Lewisham School Exclusions

People may have seen an article published yesterday on Eastlondonlines which said that Lewisham has the third highest school pupil exclusion rate in England. My response is below.

The DfE has released exclusion data, not for the academic year which has recently finished, but for the year before that (2015/16). This shows Lewisham near the top of national league tables for numbers of excluded pupils. This isn’t a surprise. We knew the figures were bad but my concern is what it means for young people’s lives – that’s why reducing exclusions has been and continues to be a priority. And not just playing the numbers game to massage the figures down, but ensuring that more young people continue and thrive in mainstream education, despite the challenges they face. Challenging targets for reducing exclusions are part of our ‘Secondary Challenge’ partnership approach to improving our secondary schools. And the schools are working better together and agreed a revised Fair Access and Managed Moves Protocol to use alternative options to exclusion. We are also working towards earlier identification of problems and earlier intervention to prevent escalation. This has yielded a 22% reduction in permanent exclusions since those published figures. That’s progress but it’s not enough. So the work continues, with new leadership in our Pupil Referral Unit and ever closer working between our schools, working with social care and our education services which support vulnerable pupils and help schools tackle persistent absence from school and the other precursors to exclusion.