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Ofsted warns North East Heads over soaring exclusions

The Regional Director of Ofsted, Cathy Kirby, has written to secondary Head Teachers in two North East local authorities to raise concerns over the rates of fixed-period exclusions.

Ms Kirby said it was “difficult to understand” why exclusion rates should be significantly higher in some areas than others. She said inspection teams would be “asking inspectors to look very carefully at the use of exclusion in areas with high rates compared with national and regional figures”.

The letters were sent to secondary Heads in eight local authorities in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber region of Ofsted, including to Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland.

In 2015/16, Middlesbrough there were 4,802 fixed period exclusions at a rate of 62.22, in comparison with 270,135 exclusions nationally at a rate of 8.46. In Redcar & Cleveland, there were 2,594 exclusions at a rate of 31.84.

The lowest fixed period exclusions were in South Tyneside with 295 exclusions at a rate of 3.54.

There was frustration expressed by some secondary Heads in the region, with one North East Head saying their school had only had single figure exclusions across a ten-year period.

Concern was raised about the impact of zero tolerance behaviour policies adopted by some schools in Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland at the time which had resulted in a significant number of exclusions.

The statistics are particularly eye-catching in Redcar & Cleveland which had employed an agreed ‘no exclusions’ policy among secondary schools for a number of years until recent changes in ownership of some schools in the area.

Mike Parker, Director of SCHOOLS NorthEast, said: “Cathy Kirby is right to raise concerns about the extreme levels of fixed period exclusions that took place in these two local authorities. Our concern though is that her direction to inspectors appears to be solely focused on what’s happening now, and not on the practices that took place in 2015/16.

“A rigorous focus on behaviour is entirely appropriate in schools but the levels of exclusions published by Ofsted warrant much closer inspection to understand what was happening at the time these figures relate to (2015/16) and how exclusion rates are currently. This should also be extended to exclusion rates in other local authority areas in this current academic year in order to deal with issues now rather than responding to historic data.

“It sends completely the wrong signal to leaders working tirelessly to find solutions to behavioural problems while keeping pupils in school if there are other schools moving their ‘hard to manage’ pupils on via fixed period into permanent exclusions as anything other than a last resort.”

In its statement to the media, Ms Kirby also pointed to efforts by HMCI Amanda Spielman to highlight concerns about exclusions.

The press statement said that Ms Spielman has been very clear that it is never acceptable to exclude pupils, either formally or through pressure on parents, specifically to boost school performance. To tackle this issue, Ofsted inspectors will look even more closely for signs of off-rolling and will explore related reports about troublesome children being sent home on inspection days.

Mr Parker said: “Everyone in the sector knows that the fox has been in the hen house for an awfully long time when it comes to exclusions. There has been deep suspicion among leaders about exclusion practices for the past six years or more. Far greater transparency is needed about exclusions – past and present – so that young people aren’t suffering at the hands of a system that rewards schools for moving ‘hard to manage’ children off the pupil roll.”

The following data charts were published by Ofsted to illustrate the Fixed-period exclusions in secondary schools, by region and local authority, 2015/16

Pupils can receive more than one fixed-period exclusion, so the figures below show both the total number of exclusions, and the number of pupils with one or more exclusion.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england-2015-to-2016