Everyone who’s been through a school has a story to tell about exclusion. These sit on a sliding scale from high farce (I remember a boy at my school being dismissed for skateboarding across the hallowed surface of a rackets court) to sickening horror. 

But what all of them have in common is that the exclusion forms the climax of the excluded child’s story for narrator and listener alike. 

Every story that gets told is unique. But, as with any story, they are works their tellers craft to communicate a message that suits them. When it comes to exclusions, the stories we tell omit some of the most salient details, and fail to amplify the voices of the most informed. That needs to change.

Exclusions: Meeting every child’s educational needs

Following recent announcements from both the new children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, and the Department for Education’s mental health tsar Dr Alex George, calling for an end to exclusions, educationalists of all shapes and sizes have fallen over themselves to broadcast 280-character Penny Dreadfuls, in which they claim torpedo the arguments of the anti-exclusion lobby. 

While the criticisms of these two senior figures have trodden predictable paths (if you wanted to build a dream anti-exclusion lobby from scratch, you probably wouldn’t place the former chair of a trust notorious for off-rolling or a Love Island heartthrob at the vanguard), the most biting criticisms have been reserved for the work of No More Exclusions. 

The organisation is a self-described “abolitionist coalition grassroots movement in education”, which had already provoked ire in October by claiming that they would not exclude in the case of proven sexual assault, arguing that we should create “an education system which actively prevents this harm rather than only reacting to it”.

It is entirely reasonable to have serious reservations about zero-exclusions policies like these in the current environment. But refusing to take the goal seriously discredits those who claim to speak for the safety of all children. 

It doesn’t take long to work out that No More Exclusions sees its aims as part of a wider set of policy ambitions surrounding the systemic racism present in British society. The label “No More Exclusions” refers to a policy goal that is just the tip of the iceberg: the campaign’s FAQs speak of “meeting [every child]’s psychological and educational needs”, which surely includes policy shifts from the Home Office and the Department for Justice, alongside the Department for Education and schools. 

These campaigners will know that such policy goals are wildly ambitious under the current government. Taking this moment to shift the Overton window on school exclusions, though, is a long overdue auxiliary target, and one shared by programmes such as The Difference and backed by evidence from charities such as The Runnymede Trust. 

Tackling systemic discrimination 

The reason that advocates of no-exclusion avenues have caused such opprobrium is because they have put themselves on the other side of the debate from some of the sector’s most vocal authorities on behaviour.

The former argue that we should address behaviour in terms that emphasise the roles of systems and institutions, while the latter espouse a philosophy that places a high value on personal responsibility. 

When teachers, consultants and commentators decry a no-exclusions vision as one that fatally compromises school safety, the stories they tell focus on an event that can’t help but frame one student as the villain and other 29 in the room as victims. 

This is not because they don’t know about the systemic issues that contribute to disproportionately high exclusion rates among certain groups, rendering them victims in their own right, but because explaining the complex web of setbacks that perpetrators have faced, and weighing those against their agency as a child is exhausting and time-consuming work. 

It is much easier to fit a story about a knife attack into a tweet or news bulletin than it is to explore the effects of delays to SEND support, rising rates of racial hate crimes and the oncoming wave of mental-health issues facing children post-lockdown, which we know will disproportionately affect students from deprived households and BAME backgrounds already at greater risk of exclusion. 

The net result is an approach to exclusion that often appears something like educational NIMBYism.

“Yes,” they say, “we care hugely about the students most at risk, and we will move heaven and Earth to avoid excluding them, but after a certain point we can’t have them here.” 

It is striking to observe the willingness of some to argue against safe spaces when it comes to protecting minority groups from systemic state and institutional trauma, but in favour of them when it means alienated and disenfranchised young people bearing sole responsibility for their actions. 

Despite this overwhelming body of evidence suggesting that the complex needs of children at risk of exclusion are best addressed by root-and-branch reform, the loudest voices continue to frame these stories in individual terms. As long as that persists, the debate will remain at a standstill.

Once these children have been removed from mainstream settings, they begin a new narrative; one that is underfunded, inconsistent and rarely blessed with a happy ending.

It’s a narrative that mainstream teachers no longer have the power to influence or much need to recount, and so it is unsurprising that we do not see them amplified to the same extent as their prequels. 

If we want to do right by these students, however, the profession needs to humble itself and listen to the voices of those who pick up where we leave off.

That means more access to well-funded interventions before a permanent exclusion is looming, greater dialogue between schools and accountability for off-rolling and permanent exclusion, further opportunities for groups like the Institute of Race Relations, IC Free and, yes, No More Exclusions, to alert teachers to the lived experiences of excluded children, and reframing accounts of exclusions to focus on systemic failures alongside individual narratives. 

It may never be safe to pursue a sector-wide policy of no exclusions but, until we start listening to those who say it could be, we will be stuck with the same old story. 

Will Yates is deputy raising standards leader (sixth form) at Barnhill Community High School, in West London