More than £1million will be ploughed into helping bad behaving Suffolk pupils despite the number of students being excluded from schools dropping.In the last academic year there were 150 permanent exclusions in Suffolk, compared to 161 the year before.
More than £1million will be ploughed into helping bad behaving Suffolk pupils despite the number of students being excluded from schools dropping.
In the last academic year there were 150 permanent exclusions in Suffolk, compared to 161 the year before.
The recent figures have been released by the DfES and show that the percentage of pupils being thrown out of school in Suffolk has dropped from 0.16% in 2001-02 to 0.15% in the last academic year.
There were 9.290 exclusions in the whole country last year.
Although the Government claims it is finally getting the balance right by helping teachers to improve behaviour in the classroom and backing their authority when pupils' behaviour warrants exclusion, Suffolk County Council are not quite so sure.
Tony Lewis, Suffolk County Council's portfolio holder for children and young people said: "The number of pupils permanently excluded from schools in Suffolk is higher than we would like to see.
"In order to help prevent exclusions by earlier intervention work in schools, we are investing more than £1.44million over the next three years to establish a behaviour support service.
"This service will provide a team of teachers and assistants to support schools to develop strategies to help pupils with the most difficult issues who could potentially be excluded without extra intervention from the service. This will also link to other developments in Suffolk where outreach work from our Pupil Referral Units supports pupils to remain in mainstream education."
In Suffolk there were 11 appeals lodged against permanent exclusions last year, down from 15 appeals lodged in 2001-02.
More than 1,000 appeals were made against exclusion decisions in the whole country.
Do you think pupils are getting better behaved? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or send an e-mail to EveningStarLetters@eveningstar.co.uk
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