School exclusions: Does anyone ask the right questions?

When a pupil is excluded from school, it is often what the child has done wrong, the financial cost to the education system or where the child will be educated that is discussed-not what the effect will be on the individual who is placed outside the school structure, into what may otherwise be a chaotic existence. The effect on the child's self worth and self esteem are often areas that are not discussed.

Anna Carlile, a specialist in permanent exclusions from school, will look at the wider picture during the first Symposium on Learner Identities on Tuesday, 14 July at Edge Hill University's Woodland Conference Centre, Chorley from 9am to 4:30pm.

Looking at the experience from the pupils' and the professionals' perspective, Anna Carlile will explore the idea that ‘...professionals may be forced to make decisions about pupils in the face of powerful competition between politically unchallengeable policies.'

Carlile will argue that the tensions of multi-agency working are focussed within the contested space of the pupil's ‘extended body', creating an officially mandated ‘excludable identity'.

Anna Carlile said: "Permanent exclusion can crystallise existing prejudices. It illustrates the problems inherent in an education system dedicated to the concept of ‘full inclusion' but audited on the basis of tight measures of attainment and economic value. Permanent exclusions directly contradict the educational ethos of inclusion.

"The social and psychological effects on both the student and the professionals involved in an exclusion from school can be and are often underestimated."

Anna spent three years in the Children's Services department of a local authority, working with primary and secondary children and young people who had been permanently excluded from school, to support them back into mainstream education and to challenge any barriers to learning.

Experienced in working with school inclusion managers, social workers, mental health workers, officers in the youth justice system, and attendance officers, Anna commissioned and worked with programmes to support young people who were unable to attend mainstream school.

The exclusion cases ranged from an eight-year-old boy with acute ADHD and autism excluded for 'persistent disruptive behaviour'; a six-year-old girl excluded for biting during a period in which she was taken into foster care; a twelve year old with Tourette's Syndrome who was permanently excluded for throwing a frog at the wall and a fifteen year old girl who was permanently excluded in the midst of a forced marriage.

Speakers at the symposium, the first held by Edge Hill Centre for Learner Identities, will look at how individuals learn, looking at both theoretical and practical examples.

The one-day conference will be of interest to those working in education, including lecturers and teachers, education students, teacher educators, teaching assistants, mentors, student teachers and local authority Children's Services managers.

For more information on the full programme of speakers or to attend the conference, please or call 01695 650934.