Schools: Excluded Children

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I was pleased to hear the Minister support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. Further to that point, children with special educational needs and disability account for almost half of permanent exclusions and so-called off-rolling, often in situations where parents are encouraged to remove their child from school for reasons more beneficial to the school than to the pupil. Last year, the Government commissioned the Timpson review, which contained the recommendation that the Department for Education should ensure that schools were held responsible for children whom they excluded and accountable for their educational achievements thereafter. The Government accepted all 30 of the Timpson recommendations. What steps have been taken to ensure that head teachers cannot simply wash their hands of children whom they take off the school roll?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord raises a very good point and is correct that the Timpson review made a number of recommendations that we accepted. Work is ongoing to look at the feasibility of its implementation, and we will make announcements on that shortly. On an expelled child being rated back to the school from which he or she was removed, in theory it is a very good idea, but we need to be careful because it will obviously depend on the quality of the provision where he or she was sent, and it would not be right for the referring school to be penalised. More active thinking is going on with our larger academy trusts about creating their own APs so that they own the problem. In the longer term, this is probably a more useful solution, as it means that the system is better joined up.