Exclusions from mainstream are increasing year on year. It’s obvious to anyone in education that the system needs to change or else the problem of school exclusion and, therefore, social exclusion will continue to deepen.

Shinsei Academy is offering a new way: An OFSTED registered Alternative Provision that specialises in English and Maths GCSE and Martial Arts.

Not every pupil is able to fit into the very defined boxes that mainstream schools place them in and that’s fine. Schools, however, are facing a very steep challenge: get pupils to conform or remove them from the school roll (through permanent exclusion). Often, schools will move to exclusion because there’s no alternative. Some schools are trying their best but are unable to match the needs of pupils in their care. We know; we’ve worked in mainstream.

What’s the next step for a pupil that is displaying challenging behaviour? At best, pupils are placed onto tutoring and some form of alternative provision that's not registered; at worst, pupils don’t attend all together.

Pupils that aren’t in school, not attending the local referral units and not attending tutoring are often left to their own devices within the community - leading to anti-social behaviour, involvement in county lines and CSE. Some of our most vulnerable young people are being forgotten about.

Research conducted by the ‘Behaviour Insights Team’ (2023) Suggested that 50% of young people between the age of 15-17 that end up in police custody have been excluded from school.  

Exclusions within school are a complex and concerning issue. Every year, between 1/4 and 1/3 exclusions are issued for ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. In lay-speak, this would be termed ‘bad behaviour’ but is often the result of unmet needs within the mainstream school.

Often pupils are in a self-fulfilling prophecy; they don’t understand the classwork so they misbehave, get sent home, miss the work set for them, return to school with gaps in their knowledge and therefore misbehave. This cycle leads to a complete disengagement.

More concerning through is the fact that each year between 2/3 to 3/4 of exclusions are for assaults on staff or pupils and verbal abuse of teachers and other pupils.  In our experience, these are the most damaging types of behaviours due to the impact it has of staff/pupil safety and wellbeing and the precedent it sets within the school.

It’s clear that pupils that struggle with school need an alternative.

Exclusions are not only damaging for the pupils (Only 1.5% will leave with five good GCSE’s and 1 in 2 excluded children are not in education, employment or training (NEET) from the age of 16 (Difference Report: 2016)), Exclusions are also costly for society, see this startling research put forward by the Institute for public policy research (2016):

“IPPR research estimates that the cost of exclusion is around £370,000 per young person in lifetime education, benefits, healthcare and criminal justice costs. This calculation reflects the costs of: education in the alternative provision sector; lost taxation from lower future earnings; associated benefits payments (excluding housing); higher likelihood of entry into the criminal justice system; higher likelihood of social security involvement; and increased average healthcare costs. Using the official figure of 6,685 children permanently excluded from school last year, this amounts to £2.1 billion for the cohort.”

We are going to provide the community, the discipline and the knowledge that our most disaffected teenagers need.

We know there’s a problem in education, we can all see it; let’s fix it.