Teachers, teaching and educational exclusion: Pupil Referral Units and pedagogic practice

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project carried out in a UK Pupil Referral Unit during the 2000/01 academic year. It describes and analyses the strategies adopted by a small group of Behaviour Support Service teachers in order to achieve their everyday occupational goals. It is argued that despite their commitment to the reintegration of excluded pupils into mainstream schools, the pedagogic practices adopted by these teachers served to contribute to an amplification, rather than a moderation, of pupil disaffection and misbehaviour. Teachers' perceptions and understandings about the nature and aims of lesson content varied whilst concerns and preoccupations about classroom control remained constant. Within the context of ongoing government debates in the UK surrounding ‘social exclusion’ and, more specifically, educational exclusion, these findings call for a widening of the research agenda in these areas to include more detailed investigations of occupational circumstance and practitioner needs within non‐traditional school settings.

Notes

Andrew Parker teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. He is an ex‐secondary school teacher and teacher educator whose research interests include the sociology of education, organizational behaviour and gender relations. Correspondence should be addressed to: Andrew Parker: Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; e‐mail: [email protected]

Analia Meo is a sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently holds a Postgraduate Research Fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. She has carried out both qualitative and quantitative research in the areas of poverty, crime and education, and is especially interested in comparative education and qualitative research methods.

Analia Meo is a sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently holds a Postgraduate Research Fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. She has carried out both qualitative and quantitative research in the areas of poverty, crime and education, and is especially interested in comparative education and qualitative research methods.

Some would argue that there is a sense of ‘moral panic’ about such debates which has been exacerbated by the media in recent times. A case in point is that of the two male pupils excluded from Glyn Technology School near Epsom, Surrey, UK, in October 2002 for allegedly making death threats to a number of teachers (The Guardian 2002). According to DfES (2002), the number of pupils excluded from UK mainstream schools in 2000/01 accounted for only 0.12% of the total primary and secondary school population.

The term ‘reintegration’ is taken directly from government rhetoric on this subject. Its use does not imply any critical assessment of its alignment with the ‘inclusive’ schools agenda.

In one of his first speeches as UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills (in December 2002), the Rt Hon. Charles Clarke MP emphasized the need for Local Education Authorities to maintain the balance between educational exclusion and the provision of ‘good‐quality full‐time education’ for excluded pupils, one option being the 371 PRUs that had been established in the UK up to that point (Clarke 2002). According to DfES (2002), 79 new PRUs opened in the UK between January 2001 and November 2002. At the time of writing, PRUs constitute the most common form of educational provision for excluded pupils across all Key Stages. Other forms of provision include home tuition, placements in the voluntary sector, Further Education or work‐related learning. For more on the different ways that PRUs might be structured and defined by Local Education Authorities, see Cole et al. (2003).

According to DfES (2002), this target was subsequently met.

In England and Wales, PRUs are under no obligation to deliver the National Curriculum in its entirety and there is no requirement for pupils to complete statutory examinations at the end of each Key Stage.

Similarly, there have been ongoing calls for more work on pupil interpretations, perceptions and experiences of educational exclusion (Pomeroy 1999, 2000, Gordon 2001, Solomon and Rogers 2001).

In the interests of anonymity, pseudonyms have been used throughout. Pupil pseudonyms were chosen by the respondents themselves. Fieldwork at the Farmhouse took place between 1 and 3 days per week over the course of the term in question.

According to DfES (2002), educational exclusion has traditionally been a heavily gendered affair. In 2000/01, 83% of all permanent excludees were male. Provisional figures for 2001/02 demonstrate a fall of 1% (DfES 2003). The most common point for both boys and girls to be excluded from maintained schools in England is age 13–15 (DfES 2002, 2003). For more on the gender ratios for off‐site educational units, see Cole et al. (2003).

Fieldwork was structured around the activities and experiences of a single cohort of six Year 9 (aged 13/14) pupils. Four were attending the Farmhouse because they were ‘on the verge of exclusion’, one was a traveller and did not have a school to go to, and one had been permanently excluded from mainstream school on two previous occasions and, therefore, could not go back. Although respondents were at different stages in their educational careers, all continued their education outside of mainstream schools after their term at the Unit.

Since the present research was carried out, the Farmhouse has changed the nature of its intake and its mode of operations. It currently offers full‐time education for one group of a maximum of six permanently excluded students.

There is a sense in which this collective commitment amongst Farmhouse staff constituted what Munn et al. (2000) have referred to as a general ‘ethos’ (a set of underpinning beliefs and practices within an institution) of inclusion rather than exclusion.

It is worth noting that some Farmhouse teachers expressed concern about the disparity between actual lesson content and National Curriculum stipulations.

For instance, Alice was not visibly recognizable as the Teacher in Charge of the Unit.

While the former were written down in formal documents, the latter were identified by teachers' imputation of deviance, whether formulated directly to the pupils or indirectly through their written reports (Hargreaves et al. 1975).

Throughout the fieldwork period, Harold, Sky and Carl were the main instigators of pupil misbehaviour.

During the course of the fieldwork, none of these methods of punishment and reward was effective in terms of their deployment as an individual or collective deterrent from further disruption. The use of reward systems in schools has recently become more popular as a form of classroom management (Kinder et al. 2000).

It is worth noting that concerns have been expressed for some time over the quality of curricular provision in off‐site educational units in England and Wales (e.g. OFSTED 1995).

Correspondence with Farmhouse staff after the fieldwork had been completed (i.e. amidst processes of respondent validation) highlighted that some felt PRU placement to be an inappropriate means of educational support for a small percentage of the pupil intake. In turn, staff members readily acknowledged that some pupils who entered the Farmhouse clearly had the potential to amplify and exacerbate instances of misbehaviour amongst the wider pupil populace.

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Notes on contributors

ANALÍA MEO

Andrew Parker teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. He is an ex‐secondary school teacher and teacher educator whose research interests include the sociology of education, organizational behaviour and gender relations. Correspondence should be addressed to: Andrew Parker: Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK; e‐mail: [email protected] Analia Meo is a sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently holds a Postgraduate Research Fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. She has carried out both qualitative and quantitative research in the areas of poverty, crime and education, and is especially interested in comparative education and qualitative research methods.