Excluding the ‘included’

Following on from our post on the growing number of children with SENs permanently excluded from school, we have this from the Association of School and College Leaders:

Schools are excluding more children permanently for bad behaviour because of difficulties in arranging support for them, head teachers say.

ASCL president Brian Lightman told his union’s conference in Brighton: “Earnest efforts to address the immense challenge of providing for the education of our most vulnerable young people are being undermined by the difficulty of accessing appropriate support services.

“This has begun to force schools to resort to permanent exclusions instead of longer fixed-term exclusions which might have enabled them to help these students.

Apparently 40% of schools report that it takes 3 months to access mental health services for pupils.