School kids given the boot

Jan 29 2010 by Julie Watt, Dumfries Standard Friday

HUNDREDS of children have been booted out of Dumfries and Galloway schools for bad behaviour.

Incidents include persistent disobedience, assaults, offensive behaviour and threats of violence.

However, the shocking figures are an improvement on the previous year when there was 1,088 exclusions in Dumfries and Galloway.

A report by the Scottish Government this week revealed education bosses had no choice but to suspend children from primary and secondary 977 times last year.

Fifty-nine primary pupils were excluded from school compared to 442 secondary pupils. And all too often the same pupil is excluded several times.

John Dennis, secretary of the Dumfries and Galloway branch of union The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), told the Standard: “We are determined at EIS to do what we can to improve procedure to make sure violent and unruly children are properly dealt with.

“We are working alongside the local authority to adopt a more uniformed method of recording incidents of severe behaviour and hopefully that will be in place next August.”

However Mr Dennis believes the figures only show a snap shot of the problem.

He said: “The statistics are worrying but I don’t think they represent a true reflection of how bad the situation is, especially in primary schools.

“Violent attacks against teachers are more common than people realise and many head teachers are reluctant to suspend children, especially of primary school age.”

He believes action is needed to stop the majority who behave having their education ruined by a minority that misbehave.

He said: “More resources need to be put into areas of behaviour support, to enable those persistently misbehaving to be taught separately so that the majority are not affected.

“In many cases those children who persistently misbehave come from a background of poor parenting and an unstable home environment.”