Too many children excluded from primary school says former Ofsted boss

16 comments

1. > “You can’t teach a lesson if someone is throwing chairs at you. Exclusions are incredibly rare; the average primary school excludes one child every 17 years.”

   > Writing about the issue on X, he added: “In other news: kids who tell their teachers to f*** off all the time ‘tend not to do as well as they could.’

   > “Eye-watering stupid activism from this organisation.”

2. Not being funny but I went through school being a bit of a cunt, didn’t get suspended once, and still did pretty well at exams… To me that means to get permanently excluded in primary school, you’d basically have to be a little Hitler in the making (note, drawing swastikas on walls didn’t get my brother excluded either…), and you almost definitely **shouldn’t** be around influencing other childrens behaviour at all.

3. Journalists never ask any actual teachers what they think about their working conditions. We only ever hear from opinionated spectators.

   So long as there’s someone willing to stand at the front of a classroom and take the abuse, it will never get better. All out, all change.

4. These people wring their hands over the kids that get expelled but what about the 29 others who learn literally nothing while one kid makes teaching impossible.

5. It’s primarily the parents that are to blame due to poor parenting but at the end of it all, if your kids being a little shit disturbing a majority of the class then unlucky, they shouldn’t have to keep disruptive kids in a classroom for the sake of an ofsted report.

6. Lol. One of my kids was being bullied at school. Hit daily. Bit on occasion. This went on for a year with the school achieving nothing.

   After telling the school I’d told my child to knock the other child out, and that thanks to years of training this was a very real prospect, the school took an interest.

   It didn’t achieve anything so on the Tuesday my kid absolutely flattened the other kid. Bullying stopped immediately.

   School called up to play hell with me, at which point I reminded them they never excluded children, they’d had a year and done nothing, and that I’d given then a final warning.

   Bullying sucks. I don’t care what the other kids home life is, they aren’t bullying my kids. Sometimes overpowering violence is all other folks understand.

7. Because schools are already incredibly overstretched. They don’t have time to spend 3/4 of the lesson trying to defuse bad behaviour.

   Parents need to instill some discipline and basic good behaviour into their children before they start school.

8. a local 7 year old was asked politely to be home schooled by our local award winning multi academy trust. the one non academy tried to take him in, but the kid just never turned up.

   2 years later hes caught up in a county lines drug bust.

   education these days is about the chains first and the kids second way too often. but that privatised education for you of course. thats before you even get the to cost of disabled kids that some academy trusts just hate.

9. I was put in ‘special lessons’ (where I was sat with the librarian and told not to make ‘a noise’) because in the late 80’s no one believed a girl could have autism.
   I didn’t learn to read until I was 13.
   Was a just angry because a minute to try and understand me?
   Or was i nothing but failed?

10. Here’s an idea.

    Have parents give their bank details to the school and charge them incrementally increasing amounts whenever their kid is a cunt

11. Not enough parents are excluded from school except for say parents evening. The kind that harass teachers, talk down to them, think rules don’t apply to their child.

    And far too many have a car licence who are unfit to hold one.

12. Permanent exclusions are effectively banned in Scotland, I think the last couple of years it has been 1 pupil per year for the whole of scotland.

    For pupils and schools it is difficult because resources are being cut and general behaviour is declining.

    I believe there is some evidence in a reduction in youth crime and better outcomes for the most vulnerable but there is a toll to pay.

13. I’ll straight up say I fucking hated school for not disciplining enough students. I was the quiet, awkward kid. Turns out I had inattentive ADHD. I was bullied right through school. I also have impaired ability to focus, so when the badly behaved kids were making stupid noises and throwing things I wasn’t able to learn at all. They RUINED my education and I ended up spending years of my adulthood catching up to where I should have been all along.

    So exclude away as far as I’m concerned.

14. Teaching is one of the roughest professions. I feel sorry for them. We need huge investment in teaching and stop forcing our teachers to quit in droves.

    Give them the support they need and give the kids the support they need. Then maybe we can rebuild the country.

15. What ? Not enough kids are excluded.

    The assholes they keep in school ruin education for the ones that do.

    These kids are given an equal chance, disrupt and misbehave, then you should be removed before you drag down a whole class of kids and potentially impact the future they have.

16. All Wilshaw ever wanted to do was fuck over teachers – he’s the one who said if teachers aren’t complaining about your changes then you’re not making the right ones.

    Trying to keep all children in mainstream schools is what’s crippling the profession, and making the education of the other 30+ children in the class hell