From Jane:
When Westminster Academy first opened some students were sent home “to await a meeting”. No official exclusion took place.
I have now heard of a Suffolk converter unofficially excluding.
Who collates attendance figures and exclusion figures for academies. I assume it is the DfE only and, therefore, there is almost no monitoring. (I realise that permanent or long term exclusions have to be reported to the home authority of the student.)
Alasdair Smith said:
Interesting question. I think you should ask the DfE if they collect this data
12 June 2012 at 11:06amAnonymous said:
I am a former student at Westminster Academy. When children misbehave, rather than being formally excluded, children are told to “work from home.”
“On paper” behaviour is seen to be improving. However, it is clearly not!
Keep up the excellent work Jane!
27 July 2012 at 4:20pmChris said:
I’m currently writing a thesis at present looking at ‘managed moves’ between secondary schools. What is abundantly clear from my interview data is that young people that do not conform to the rigid structures of mainstream schooling have little, if any advocates outside their families and, if they’re lucky, passionate members of staff within LAs.
There is NO reason for schools to take difficult students. They have the RIGHT to simply refuse young people, sending them back to their previous school or another local secondary. They are out-of-sight and therefore out-of-mind, do not appear favourably on school figures and Headteachers have every right to deny them access top education. Similar to unofficial exclusions, no record of these are recorded by the DfES. Given that these pupils are most likely to experience horrendous family circumstances, school failure, juvenile delinquency / incarceration, drug addiction and poor employment prospects, should this demographic not be looked at more closely.
The answer is self-evident, however, they do not sit pretty within the academies movement, where schools have even further control as to who they take… So when all academies refuse to take a young person, where do they go?? This has not been answered. My hunch is that local authority academies, particularly those sharing a sponosr will build sin-bins for them and send them away when they’re not conforming. A VERY worrying state of affairs.
2 January 2013 at 9:20pmShelagh Limmer said:
What strategies can governors employ if a headteacher wants to change from LEA to academy status?
23 January 2013 at 8:28pmJane said:
The Governors vote against it. While it is an LEA school the Governors govern.
14 February 2013 at 10:39amThe Red Rocket said:
At my school which is an academy (was no different before conversion), they simply remove pupils off role before they run census data for attendance etc. That way the figures look better, and nobody is any wiser. If anyone starts sniffing around, they just pop them back on again.
6 March 2013 at 8:49pmJane said:
Details of any child who is taken off roll should be passed to the local authority in which the child lives. If that is not happening, the local authority needs to be informed. Apart from anything else, if a child is simply taken roll without having a school place to go to, this is an extremely serious child protection issue.
This should be one thing that the local authority can investigate, even in an academy.
8 March 2013 at 3:50pmThe Red Rocket said:
Sadly Jane its standard practice in many schools. You are right about it been child protection issue. Like I say, once anyone sniffs around, they put them back on, its all about removing them for census day.
15 March 2013 at 8:29pmVeronica said:
My son was told ‘he had to work from home’ also & was given materials to study from at home with no support. He was not ‘offically’ excluded.
20 March 2013 at 6:25pmThe Red Rocket said:
Veronica, we call this ‘churn’ at our school. Demand a date that he will be allowed back in to school. Ask for all documentation connected with the incident(s) and ask for a copy of the schools exclusion policy along with the inclusion policy.
24 March 2013 at 4:18pmBrian said:
The school I work at simply asks the parents of students who have misbehaved to “stay at home” for a day or two “so we can investigate the incident” or ” so things can calm down”. It’s always put to them as a favour and to avoid an exclusion. It is then recorded as absent for “other” reasons and authorised. Therefore this does not show up as an exclusion.
2 April 2013 at 1:12pmThere is a school in my town which regularly gets rids of unruly students by making their lives at school very uncomfortable so they just leave through a “parental request”. The school losses 10s of students from year 7 to year 11. It is a well known secret in the town and the local authority also knows but choose to ignore it because their results are good.
b said:
I have worked 15 years in an inner city northern comprehensive in a ward with the highest level of child poverty in the UK.
11 April 2013 at 10:15amChris wrote a few things that chimed with experiences. What concerns me, and a good few others, most at present are those most vulnerable children from very traumatic family backgrounds:
our hunch is that the city’s academies and the LA will not provide any adequate for them. A VERY worrying state of affairs. WATCH THEM DISAPPEAR.
maggie coombes said:
my son has been coded as educated off site to prevent the academy as having unauthorised absences. he has been out of school for 6 months with ill health but there is no funding to refer him for medical tuition. does anybody care,no.
11 April 2013 at 5:53pm