longer provide, some providers may well feel that they are left with little option but to exclude.’

FUNDING

LKMCo has called on the Government to establish an ‘avoiding exclusion’ fund of up to £10,000 per pupil to help keep the most challenging children in schools.

Bart Shaw, senior associate at LKMCo, says the benefits of reducing exclusions would be numerous. ‘If you can reduce the number of exclusions entirely, that will not only benefit kids, for whom the whole process of exclusion can be extremely psychologically damaging, but will also make good economic sense,’ he explains.

‘The idea is that schools would use the money to buy in services to prevent the exclusion rate being quite as high as it is, especially for children with SEND where rates are significantly higher.’

The original plan was to target secondary schools, but the organisation is now considering primary schools, and potentially the early years sector. Mr Shaw adds, ‘It’s difficult to say what is appropriate across the board, but there is certainly a clear case for early years providers to be funded to increase capacity and skills in meeting the needs of children with SEND.

‘The administration would be much more complicated, but if we are talking about early prevention, then why not think about starting with the early years?’

Mr Freeston warns that without addressing funding, the issue looks set to get worse. ‘It is likely that without adequate support for early years settings, more and more children will be at risk of exclusion,’ he says.

‘This is not good enough, and Government needs to get a grip on this issue before some of our youngest and most vulnerable children being kept out of mainstream care and education becomes the new normal.’

MORE INFORMATION

Exclusion statistics are at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2017