Teachers angry over reinstated pupils as exclusions increase

There has been a sharp rise in the number of pupils excluded from secondary schools, taking the annual total to more than a third of a million.

But teachers' leaders are angry that more than 100 pupils successfully appealed against their exclusion and were allowed back into their classrooms. Headteachers said this was undermining their attempts to instil discipline in schools.

There were 343,840 exclusions last year, a 4 per cent rise on the previous year and the equivalent of one in every 10 pupils, national statistics pubished yesterday showed. The number of permanent exclusions for serious disruptive behaviour or assault fell by 3 per cent to 9,440.

Jim Knight, the Schools minister, said the increase showed headteachers were cracking down on persistent low-level disruption in the classroom - identified by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, as one of the biggest threats to order in the classroom.

The proportion of successful appeals against exclusion rose by 9 per cent to about a quarter, with 130 out of the 240 pupils involved being reinstated.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "I find it astonishing and worrying that more than half of successful exclusion appeals result in the pupil being returned to the same school. Heads need and deserve better support than this if they are to maintain the standards of discipline that society expects. It is undermining schools' ability to discipline."

David Willetts, the shadow Education Secretary, said it was "disturbing" that so many appeals were successful.

"How can you possibly maintain order when a child you have expelled from your school wins an appeal and is back in your classroom?

"It is not fair on teachers or the vast majority of children who are at school to learn without being distracted by a badly behaved minority."

The figures showed that boys were four times as likely to be excluded as girls - and that pupils aged 12 to 14 were the most likely to be affected. The average length of time for an exclusion was 3.5 days.

Mr Knight said the rise in fixed-period exclusions reflected the tough approach schools were taking to address bad behaviour.

"They are using the short, sharp shock of a suspension to nip problem behaviour in the bud and this is helping to stop it escalate to the point where permanent exclusion becomes necessary."

New measures would be introduced in September compelling parents to ensure their children stayed at home for the first five days of an exclusion, Mr Knight said. Schools would be be told to set homework for pupils to stop them roaming the streets and fines of £50 would be imposed on parents if they allowed them to do so. "We want to stop fixed-term exclusions being seen by some as an unofficial holiday," he said.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers called on ministers to classify mobile phones as potentially offensive weapons and to ban them from schools. Chris Keates, general secretary, of the NASUWT, told a meeting of a government task-force aiming to stamp out cyber-bullying in schools that they were being used by pupils to denigrate their teachers on internet sites such as ratemyteacher.