Belief in fairness is near universal. Real fairness may be a long way off, but most people believe everyone deserves a shot at success. Want to cause trouble? Tell people about postcode lotteries; tell them that Barnstaple’s residents enjoy better access to cancer drugs than Barnsley’s. It feels wrong.
I’m studying this postcode lottery: I’m examining how locality affects education for Teach First. Do the needs of deprived students differ from one area to another? Do a teacher’s priorities change if they move from Hackney to Blackpool, or from Wolverhampton to South Leeds? Should they?
I looked at two sets of statistics on Thursday. The first inspired me: in two boroughs – Westminster and Islington – students attend university in equal numbers, whether or not they receive Free School Meals. The second astonished me: they showed how many young people were excluded from school in each local authority. They felt wrong.
Permanent exclusion is the most drastic thing a school can do to a child; unfair application of this power would be appalling. Yet the disparities between different areas are striking. So let’s say you’re worried about your son or daughter – they’ve been in trouble in school before – and you’re mobile. Where should you move?
Best options
In 2013-2014, not a single student was permanently excluded from secondary school in six local authorities: Darlington, Kirklees, Redcar and Cleveland, St Helens, Slough and Wigan. In eighteen more local authorities, fewer than five students were excluded.*
Worst options
The average secondary school permanent exclusion rate is 13 per 10,000. In Dudley, 40 students were excluded per 10,000. Dudley is comfortably the worst place to take your child: they would be twenty times more likely to complete school in Leeds. Other bad choices include Tameside (37 per 10,000), Oldham (32), Medway (31), Nottingham, Middlesbrough and Hull (all 30).
Best and worst options in London
At all costs, avoid Lewisham; 38 pupils were excluded per 10,000. Tower Hamlets excluded only 3 per 10,000, so a move from New Cross to Wapping – ten short minutes on the Overground – slashes your child’s risk of exclusion to a twelfth. Adjacent boroughs create traps for the unwary elsewhere: choosing poorly multiplies your risk of exclusion fourfold on the border between Ealing and Hammersith and Fulham (28 per 10,000 in Ealing; 6 per 10,000 in Hammersmith and Fulham). Likewise, if you live in Kilburn, at the junction of three boroughs, know that choosing Brent over Westminster doubles your risk of exclusion; choosing Camden triples it.
What does it all mean?
I cannot understand these figures. Are we honestly to believe that young people are ten times worse behaved in Lewisham than Tower Hamlets? Can it possibly be fair that the nuclear button is pressed twenty times more frequently in a year in Dudley than in Leeds? What code have Darlington schools cracked to avoid exclusion entirely, that Middlesbrough schools have not yet deciphered?
Permanent exclusion changes lives. Excluded children are three times more likely to leave school with no qualifications and 37% more likely to be unemployed (Barnado’s, 2010, p. 43). For 13% of excluded children, their ‘criminal career’ begins the month they are excluded. Society bears a cost too, calculated at almost £65,000 over an excluded child’s lifetime. Mindful of these costs, these decisions are not to be taken lightly.
Exclusion is a battleaxe: blunt and devastating. I’m not trying to argue it’s always wrong: sometimes it may be unavoidable, or even desirable. I’m not trying to argue that growing up in Leeds is identical to growing up in Dudley (I hope to establish how different it is in due course). But if we are to exclude young people, we must do so fairly, consistently and defensibly. When a child begins to get into trouble at school, a move of a few hundred metres could save their school career. That’s a postcode lottery. That feels wrong.
Post-scripts
* Where fewer than five students were excluded, the DfE do not provide the number, or a percentage of the school population.
The data, for the 2013-14 school year, can be found here. I gave all figures as a number per 10,000 pupils, to avoid the confusing effect of discussing the exclusion of 0.03 pupils per hundred in Tower Hamlets. The data also covers fixed term exclusions, and permanent exclusions from primary schools and special schools; I have concentrated on permanent exclusions as more drastic, secondary school exclusions as more numerous.
I’ve focused on geographical inequities because I’ve never seen them discussed. There are many other inequities, somewhat better known: Black Caribbean boys are three times more likely to be excluded; those receiving Free School Meals are three times more likely; students with Special Educational Needs are ten times more likely (Barnado’s, p.8). Closer examination of shady managed moves and ‘unofficial exclusions’ would do no harm either.
I am very grateful to Peter Atherton (@dataeducator) who saved me from at least one embarrassing mistake in my use of data..
Image Credits: Leeds – Andrew Curtis, Dudley – LivingInMediocrity, Deptford Market – Silk Tork, Whitechapel Market – Mike Faherty
And if anyone can get me up-to-date exclusion statistics for Blackpool, I’d be very grateful.
Thanks for this. Part of the explanation is that some councils make a priority to keep statistics on permanent exclusions down, eg by managed moves.Schools will also suggest that parents home educate.
I’ll second that ‘managed move’ comment. I know of one LA where there was often a transfer system of students from one school to another – sold to parents as “we are on the brink of permanent exclusion. Do this move instead to avoid it being on his/her school record”. Described as one parent as like a gun to the head – sign this or we kick your kid out!
Yes, the ‘home education’ idea has also been used as ‘gun to the head’ for parents. Would be interesting to see stats for this and if they correlate with fewer exclusions. It’s a poor sustitute for education in a school. The managed move can be successful for some, certainly better than a straight PEX. Would also be interested in seeing stats for children in care who typically have higher rates of exclusion – don’t know if you’ll be delving into this as part of the research? Great stuff, look forward to future instalments.
Keeping disruptive pupils in exam classes has an effect on other pupils and hence on school scores. 13 & 14 year old boys represent over 3rd of PEX, & 13/14 boys and girls combined are nearly half of all PEX (48%). I’ve helped parents in the run-up to PEX & have found schools already using internal exclusion, parking etc as well as fixed period exclusion. In other words, those children aren’t in class anyway. Heads seem to me to be balancing the impact on one family vs popularity with all the others for having made lessons quieter and given THEIR children more attention from teachers. Many parents might be reading the tables quite differently eg if they think of their child as victim of disruption, they might actually prefer high PEX area.
I agree with all the comments. Also there is a simple assumption that areas that exclude less do so because they are somehow better at integrating pupils. When the truth is it could be cohort, culture, community, behaviour management systems that are more controlled, etc. In addition, if these children who are permanently excluded were to move on mass from Lewisham to Tower Hamlets, there is nothing to say that the exclusion rate there would not go up while it would fall in the latter. I think any analysis needs to look at both individual factors relating to the pupil and institutional factors.
In the early part of my career I worked for a local authority that told schools not to exclude anyone at all. It was a nightmare. Some schools found ways to exclude “informally” but the main effect was that outrageous behaviour was tolerated. I would suggest that this policy, was the “blunt axe” not exclusion.