Should schoolchildren be excluded?

Anne Longfield (Children’s Commissioner for England) published an in-depth report this February looking at children who are members of, or at risk of being exploited by, gangs. The report urges schools to be attentive to the risk factors that make children vulnerable to gang membership and their safeguarding responsibilities with respect to those children.

Here are some key recommendations raised by the report which schools should bear in mind:

Collaboration with agencies

The report highlights that children facing a poor institutional response (e.g. school exclusion or off-rolling) coupled with child-level (e.g. SEND) and family-level (e.g. abuse) vulnerabilities are at highest risk of gang membership. Due to the interlinked nature of these vulnerabilities, the Children’s Commissioner emphasises that a multi-agency approach is required to identify and protect children at risk. Schools, children’s services, police and the NHS are urged to work together to combat these issues through effective joint action and not pass children from agency to agency.

Schools should be mindful of the Children’s Commissioner’s advice to co-ordinate proactively with other agencies (including local children’s safeguarding boards) to identify and safeguard children vulnerable to gang membership. This may require a paradigm shift within the school to promote recognition that children at risk from gangs are a safeguarding concern and should be protected in the proper discharge of a school’s safeguarding responsibilities.

Exclusion and off-rolling

The report presents a breadth of evidence to support its conclusion that exclusion and off-rolling exacerbate a child’s risk to being exposed to gang activity. The Children’s Commissioner urges schools to recognise that the act of excluding a child in itself makes that child more vulnerable to gang violence. Schools are advised to keep children in school by responding to challenging behaviour and additional needs.

On a national level, the report recommends that the DfE takes action to combat schools that persistently exclude or off-roll. In particular, the DfE is advised to respond to the forthcoming Exclusions Review by ensuring that schools realise the safeguarding implications of excluding children, and are held responsible for these.

The links drawn in the report between exclusions and gang membership should be carefully considered by schools in examining their exclusions and off-rolling policies. Schools should be careful to look at a child’s vulnerabilities to gang violence when making a decision to exclude or off-roll, and consider other means to respond to challenging behaviour and additional needs (such as collaboration with CAMHS in relation to a child in need of mental health support).

SEND

The report further emphasises that failing to diagnose and treat special educational needs (particularly prior to children starting school) exacerbate vulnerabilities to gang membership. The Children’s Commissioner urges the DfE to place a greater focus on early years’ initiatives to identify SEND needs. The DfE should set a clear target for reducing the number of children beginning school with very low levels of development, along with a national plan for improving SEND identification in the early years. This advice is positive news for schools with a SEND provision, though it remains to be seen how this proposal will be implemented by the DfE in practice.