Welsh Affairs

Debate between Owen Smith and Chris Evans

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the first time that you have called me to speak in a debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, so may I congratulate you, somewhat belatedly, on your elevation to the Chair?

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

You smoothie.

[Chris Evans]

Thank you very much.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who is not in his place, I bemoan the lack of the St David’s day debate, which has been held since 1944. When Aneurin Bevan spoke in this place in 1944, he said that there were no Welsh problems, only problems. The wonderful thing about the Welsh day debate that we are missing is that it allows us to bring up issues that usually go unnoticed in this House. Today, I will bring up the issue of truancy in schools.

Truancy is not simply a matter for schools; increasingly, it affects the whole of society. It is a complex issue. It is not simply about pupils skipping school to go to the park with their friends, but is often a sign of deeper problems at home and, in some cases, of abuse. If a pupil truants from school often enough, they will be excluded. They will thereby miss out not only on a worthwhile education, but on the support network that schools provide. That can result in people falling in with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble with the police, making them less desirable to potential employers.

When I visit schools in my constituency, I am always impressed by the level of pastoral care that students receive. Head teachers have told me that for some students, that care is arguably more important than traditional classes. For many students, the support that they receive in school is invaluable. That is why exclusions and truancy are serious issues.

Over the past few years, the Welsh Government have done an incredible amount of work to prevent schoolchildren from being permanently excluded. Just 102 pupils were permanently removed from Welsh schools last year, which is almost 100 fewer than in 2009-10, when there were 200 exclusions. That is a step in the right direction. However, I will focus today on what is known as “soft exclusion”.

The number of temporary exclusions is still too high. There were 17,508 temporary exclusions in 2011-12 in Wales alone. More research and data are needed to explain why that is occurring. In October 2009, my predecessor, Lord Touhig, asked a parliamentary question about what research the previous Government had done on the effects of exclusion on pupils. He was told that no research had been commissioned. Sadly, that is still the case. What do young people do when they are excluded temporarily? Do they miss out on work? In reality, we just do not know.

In preparation for this debate, I read a report by the charity, Barnardo’s, which did some research on the use of unlawful exclusions. That is when schools ask parents to keep their children away from school without providing a formal notification of exclusion. Local authorities know nothing about such exclusions. There is obviously not a huge amount of data in this area, which is unfortunate, but the Barnardo’s study is based on anecdotal evidence.

I shall quote from the report. One parent said:

“From year 7 the head of year would phone me to say he’d been excluded, but no time scale would be mentioned. A letter would arrive two days later telling me how many days it was. There was no work set or given.”

The report heard evidence from parents of a lack of dialogue between schools and families, which leaves the pupils falling behind. One parent said:

“The head of year would ring me and say they were thinking of excluding him. Sometimes there would be a letter. It takes two days or more to arrive and it would say work would be set two days after that, but by then the exclusion time would have passed.”

The police in Blackwood say that the problems in the market area are caused mainly by young people who have been excluded, whether temporarily or permanently. That demonstrates the drain on police resources and the wider effect that this issue has on society. I was even alarmed to find, shockingly and tragically, that pupils with special needs accounted for a little over 60% of all exclusions in Wales in 2012-13, and those with school action and school action plus special educational needs had the highest rate of permanent exclusions at 0.6% per 1,000 pupils. A report by the charity Ambitious about Autism found that four in 10 children with autism had been informally excluded temporarily.