Pros and Cons of unlawful exclusions

Robert:

What are the pros and cons of unlawful exclusions?

Beth:

So an unlawful exclusion is when a child is sent home, but without following that proper exclusions procedure. Sometimes we hear from families, from parents and carers, that they’ve been offered an informal exclusion or they’ve been sent home without following that procedure in the positive way, because it means that it’s not recorded, that they’re not, I guess the child isn’t officially marked down as somebody that has been excluded.

Robert:

Okay.

Beth:

And while you can kind of see the logic there in practice, it’s really not a helpful thing to do. Exclusion procedures are there for a reason and they should be followed through properly. It gives people a legal right to appeal the decision as well. Whereas if you’re sticking with an informal exclusion or an unlawful exclusion, then you’re not able to access that support and that appeals procedure.

So yeah, it’s a tricky thing because I think a lot of professionals want to offer it as a positive way of trying to make it not sound that bad, but really it is that bad. If a child’s not able to be at school, something’s not working, and we should reflect that. And we should reflect that in the, in the practise that we do and we should make sure that we’re following procedures correctly.

And quite often it’s seen as a positive. I think people imagine that a pro of doing it that way rather than following the procedures is that it means there isn’t that mark against the child’s record, that it’s not, it’s not as serious. But actually I think we need to reflect on the fact that anytime a child is asked to leave school it is that serious. We need to think about why they’ve been sent home what’s gone wrong in their support or in their day that means that this has happened and how can we prevent it? So one of the cons of the unlawful way, of not recording these things, is that there isn’t that record of what’s happened that isn’t you know, that mark against their name isn’t always a bad thing because it means that you can keep track of what’s going on. If they’re being excluded repeatedly and that’s recorded as an exclusion, you can start to see patterns. You know, you could reflect on it always seems to happen on a particular day or a particular time of the year or all that information can actually be really beneficial. Whereas if you’re recording things, if you’re not recording things and it’s all kept informal, it’s much harder to see those patterns and to recognise what’s going on.