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Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 27th to August 30th
In my session in this symposium I will look at:
The phrase exclusion from school can apply to a wide range of situations but the area that we will be covering in this symposium is that of disciplinary exclusions.
i.e. "the means by which the headteacher of a school can prevent a child or young person from attending the school, either for a fixed period or permanently"
We will therefore not be talking about those children who may be excluded from mainstream education by virtue of their special educational needs which means that they may be educated in a special school. Some of these children may be doubly excluded in that they are excluded from mainstream education and then excluded for disciplinary reasons from their special school and we do have some data on that which we will talk about. Other groups of excluded pupils which we will not be including today are those who may be excluded because of their personal circumstances- for example pregnant teenagers - or those who voluntarily absent themselves from school or whose absences may be condoned by their parents.
Another important point to make in terms of definitions of disciplinary exclusions is the fact that in England and Wales the phrase exclusion from school refers to either temporary or permanent exclusion whereas in Northern Ireland we use the terminology of suspension (temporary exclusion) and expulsion (permanent exclusion).
To suspend or expel a pupil is not easy. Recent changes in the legislation both in England and Wales and Northern Ireland1 have meant that children can no longer be suspended from school indefinitely, a frequent practice in the past. Instead, a child must either be suspended for a fixed period (no more than 5 consecutive days and no more than 15 days in any one term) or expelled. Only the school principal or their representative can suspend a pupil and the parents, the school's board of governors and the relevant Education and Library Board (ELB) and where appropriate the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) must be informed.
In cases of expulsion the pupil must have been suspended before he/she can be expelled. In controlled schools (basically the Protestant primary and secondary schools in NI) the expelling body is the ELB and in voluntary grammar (we still have selection at eleven in NI so have a large group of grammar schools) and maintained (i.e. Catholic secondary) schools the decision to expel rests with the school's board of governors. Furthermore, the new legislation has introduced parental right (but not pupil right) of appeal against expulsion, as well as ensuring that parents should be made aware of their rights in such situations.
While this is the official line there is increasing anecdotal information that some schools are using various creative techniques to overcome such restrictions which I will describe in greater detail later.
Over the last number of years permanent exclusions from school have been monitored in England by the DfE and the figures indicate an increase from 1991/92 when 2,910 pupils were permanently excluded to 1994/95 when the numbers were approximately 12,500. However, research carried out by Parsons for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE, 1997), based on reporting of exclusions by schools to the LEA put the number of exclusions for the 1994/5 year at 13,400.
Parsons explains the discrepancy between the two sets of figures as due to schools under-reporting the number of exclusions in the DfE research. Sterling (1992, 1993, 1996) also highlighted the problem of under reporting exclusions and the continued use of informal exclusions.
In Northern Ireland there are no comparable figures available although the evidence from individual Educational and Library Boards would suggest a similar dramatic increase in suspensions and expulsions.
It has been suggested that the increase in disciplinary exclusions is due to a rise in the numbers of children with emotional and behavioural problems and indeed there are more psycho-social disorders in childhood and referrals to child guidance services have increased. Additionally, substance abuse problems are rising, eating disorders are becoming more prevalent and there is a steady increase in the known incidence of sexual abuse all of which are known to be related to indiscipline. Furthermore, there are increasing numbers of single parent families and recorded divorces. However, as Smith and Rutter (1995) point out it would require an increase of epidemic proportions to account for the increase in exclusions.
Other factors must be playing a part here and it is suggested that the series of education reforms which have forced schools to move into the market place have had a major impact. Disruptive pupils do nothing to enhance a school's placing in the league tables and parents prefer to send their children to schools which have a good examinations record, thus schools are not encouraged to spend any of their already inadequate funding on maintaining disruptive pupils. While schools may try to balance the business ethic with that of their professional standards this is an extremely difficult task and in many schools the level of tolerance for disruptive pupils appears to have dropped sharply.
Additionally, the business ethic in education has led to the focus being on teaching subjects rather than the child and providers of initial teacher training find themselves having to concentrate more and more on teaching methods rather than the underlying theory. This means that newly qualified teachers have little knowledge of the entire area of child psychology, resulting in a lack of understanding of the rationale behind behaviour management techniques.
Educational reforms also mean that teachers find themselves having more and more tasks and changes foisted upon them resulting increased levels of stress and little time for the disruptive pupil whom the teacher unions assert is the biggest single impediment to further raising standards. Such factors are all likely to reduce tolerance levels within schools and lead to increased suspensions.
There is also a marked lack of resources in this area particularly in terms of support services and inter-agency initiatives - and Alex and Cathy will be elaborating on such points so I have no intention of stealing their thunder!
Growing concern surrounding the increased use of suspensions in Northern Ireland resulted in DENI funding a research project to examine the issue. The research was divided into three phases. The overall aim of Phase 1 was to monitor suspensions and expulsions in all schools in Northern Ireland for the 1996/97 academic year, while Phase 2 was designed to investigate the suspension and expulsion process at school level, including prevention strategies and the re-integration of excluded pupils. Phase 3 was a series of case studies of selected schools across the Province and well as an examination of provision of education otherwise than at school. Phases 1 and 2 of the research have now been completed and the final report submitted to DENI. The fieldwork for Phase 3 is now complete and we are in the process of writing that material up.
All schools are obliged to inform their ELB about suspended pupils. When we started the project a variety of methods were being used though most ELBs had a monitoring form of some sort of other. Working from these forms (and particularly the one used by the BELB) we developed our own proforma which the Boards agreed to use.
This form required a range of information about the suspended pupil which included basic personal details such as age, gender, year group, school, and post code. Other additional information was requested - e.g. free school meals entitlement, annual attendance percentage, support services/agencies involved with the child and whether he/she had a statement of special educational needs. Length of and reason for suspension were also recorded.
Schools completed these new forms and continued to return them to their Board who in turn returned the forms to project on a monthly basis.
Expulsions are monitored on a termly basis and each ELB provided the project with a completed form providing information about all pupils expelled within their areas.
This operation did not run as smoothly as we would have hoped, especially in the early stages of the research.
There was much information that came out of the monitoring exercise but for the purposes of today's talk I will use the findings to answer five questions:
Remembering the outlined limitations of the data during the 1996/7 academic year 2631 pupils were recorded as having been suspended a total of 3748 times with 16% of these female and 84% male. The majority of pupils were suspended only once, however 402 pupils received two periods of suspension and 281 pupils were suspended on three or more occasions - what we referred to as "multiple suspensions" - during the period surveyed.
That the majority of pupils were suspended once in the year might imply that in the majority of cases a single suspension acted as sufficient deterrent to ensure future compliance with the behaviour desired by the school. While this is a possible interpretation, it is important to note that we had no way of knowing whether these pupils were suspended in previous years or whether they will experience further suspensions in future.
Approximately, 79% of suspensions came from secondary schools, 11% from grammar schools, 6% from primary schools and 4% from special schools.
However, there was a high degree of variation in the way schools used suspensions even when they had similar catchment areas. Some appeared to manage pupil behaviour without using suspension at all, or using it only sparingly. These schools also seemed to make an attempt to ensure the length of suspension was appropriate to the offence. Other schools always used the maximum five day suspension apparently without regard to the seriousness of the offence. We therefore categorised schools into "no suspensions", "low suspensions" (suspension rate of less than one pupil in 100), "moderate suspensions " (suspension rate between one and three pupils in 100) and "high suspensions" (suspension rate of more than three pupils in 100).
As may be seen from the slide within the primary sector the vast majority of schools were found to have made no suspensions, with only five schools being found to have "moderate suspensions" and four "high suspensions".
Within the post primary sector the pattern for grammar schools was similar to that for primary schools i.e. greatest percentage had no suspensions then low, moderate and a very small percentage with high suspension rates.
Table 4 : Percentage of schools by suspension rate
This is a very different picture from the post primary secondary school sector where schools were found to be divided almost equally across the four categories, with the lowest percentage being in the "no suspensions" category.
Only a small minority of the suspensions came from special schools with over two thirds of these schools having made no suspensions. However, that there were any suspensions from this sector would be of concern. Special schools provide education to children with special educational needs and there are few if any, educational alternatives for these young people. This is particularly true if children are being suspended from schools especially established to manage pupils with emotional and behavioural problems and three of the special schools which had "high suspensions" were in this category.
In relation to special educational needs it is worthy of note that 9% of suspended pupils were in possession of, or waiting for, a statement of special educational needs. This is in contrast to 2% of the school population who were identified as having statements of special educational needs at October 1996. It would appear that a disproportional number of pupils with statements are being suspended from school.
When examining suspensions by year groups it was found that while most of the primary school pupils were in Key Stage 2, and in particular in P7 though a small minority were suspended as early as P2 (n = 2) and P3 (n = 3). Being suspended so young in their school career would not auger well for these pupils in the future.
For the post-primary school pupils, the largest number from a single year group was year 11 where 26% were suspended with 21% of suspensions originating from year 12 (Year 11 and Year 12 in NI are equivalent to Years 10 and 11 in England). Suspensions from year 10 made up 22%.
Reason for suspension was entered on the monitoring form by the principal of the school. Reasons ranged from very generalised statements such as "parental attitude", "infringement of school rules", through to more specific, if still somewhat minor misdemeanours, including "failure to complete homework", "inappropriate footwear", through to extremely serious behaviour such as "deliberate physical attack on teacher". Certainly, the extremely wide range of reasons would suggest that there is a need for clear guidelines as to when suspensions are deemed appropriate.
After having developed several broad categories we followed the procedure used in the Elton Report and divided these into "low level misbehaviour" - i.e. persistent repetitive acts which are serious in that they are very trying for teachers, but are unlikely to result in physical harm to pupils or staff. Other categories which could result in physical harm, or which were of particular concern were kept separate.
From the slide you can see that over half of the suspensions occurred for reasons that did not involve dangerous or violent behaviour but were due to disruptive behaviour, abusive language to teacher and serious or persistent misbehaviour. Included in this category is a number of pupils were suspended for what appeared to be inappropriate or trivial reasons, such as smoking, failure to conform to school uniform or unsuitable hairstyle and truancy. The irony of suspended pupils who are voluntarily absenting themselves from school I'm sure is not lost on you!
Physical attacks on teachers accounted for only 2.2% of suspensions and have been combined with attack on pupil and fighting for the purposes of this presentation resulting in the 18% of suspensions for violent misbehaviour.
Illegal activities were retained as a separate category and while not necessarily involving a criminal prosecution they could have resulted in one. The range of activities here included such things as possession of illegal substances, vandalism or theft. (8% - N=314). It is perhaps worth noting here that some of these suspensions were seasonal - for example at Halloween there was a dramatic increase in suspensions for the possession of "bangers".
A diverse pattern of reasons for suspension emerged within the different sectors. Secondary pupils were more likely than grammar to be suspended for abusive language, attacks on pupils and attacks on teachers; grammar pupils were more likely to be suspended for 'illegal activities' or serious/threatening behaviour. Primary and special schools both suspended a higher percentage of pupils for physical aggression than for any other reason.
A group of pupils who were suspended three or more times during the academic year were identified as 'multiple' suspensions (11% - n=281) accounting for 996 suspensions. 89% (n= 251) boys and 11% (n=30) girls.
Multiple suspension most likely to be:
During the period of the research 76 pupils were reported as expelled from school with the vast majority being males from secondary schools. While most of the expelled pupils were from Year 11 just under 40% were from Years 8, 9 and 10 which is a cause for concern given that these pupils could potentially be out of school for quite some time. These pupils had a similar profile to those with multiple suspensions in terms of background and eight of them either had a statement of special educational needs or were waiting for one to be completed.
The most common reason for expulsions was serious/persistent misbehaviour, followed by physical aggression and illegal activities.
It is also important to note here that the numbers of formal expulsions do not include those pupils whose parents have been persuaded to withdraw their child from the school on a permanent basis - an informal expulsion process which was highlighted by professionals.
These two groups of pupils (i.e. multiple suspensions/expulsions) are likely to be out of school for sometime and it is important to examine what kind of provision is available to them. A very similar pattern was identified for the two groups so I have opted to look solely at the expelled group today.
Of the 76 expelled pupils we had information on current education for only 66 of them. Of this group only 7% (n=5) had managed to get placed in an alternative school (four in mainstream schools and one in an special school for emotionally and behaviourally disturbed children).
For those who were still out of school the most popular type of provision was home tuition (30%) while 8% received group tuition. The amount of home/group tuition varied across the ELBs but would rarely exceed eight hours per week. Among the group on home tuition two pupils were waiting placement in EBD special schools and two were also involved in 'link programmes' with Colleges of Further Education.
Provision described as 'alternative education' (9%) ranges from units set up for expelled pupils by the ELBs to projects run by voluntary organisations which educate a number of pupils expelled from schools. Some of the voluntary projects do not receive funding from DENI or the ELBs and are not recognised by DENI as schools. (This provision is included in Phase 3 of the research.)
Approximately 25% of pupils were not in receipt of any education. Of this group 11% were waiting a placement either in a special school or a unit for expelled pupils. Subsequent to expulsion from school one pupil was taken into secure accommodation with education on site as a result of involvement in criminal activity. When we followed up expelled pupils in 1998 we found that
While some of these alternatives may be suitable as short term provision for year 12 pupils who are unlikely to return to mainstream schools, particularly if combined with work experience, they are not a viable alternative education for younger pupils. Given that year 11 followed by year 10 pupils represent the largest percentage of pupils expelled it is important that provision for these pupils meets both their academic and social needs.
While our research was unable to examine directly the effects of multiple suspension/expulsion on the pupils I would just like to finish my input today by looking briefly at this question.
Educationally these young people are unquestionably going to - run the risk of falling behind academically partly because of the inadequate provision just described, but additionally they will have problems re-integrating back into the education system, particularly if they have been out of school for sometime.
Additionally, there are implications both socially and psychologically. In some instances suspension can have an adverse effect on relationships within the family. Many of these young people come from socially disadvantaged areas and from my own personal knowledge are from dysfunctional families. Having a young person at home all day can lead to extra pressure on a family already having difficulty coping which could well lead to intervention (or in some cases further intervention) by social services and possible periods in care.
As with unemployed adults, a young person suspended from school lacks a structure for their day and quickly gets out of the habit of going to school. Lack of structure and purpose to the day has been shown, in the case of unemployed adults, to have a detrimental effect on psychological well-being (e.g. Kilpatrick and Trew 1985). If this is the case for adults might it not be just as true for children and young people suspended from school?
Such young people may also experience a greater risk of becoming involved in deviant sub-cultures which involve substance abuse and other activities which lead to juvenile offending. Support for such an argument comes from research in the field of child care and juvenile delinquency. Farrington, (1991) for example has shown that young offenders have conduct and behavioural disorders and a history of poor school attendance and in Northern Ireland children and young people committed to training school have been shown to have a high percentage of intellectual and educational problems, have poor attainment levels and negative attitudes towards school (APRU, 1990). Related to this point Devlin (1995) examined adult prisoners memories of their education and argues that teachers play an important role in limiting offending behaviour in young people.
Furthermore, removal from your peer group is likely to have a negative effect and anecdotal evidence would suggest that expelled pupils feel alienated and rejected. There is a wealth of research evidence from the field of social psychology which demonstrates how teachers treat pupils differentially depending on whether they conform to expectations, their "likeability' as well as their attainment and their ability (remember Pygmalion in the Classroom - and the literature on the hidden curriculum)? I would put it to you that the children and young people who tend to be multiply suspended or expelled are those who are devalued by the school because of their failure to conform and lack of ability/attainment. They have been what is increasingly referred to as "psychologically excluded", become disaffected with school and the end result is a disruptive pathway through their school career. If this is the case then the question has to be asked - can a distinction between disciplinary exclusions and exclusions for other reasons such as special educational needs really be justified?
Blyth and Milner, (1993) argue that exclusion from school, particularly permanent exclusion, is the first step in exclusion from society. As adults these young people are likely to be:
It is therefore of the utmost urgency that the procedures schools use in terms of disciplinary exclusions are examined and I therefore now hand you over to Alex who will look at this question in greater detail.
1 Recent legislations in Northern Ireland includes the Education and Libraries (NI) Order 1993, Schools (Suspensions and Expulsion of Pupils) Regulations (NI) 1995, Schools (Expulsion of Pupils) (Appeals Tribunals) Regulations (NI) 1994
APRU (1990) Profile of young people with training school orders for care or justice. APRU, Whitefield House, Belfast.
Blyth, E. and Milner, J. (1993) Exclusion from school: a first step in exclusion from society? Children and Society : 7 (3) 255-268.
Commission for Racial Equality (1996). Counting the Cost. London, CRE.
DES (1989) Discipline in Schools, Report of the Committee of Inquiry chaired by Lord Elton. London, HMSO.
Kilpatrick, R. and Trew, K. (1985) Lifestyles and psychological well-being among unemployed men in Northern Ireland. Journal of Occupational Psychology 58 207-216
Farrington, D. (1991) Antisocial personality from childhood to adulthood. The Psychologist: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 4, (Sept) 398-394.
Parsons, C. and Howlett, K. (1996) Permanent exclusions from school: A case where society is failing its children. Support for Learning 11 3 109-112
Smith, D. J. and Rutter, M. (1995) Time trends in psycho-social disorders of youth. In M. Rutter & D. J. Smith (Eds) Smith Psycho-social Disorders in Young People. London, Wiley:
Sterling, M. (1992) How many pupils are being excluded? British Journal of Special Education 1 (4) 8-9
Sterling, M. (1993) Second classes for a second class. Special Children, May 1993, pp15-18
Sterling, M. (1996) Government policy and disadvantaged children in E. Blyth & J. Milner (Eds) Exclusion from School. Inter-profesional issues for Policy and Practice. London, Routledge.
The majority of "multiple suspensions" were male and from the secondary school sector. They were significantly more likely to be in receipt of free school meals and have lower rates of attendance as well as being known to Education Welfare, Educational Psychology and a range of support agencies including Social services, in-school support and outreach from special schools. Many pupils with multiple suspensions missed an appreciable number of days from school. Approximately 41% missed fifteen or more school days with 8% missing more that twenty school days due to suspension.
This document was added to the Education-line database 04 January 1999