Edinburgh University has carried out research that suggests that excluded pupils are more likely to go to prison as adults. I'm pretty certain that many of its readers will have reacted with mock (Oh really!!!) shock: did we need another report to tell us this? Well, yes and here's why. Looking through the TES summary http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6318854 there are some success stories and maybe we should be focussing on what appears to work.
I was brought up in Birmingham and we are blessed with the "Number 11 Outer Circle 'Bus Route.
The route takes you around 26 miles of Birmingham and when we were kids....yes you get it, this is how we spent our sad gaming platform free existences. It prepared me well for my work in Education generally and working with challenging young people particularly: mainly because if you wait long enough, the Number 11 will, unfailingly turn up again and do the same thing as it did the last time. Only the drivers (and heck the dates me) and the conductors were different.
The Education Workforce has been driven around the place by a plethora of Drivers and monitored by a head scratchingly diverse range of conductors some of which should not have been allowed anywhere near the Education Bus. Others have skipped along a continuum of bus driving techniques
- Break neck and destabilising-inducing panic and vomiting amongst the passengers
- Ponderous to the point that everyone thinks we've stopped
- Indifferent to the needs and understanding of the passengers-about their journey requirements, arrival times and so on.
Amongst all of this uncertainty, one fact remained the Number 11 would always be there.
And here we have it. Schools, academies and other providers are subject to regular changes in the manner in which they are expected to deal with challenging young people. The report "Vexed Questions over Exclusion" raises an interesting success story: that Schools with behavioural values based tend to do better in addressing challenges and that punitive approaches work less well.
Teaching values is tough: particularly when we consider how we (the adults) manage the gap between our Espoused (what we stand for) Values and our Lived (What we really do) Values. Kids can spot the gap from miles away and the bigger the gap is, the less credibility we have, proving to them that Monkey Say and Monkey Do are two very different monkeys that pretend to be the same one.
We can take a punitive approach-a "Short, Sharp Shock" that has more to do with organisational revenge than moving processes and people forward in a meaningful manner. It will gain populist applause and eventually serve no one as thresholds slip, consistency vanishes and appropriate responses to challenge converge into a Number 11 Bus route of sanctions.
Where we have have strong values, where what and who we are is informed by what we do and say and vice-versa, we stand at least a chance to deliver a strong message based on how we deliver the values we espouse. And yes, there need to be sanctions, sanctions that go hand-in-hand with well measured support and access to a range of options that engage with the person, not just the behaviour. This might give us a better chance of keeping the important link between the provider and the child.
I'm off to relive my childhood on the Number 11!
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