| SPOTLIGHT |
Gloucestershire County Council has proposed that schools could be fined £5,000 per excluded pupil, with the ‘fine’ passed on to schools willing to accept the children concerned.
The proposal was in a high needs provision consultation, which closed in September and from which the council is assessing some 1,000 responses ahead of a December cabinet meeting.
Permanent exclusions in Gloucestershire reached 110 in 2016-17, a level the council called “worryingly high”.
It said exclusion “can have a life-changing effect on children and their families” but it had difficulty in finding schools willing to accept a child excluded from another school and they rarely returned to mainstream schools.
A Gloucestershire spokesperson said: “Children who are excluded from school are able to continue their education, full-time, through the county council’s alternative provision service whilst the council works with the family to find them a permanent school place.
“Support to get to the root cause of why a young person has been excluded is offered based on the needs of the individual child, which might include personalised support from one of our advisory teachers or a member of the Educational Psychology Service.”
Mark Smulian
