Discipline and Vulnerable Pupils

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Heather .J. Bamford  G20139731- Education 1201- Charlotte Barrow

Discipline and Vulnerable Pupils

The general opinion of the government, teachers and other agencies concerned with the welfare and development of children and young people in the education system is that “the majority of pupils behave well and schools are generally orderly and productive places of learning” (DfES, 2006).

“An extensive analysis of attitude to school among 2,250 top primary and first year secondary pupils” (Keys et al. 1995) concluded that the majority of pupils actually quite like schools with only ten percent having negative views towards it.

 However it is the smaller percentage of pupils who struggle to succeed, showing signs of disaffection that this essay is concerned with and whose needs should be taken into consideration thoroughly when developing the schooling system further.

It is thought by (Riley, 2004) in the journal article ‘Voices of Disaffected Pupils’ that ‘Little research has looked specifically at the perceptions of children from homes in socially disadvantaged areas’ which is felt to be an area where a wealth of knowledge on how to improve the system could be found.

This is an important issue, which I believe has a lot of scope for improvement and can constantly be reviewed, analysed and developed and the legislation surrounding these issues is constantly being updated providing many topics of discussion. I have chosen to look at this as I believe that special attention needs to be given to the less advantaged pupils to help them achieve their potential.

Pupils showing signs of disaffection often exhibit many kinds of poor behaviour including being disruptive, truancy, and conflicts with teachers, and low effort levels in their work, physical violence towards teachers and other pupils and sexual misconduct.

There can be a plethora of reasons that pupils behave in these ways including not having the cognitive, physical, social and emotional skills necessary to understand and follow school rules and procedures, pupils may be experiencing some kind of trauma or pupils may have the skills needed to follow rules and achieve well but simply choose not to do so. All of these reasons will be examined further later on in the essay.

Further to this the procedures and legislation relating to the way in which vulnerable and disaffected pupils are dealt with is going to be reflected upon, analysed and suggestions made on the improvement and development of these issues. Looking closely at different kinds of exclusion, how vulnerable pupils are identified, how the disproportionate exclusions among vulnerable pupils is taken into account and what provision is made for pupils after exclusion occurs for example Pupil Referral Units (PRU).

Firstly I am going to focus on exclusion and how it occurs; the types of exclusion that can occur are permanent, fixed term, informal, internal and lunchtime exclusion. In most cases exclusion is the last resort after a range of strategies have been applied to combat the bad behaviour, It is important for Head Teachers to be able to identify pupils that are considered to be vulnerable or high risk of exclusion and make alternative provision to suit their needs working in partnerships with other agencies as recommended in “The Children Act, 2004”.

Permanent exclusion from school may occur as a result of a serious actual or threatened violence, sexual abuse or assault, supplying an illegal drug or carrying an offensive weapon. Actions that put others at risk are the most likely to result in this kind of exclusion. It is only the Head Teacher of a school or PRU that can make the decision to exclude a pupil.

When a pupil is excluded it is the parent’s responsibility to make sure that the child does not make a nuisance of themselves in school hours in public places. This can often be a problem as parents often have work commitments that make it impractical for them to supervise the child.

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It is the Local Education Authority’s (LEA) responsibility for providing alternative provision by the 6th day of exclusion. This can often be a PRU.

“Under section 19 of the Education Act 1996, local authorities have a duty to provide suitable education for children of a school age, who because of illness or exclusion from school will not receive a suitable education without these arrangements.” (Every Child Matters, 2005)

PRU provide the gap in the system being focused on meeting the more individual needs of vulnerable pupils. Often the staffs are better equipped and trained to deal with these ...

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