On Monday, education secretary Damian Hinds promised that we would not have to wait too much longer for Edward Timpson’s report on school exclusion practises and the government’s response to it.
When it comes, he said, we’ll find that it’s a “comprehensive and thorough piece of work”.
Tes reported recently that the report’s delayed publication was likely down to internal wrangling about a potential recommendation to significantly limit schools powers to exclude pupils.
On Wednesday, academies minister Lord Agnew appeared to contradict this when he told the education select committee that the government will seek to “tighten accountability” over school exclusions.
The waiting and the uncertainty surrounding the final version of the Timpson Review is not helpful to schools. The threats of greater sanctions for schools will not actually provide the solution to a complex problem that often pits schools, pupils and families against each other, just at the time they really need to work together.
Politicians love to talk tough. We are all familiar with the regular pronouncements of ‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘crackdowns’. And we should make sure that unjustified exclusions come to an end. The trouble is, the answer to reducing school exclusions lies not in further high-stakes, sanction-driven accountability measures for schools but in funding schools and other services properly so that pupils can receive timely and effective intervention and support.
Exclusion should always be a last resort. But the fact is schools are reaching last resort territory earlier than they want to, because they cannot access the support that some pupils need.
Accountability for the results of excluded students cannot be retained by mainstream schools unless they have access to all the support that at-risk pupils might require and unless they have some influence over the quality of the provision being made for pupils following their exclusion.
Schools need to retain the right to exclude pupils where it is clearly justified. A school’s first duty is the safety of its children. You can imagine the outcry if a school was found not to have excluded a violent individual and pupils or staff were injured on school premises.
Responses to this issue have been too simplistic. While schools are at the centre of efforts to keep young people safe, they are not the only areas of society that should be responsible for this work.
As Damian Hinds said, exclusion should not be the end of the road, but the start of something positive and new. He also said that he supports schools being able to make decisions about exclusion because such decisions are an important part of behaviour management.
It is to be hoped that the government has used the time they’ve taken to delay the publication of the Timpson Review productively.
The NAHT heads’ union gave evidence to the Timpson Review and we will be publishing it in full this week because we have concerns that a tougher approach to exclusions could have the opposite effect to the one that ministers intend.
We would recommend that the government doesn’t take a more aggressive approach. There’s widespread agreement that the accountability system is aggressive enough already. On its own, accountability does nothing to improve school standards or improve outcomes for young people.
The government has recognised this and is taking some steps to reduce aggressive accountability in other areas - notably by removing floor and coasting standards - so it would be some highly contradictory policymaking if it simultaneously ratcheted up the accountability in another part of the system.
The more complex the needs of the pupil are, the more likely the risk of exclusion. Pupils with special educational needs are seven times more likely to be excluded than pupils who do not have additional needs.
This is why it is more support for pupils rather than more sanctions for schools that will eventually have the positive effect on pupils that we all want to see.
Paul Whiteman is the general secretary of the NAHT headteachers’ union
