Disruptive pupils to be sent to specialist 'sin bins' run by private companies

Private companies are to be given the go-ahead to take over the running of specialist units for teaching the country's most disruptive state school pupils.

Ministers are considering allowing them to profit from the provision under a shake-up of the way specialist pupil referral units are run, outlined in a White Paper yesterday.

The move is expected to pave the way for firms such as Group 4 Securicor and Serco, which are already highly involved in the public sector, to take over units. A spokesman for Group 4 Securicor said the firm would study the proposals and "assess whether there are opportunities to provide additional public services".

The proposal to allow the involvement of commercial companies alarmed Britain's biggest teachers' union, the National Union of Teachers, which said it was "a deeply worrying rubicon" for the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, to cross. In the past, firms running local authority services have been allowed to make profits, but not mainstream schools.

Christine Blower, the acting general secretary of the NUT, said it would lead to companies "making economies in provision for the most vulnerable people". She added: "The last thing pupil referral units need is to be outsourced to private companies. Such a move would only increase their sense of isolation from other local authority provision."

The White Paper published research that showed that 99 per cent of pupils taught in the units failed to reach the Government's benchmark of five top-grade GCSE passes.

Nearly nine out of 10 of the 135,000 children taught in the units every year also fail to obtain five GCSE passes at any grade.

Under the proposals, ministers plan to invite competition for running pupil referral units, nicknamed "sin bins".

They are anxious to encourage private companies and voluntary groups or charities – such as the Prince's Trust and Barnardo's to run the units. Independent schools with a record of offering boarding places for deprived children in danger of being taken into care – such as Rugby – would also be invited to apply as would sponsors of the Government's flagship academies.

Sir Alan Steer, the headteacher appointed by the Government to head an inquiry into school discipline, warned that the pupil referral units had become "the forgotten service".

"Vulnerable children can be placed with others who are displaying serious criminal tendencies," he said in a letter to Mr Balls. Mr Balls said he wanted the units to offer more places to pupils at risk of expulsion – rather than those already excluded from school. "We can then help them to access the right support before the behaviour spirals out of control and reaches the point of exclusion," he said.