According to a not-at-all-lefty thinktank, excluding1 schoolkids should be banned. Which is a fantastic idea, honestly.
Excluding badly behaved pupils from school should be abolished because it punishes vulnerable children, a report by a think tank says.
Demos says current exclusion rules, which hand difficult pupils over to local authorities, affect children with special educational needs.
And it may well do. But it also allows schools to get rid of violent and disruptive pupils whose only problem is that they’re bad little fuckers. It allows the school to remove a violent child from their victim. It allows headteachers to have a tool they can use to get parents to control their child.
It’s clearly too valuable a tool to use too often, otherwise it loses its deterrent effect. But it’s also too valuable a tool to discard as well. What would teachers have to use instead of exclusion should that tool be taken away?
So, dear brainfarttank, please to shut up. k thnx.
1 – As far as I can tell, they mean the formal expulsion of a child from a school, rather than suspension, but you have to get to page 26 of the report before they clear that one up.