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Abstract
This paper aims to examine the experiences of pupils and professionals who are affected by actual or threatened permanent exclusion (what used to be called being expelled) from school. An ethnographic study based on the writer’s employment within secondary schools and the Children’s Services department of an urban local authority in England explores the idea that professionals may be forced to make decisions about pupils in the face of powerful competition between the politically unchallengeable concepts of tolerance, inclusivity, attainment, and choice. The paper argues that the tensions of multi‐agency working are focussed within what will be called the contested space of the pupil’s ‘extended body’. Permanent exclusion, along with its tendency to prompt a pathological reading of a pupil’s issues, is therefore seen as an authoritarian strategy designed to ameliorate the inherent paradoxical tension experienced by the various professionals working within an education system dedicated to the concept of ‘full inclusion’ but measured and funded on the grounds of academic league tables.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express her thanks to Dr Rosalyn George, Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths University of London for her encouragement, advice, and guidance in completing this paper and submitting it for publication.
Notes
1. Local city or rural administrative bodies responsible for managing provision of everything from waste management and local taxes to transport strategies and education.
2. For pupils aged 11–16 years.
3. It has been difficult to maintain the ethnicity information‐gathering system in Enway. Schools and central admissions staff often omit this information from the forms; it is a significant issue in a city where around 35% of permanently excluded pupils identify themselves as other than ‘White British’. This percentage was derived from an information pack assembled by the head of Inclusion (Behaviour) and supplied at a meeting of the Enway City secondary head teachers called by the director of Children’s Services in order to discuss the rising Fixed Term and Permanent Exclusion rate in May 2007.
4. Often through ‘managed moves’, described below.
5. Around £4500 or US$7000 (in 2007).
6. This information was derived from an information pack assembled by the head of Inclusion (Behaviour) and supplied at a meeting of the Enway City secondary head teachers called by the director of Children’s Services in order to discuss the rising Fixed Term and Permanent Exclusion rate in May 2007.
7. See Note 6.
8. For a further discussion of the concept of ‘need’ when dealing with children with behaviour management issues, see Thomas and Loxley (Citation2001).
9. Formerly Social Services, and a senior social worker.
10. These officers monitor and plan support for young people who have received a court judgement.
11. Attendance Advisory officers monitor school attendance. They have the power to take parents to court for a fine or even prison if their children fail to attend school.
12. This worker provides liaison and education support services to pupils from Gypsy Roma or Irish Traveller families.
13. A series of examinations sat when pupils are 16 years of age.
14. For some reason, whilst ‘inclusion’ replaced ‘integration’ as the new policy enabling almost all pupils to attend mainstream school, once a pupil has left a school they are still re‐included through a process known as ‘reintegration’. This implies the view that whilst schools should endeavour to change their practices to include all pupils, once a pupil has been excluded, it is now up to the pupil to make the effort to reintegrate and feel ‘lucky’ to have been ‘given a second chance’.
15. Not all the heads of year and deputy heads or school inclusion managers in Enway City are hostile to new pupils. Good SAT scores and a fair attendance percentage help school staff feel more welcoming, but occasionally teachers who are sceptical about the narratives recorded in the paperwork from the previous school tend to be more optimistic and prefer to rely on their own judgment when interviewing a new pupil.
16. Not an exhaustive list.
17. A strategy soon to be further enshrined within and scripted by the latest DfES strategy, the Common Assessment Framework.
