Page 37

Changing behaviour

Continued from page 36

from school to school, even where pupil intakes are similar. Her report, They Never Give Up On You, published in March 2012, highlights that some groups of children are far more likely to be excluded than others. In 2009-2010, if you were a Black African-Caribbean boy with special needs and eligible for free school meals you were 168 times more likely to be excluded from a state-funded school than a white girl without special needs from a middle class family.

This report is a reminder that the groups more likely to be excluded are:

• boys rather than girls

• children with some types of special needs

• children from some specific ethnic backgrounds

• children from poorer families.

The report lays down a challenge to the Government and the teaching profession on this overrepresentation. Pupils are excluded for different reasons and the causes of challenging behaviour are complex: it is important to seek solutions rather than apportion blame.

Alternative provision

The alternative provision sector is currently under intense scrutiny. The Government’s behaviour tsar, Charlie Taylor, published a review in April calling for all pupil referral units (PRUs) to be spun off from local authority oversight by 2018. Education Secretary Michael Gove accepted this and has consulted on legislation to allow it, possibly as early as this September.

“What is needed is stability, not more change,” believes NUT General Secretary Christine Blower. She rejected the report’s suggestion of introducing payment by results into alternative provision, and criticised “the ongoing demolition of behaviour support teams within local authorities”.

The proposals in the Taylor Report flow from an assumption that academy conversion leads to school improvement, but the evidence is dubious and highly contested.

In the last academic year, 65 per cent of PRUs were judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding, compared with 52 per cent of mainstream secondary schools. Yet Schools Minister Nick Gibb and Michael Gove have repeatedly attacked and denigrated PRUs. “Most local authority-run Pupil Referral Units are not up to snuff,” Gove told The Guardian last year.

Sustaining good quality BESD provision has historically been problematic, and consequently is often the subject of review and reorganisation. But this constant change and insecurity can exacerbate existing problems for staff and pupils.

Children with special needs or behaviour diffi culties need the best possible support to achieve in later life. The way to achieve this is for all forms of alternative provision to be part of local authority provision, in an integrated and co-ordinated relationship with mainstream schools.

• Rosamund McNeil is NUT Principal Officer, gender and equalities.