Boris Johnson’s administration “seems to lack any recognition of the link” between school exclusions and crime, and seems “worryingly relaxed” about the removal of children, a Labour MP has warned.
Sarah Jones raised concerns during a Westminster Hall debate about the increasing number of school exclusions, pointing out there has been a 70 per cent increase in permanent exclusions since 2012, with just 1 per cent of children permanently excluded getting a good pass in maths or English at GCSE.
MPs also debated about whether a rise in exclusions led pupils into crime.
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Ms Jones, the MP for Croydon Central, said: “Too many children are being left behind and I fear that the draconian language coming from this new government may make the problem worse not better.”
Labour’s Lyn Brown, MP for West Ham, added: “Exclusion is clearly linked with the horrifying rise in violence, the death of so many of my children on the streets of Newham.
“When I’ve talked to the mums of the children who’ve been groomed and they’ve been caught up in the drug dealing, the carrying knives, the violence, they tell you loud and clear…that their son being excluded from school was a tipping point, it didn’t create the problem, but it made it worse.”
Exclusions: system at ‘breaking point’
Ms Jones, who chairs the all party parliamentary group (APPG) on knife crime, which published a report into the link between violent crime and school exclusions, said: “Children have not got 70 per cent naughtier since 2012, something has gone wrong and it is leaving vulnerable people exposed to involvement in crime.”
In England in 2017-18, she said, there were 7,900 permanent exclusions.
Half of all excluded children had special educational needs, yet support for SEND “has seen some of the biggest cuts”, she added.
The system she argued was at “breaking point”, adding that every excluded child was legally entitled to full-time education in alternative provision but the APPG’s investigation found that was not happening.
She said: “There is a great deal of commonality between the issues they face and those who carry knives, they are not getting the support they need from a system that is failing them catastrophically.”
She added: “The Conservative manifesto put an emphasis on backing headteachers to exclude children and a sinister suggestion of creating secure schools for young offenders, all the while failing to restore the per pupil funding which was cut from our schools.
“A greater emphasis on teachers being able to discipline children, 10,000 more prison sentences in place and secure schools for young offenders.
“All of these things are draconian measures to deal with problems that
would be far better dealt with if we tackled the underlying causes in the first place.”
However, Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and a former teacher said: “I disagree with the premise that school exclusions are to blame for the rise in knife crime.
“Of course some of our young people will come from troubled homes and may require extra pastoral care and educational support. However, there comes a point when we must award more agency to the actions of our young people and show them that poor behaviour has a real term consequence both at school and into adulthood.”
