“I’m the only girl standing down that corridor, and it is horrible. It’s just so uncomfortable - you just feel like a hundred pair of eyes staring at you and it’s, like, ‘Just don’t look at me’.”

Gemma* was the only girl in her class on the day I visited the pupil referral unit (PRU) that she attends. Here, girls are a minority within a minority.

“I’ve actually complained about this before,” she told me. “Because they’re expecting me to go into a classroom full of boys.”

There has been very little data on girls’ experiences of these settings. But, anecdotally, we know girls can feel uncomfortable and even unsafe there.

We wanted to understand more about this, and recently submitted some freedom of information requests to local authorities, to find out what systems were in place for girls in alternative provision. These showed that, on average, girls make up around 40 per cent of PRUs’ pupil rolls, although some councils did not hold any data on admissions centrally. 

But often the proportion is lower, and enrolment does not necessarily mean presence: Gemma told us that many of the girls in her unit simply did not turn up.  

Sexual harassment and violence

The fact that girls are in a minority should not make them less of a priority - instead, it should make us think carefully about what that might mean for their experiences of education. A range of negative experiences can lead to girls disengaging - or being excluded - from school. 

One of the most extreme examples of this is sexual harassment and violence. Evidence shows that these are serious issues in mainstream schools, but little is known about the extent of the problem in PRUs specifically.

Our research found huge geographical variation in what data was collected on violent and sexual incidents in PRUs. Some local authorities only recorded incidents worthy of expulsion, while many incidents were grouped under “sexual misconduct”.  There was one recorded incident of alleged rape. 

These inconsistencies may be symptomatic of the fact that, of those we asked, only a handful of local authorities had specific policies on sexual harassment and violence in education. This lack of guidance is alarming when we consider the risks - both inside and outside education - facing some of the girls attending these settings.

Girls attending PRUs are among some of the most disadvantaged in society. Adolescence is a critical time for girls, particularly the most disadvantaged girls. It is a time when the pressures of growing up, like starting to form romantic relationships and becoming sexualised, collide with existing forms of disadvantage such as violence and abuse, poverty and neglect. 

At this age, there are growing rates of poor mental health among girls. Girls are also more likely than boys to run away, or to go missing. As girls, they are also at a higher risk of experiencing sexual violence, abuse and exploitation than boys. 

Understanding girls’ needs

It is critical, therefore, that schools are safe spaces, and that the gender-specific risks girls face are understood. Girls are often at PRUs because mainstream schools haven’t been able to respond effectively to their needs, or to the level of complexity in their lives. Frequently, when the girl’s trauma exhibits itself in different types of behaviours, schools respond by asking, “What is wrong with her?’ instead of “What has happened to her?”

Sophie* told me she had trouble sleeping. It meant that she was often late for school. But her lateness was just a symptom of what was going on in her life. At 15 years old, she had had contact with mental health services, social workers and charity support staff, and had spent time in local authority care. Her dad is disabled and her mum is his carer. 

Sophie says mainstream schools “don’t really adjust to one individual. They don’t, like - they don’t know every circumstance of an individual. So it’s quite hard.”

Gemma felt like she was treated unfairly in mainstream school, prejudged because of family members who had attended before her. 

“They should have said, ‘Let’s give her a chance,’ but they didn’t. So I was just a bit like, ‘You know what? I’m going to give you a reason to dislike me.’ And that’s what ended up happening.”

Sophie thinks the pupil referral unit I met her in suited her needs much better than mainstream school, giving her more focused education and support. But Gemma was less sure. She wanted to learn things that were more relevant to her life as a girl, but felt that was overlooked there - perhaps because of the male-dominated environment.

“I want to actually, like, learn something that we can’t learn in front of boys. Like stuff about our bodies. Like, forget about the boys, let’s talk about our own body.  Because a lot of girls here don’t understand their body,” says Gemma.

Not getting the support they need

Our research shows that only a handful of local authorities have specialist support for girls in alternative provision in their areas.

If specialist support is not in place - combined with an absence of policies and procedures to protect girls - the risks they face may not be properly assessed or responded to. This means that girls may not always be getting the support and protection they need, leading to potentially poor outcomes for their wellbeing and their education.

(This is not just an issue in PRUs - girls’ needs tend to go overlooked in mainstream youth education policy as well. For example, there is no mention of girls’ mental health in the government’s children and young people’s mental health Green Paper, despite young women having the highest rates of mental ill-health, including rates of self-harm.) 

Too often, adolescent girls get lost in the system at a critical time in their development. They are likely to face unofficial exclusions from school. And, at 16, they can drop off the radar of social services and local authority care, and the transition between child and adult mental health services is frequently experienced as a cliff edge in reduced support. 

Girls in PRUs are among the most disadvantaged and marginalised young women: too little is known or understood about their lives. Being referred to a PRU should be a warning sign that things are going wrong in a girl’s life, but it should also be an opportunity for her to access the safe space and support she needs to fulfil her potential. 

Until we see better data gathering on the reasons behind school exclusions and the characteristics of girls in pupil referral units, and a commitment to policies to ensure their needs and experiences are taken into account, we cannot be sure we are keeping girls safe or doing them justice. 

*Names have been changed.

Jessica Southgate is CEO of Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk