Alex is 12 years old, a bright and lively conversationalist; a sparky and intelligent girl. But since September she has spent only a day and a half in school and has run away from home 22 times. She is often found playing the slot machines on the seafront, her favourite haunt in her home town of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. She is a habitual school refuser and has hardly shown her face at her new secondary school. When she did turn up, she says, “all the other kids called me a skiver. I hate school, and the teachers are a pain in the neck.”

How she is regarded by her peers bothers her greatly; the lack of trust between herself and her teachers is also part of her problem. Staff at the Scarborough pupil referral unit, which Alex is attending for six weeks prior to being placed in a different secondary, say she is extremely vulnerable and are concerned for her safety and future. She appears to be friendless, caring for younger siblings when at home, raking around the beach and streets alone when not. Alex’s emotional and psychological needs are not being met, says Frances Toynbee, head of the Scarborough pupil referral unit, and she has withdrawn from both the learning and sociability of school.

A new report on girls and exclusion, published next week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, reveals that Alex is not alone; many girls who experience difficulties in school tend to self-exclude rather than be excluded on disciplinary charges; truanting rather than behaving disruptively. The rising tide of permanent exclusions in the past decade (10,438 recorded in 199899) shows that boys are more than 10 times more likely to be excluded from primary school than girls, and four times more likely to be excluded from secondary school. Much alternative provision is therefore fashioned with boys in mind.

Although at first glance girls seem to be coping with education - they outperform boys at both GCSE and A-level and are more likely to enter higher education - this masks the fact that 1,800 girls were permanently excluded from school last year, according to Department for Education statistics. The JRF report, Not a problem? Girls and Exclusion from School, argues that this figure would be much higher if unofficial, fixed-term, informal and self-exclusions were taken into account. In Wales, for example, girls have a higher rate of overall absenteeism, with 10.6 per cent missing (half-day) sessions compared with 10.4 per cent of boys.

The causes of girls’ exclusion are complex, but feelings of isolation, unresolved personal, family or emotional relationships, and bullying loom large. Like Alex, many girls interviewed in the report speak of friendship problems as a key source of tension and conflict. The report identifies “bitching” as a widespread, corrosive practice; falling out with friends, social harassment or being shunned by peers are other alienating pressures.

Emma, a long-term non-attender, now at FE college, says: “I was getting called fat and everything and other pupils would swear at me. It was stupid, but it really got on my nerves so I didn’t want to go.”

Disturbingly, the report highlights the fact that while many girls view peer relationships and bullying as a major factor in their self-exclusion, many professionals do not recognise this as a problem. At the King’s Centre in Birmingham, a pupil referral unit that runs a course on sexual health and personal relationships, girls discuss their problems at school. Rachel, a shy, withdrawn girl who has been out of school for two years, couldn’t get on with her peers, who were always “getting into trouble” and “spreading rumours” about her. In the end she stayed away from school and spent much of her time “helping around the house” and looking after younger siblings.

Liz, who was excluded for “fighting” and has been out of school for a year, is very concerned about missing out on an education “because it will be hard to get a job”, but does not miss her time in school which she felt was marred by the “bitchiness” of other girls. Although she tried to talk to teachers about it, she says “they didn’t understand and they did nothing. They thought I didn’t want to learn. They don’t pay much attention to what’s going on between girls; they think it’s only a bit of bitchiness.” One third of the girls interviewed also said they had been subject to internal exclusion (being withdrawn from lessons), a sanction that does not appear in official statistics. Emily says: “I was outside an office for four days, sitting there doing nothing.”

Lotty, aged 13, the only other girl in the Scarborough unit with Alex, says she felt teachers were always waiting for her to make a mistake, and that she only ever trusted one teacher to help her with her reading problem. “He used to say, ‘I know you can do it’. He was strict but he was fair.”

Cathy Street, who co-directed the JRFreport with Professor Audrey Osler, director of research at the Centre for Citizenship Studies at Leicester University’s school of education, has a background in psychiatric social work. She is research associate of the New Policy Institute, an independent think tank based in London, and has lectured in health economics at the London School of Economics.

In recent years she has been researching provision of services for young people with mental health problems. Children out of school are more likely to experience mental problems, and girls, she says, are suffering disproportionately. Three times more girls self-harm compared with boys, for example. “When we started this research,” says Ms Street, “people said, ‘why are you doing it? Girls are not the problem, it’s boys’. They felt that girls were more articulate, more mature and more able to access help if they needed it. This is not the case, but young women and their needs have disappeared from the picture.

“Considerable numbers of young women are going out into society with huge chunks of their education missing. Many become the young mothers of the next generation, passing on their own bad experiences. We have to get to these girls to break the cycle.”

Professor Osler says: “If the Government is serious about dealing with social exclusion they have to redefine exclusion to cover withdrawal from learning.” Girls’ voices, she believes, are not being heard while the exclusion system deals with the more acute and much larger problem of boys. “Girls don’t tend to push their problems under the noses of teachers. If a teacher has a disruptive class, he or she is not going to be over-concerned by the withdrawn girl in the corner.”

The research includes interviews with 81 girls, both excluded and in school, and a range of professionals - teachers, educational psychologists, social workers and truancy officers - in three local education authorities and three education action zones. Its purpose is to put the spotlight on disaffection of school-age girls and to enhance the understanding of “provider agencies and staff” by giving girls a voice about their experiences in school, their views on exclusion and what support they would find useful.

The report recommends that schools should provide support, such as a counsellor or school nurse, that they should have clear plans for reintegrating pupils who have been out of school because of formal exclusion, truancy or pregnancy, and that bullying policies should acknowledge the more “subtle” types of bullying “to which girls may be particularly vulnerable”. It calls on providers of alternative education to consider offering schemes exclusively for girls.

Frances Toynbee, who has conducted research into pupils’ views of alternative provision and has also been head of a pupil referral unit in London, says girls usually feel guilty that “they couldn’t handle it”. “More often than not relationships with peers are at the core of their difficulties,” she says.

The Oakdale centre, a pupil referral unit in south Birmingham that has recently run a “Positively Girls” course, is highlighted in the JRF report as an example of good practice. The four-week programme, for six girls at a time, covers issues such as self-esteem and self-presentation. Lise Albert, the centre’s head, says this course is part of a raft of preventative measures which have helped to cut exclusions in the area by 50 per cent over the last couple of years. “I felt there was a big gap in addressing girls’ needs,” she says. “Those in difficulty at school tend to vote with their feet and then it is hard to re-engage them. Girls out of school are more likely to become young mothers. Often, because of their experiences, and because they are constrained by caring for younger siblings or whatever, they are unable to be assertive.

“Many of the ones that we see here are depressed and flat. We have worked on improving relationships, getting them to talk positively about each other. Significantly, they can rarely think of something positive to say about themselves. We are giving them the tools to be more assertive, the ability to resolve conflicts before they escalate out of control. We get their school mentors to come in and work with them, to keep the connection with school, and that has been very successful.”

Pupils’ names have been changedThe Joseph Rowntree Foundation: The Homestead, 40 Water End, York, North Yorkshire YO30 6WP

WHAT SCHOOLS CAN DO

* Provide support, such as a counsellor or school nurse

* Make sure that policies to address bullying acknowledge the more subtle types of bullying to which girls may be vulnerable

* Support and train teachers to ensure they can identify students who are in difficulty and have knowledge of sources of support

* In any initiatives to support girls, recognise differences in needs related to ethnicity, sexuality, maturity and out-of-school responsibilities as well as their concern about peer reactions

* Take account of gender and ethnicity when monitoring alternative curricular arrangements

* Be sensitive to the different needs of boys and girls in student consultation (student councils, involvement in drawing up codes of conduct)

* Have clear plans for reintegrating students who have been out of school as a result of exclusion, truancy or pregnancy

A summary of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, ‘Not a Problem? Girls and Exclusion from School’, will be available at www.jrf.org.uk from January 9