What the F & F?!

This morning the House of Commons Education Committee published its report into exclusions and alternative provision. It is quite lengthy and I have only skimmed it but Martin George at TES does a summary in his article here. He picks out for his first paragraph the accusation from the Committee that, 

"There appears to be a lack of moral accountability on the part of many schools"

To which my immediate response is how very dare they!!!

The rise in fixed term and permanent exclusions is an entirely predictable consequence of the fragmentation and funding (or lack thereof) of the English school system!

• Local authorities who have the statutory duty for safeguarding and ensuring sufficient school places have been eviscerated by the chaotic and unplanned rollout of academies
• Multi-academy trusts are not paid anything to meet the system costs of running their schools
• MATs and LAs are often set up as adversaries in the system fighting for resources that neither has access to, rather than collaborating in the interests of children
• Advances in obstetric science have meant a massive increase in survival rates of premature babies (up 33% for babies born between 22 and 26 weeks between 1995 and 2006), these children have a significantly higher incidence of SEND and behavioural issues that schools are often unable to cope with
• There is a creeping preference for a command and control approach to education that prejudices against the disadvantaged, dehumanises children and puts society at risk (see previous post about Hannah Arendt)
• It also only favours those children who are lucky to have informed advocates (pushy parents) who fight for them

Fragmentation and Funding (hence the title of my post) are the causes of this problem and oddly the former is not even mentioned in the report. Don't have a pop at schools, LAs, MATs or anyone else who is doing their absolute best to mitigate the damage of this extended experiment in self-harm.

Some suggestions:

• Consolidate the system into fewer entities (either by turning LAs into MATs or merging MATs) but 1,370+ different legal entities more than half of whom are non-viable in the medium term is just a waste of time and money
• Create a mechanism for mediating between schools and LAs on referrals to places in AP to address the degree to which fixed term exclusions and permanent exclusions are chips in a high stakes gamble that benefits no-one
• Embed more specialist provision units in main stream school to support children with medical and other needs and fund them properly: this will cross pollinate specialist teaching practice into the mainstream profession 
• Attempt to understand the massive and often unreasonable efforts made in mainstream schools to retain children often to the detriment of other children because of the moral purpose they are accused of lacking
• Understand that this is a problem that starts in Primary schools not a Secondary one. Experiment with a more fluid approach to behaviour management provision that resists labelling a child 'excluded' or 'failed' when it is the behaviour not the child that is the issue