Darlington’s schools had the worst record for permanent exclusions in the country in 2006/07 when they permanently excluded 47 children from seven secondary schools.
Since then the Council has worked with schools to develop measures to address the issues, and so far for this academic year (2007/08) there have only been 19 children permanently excluded.
Over the past 12 months each secondary school has opened its own internal unit dedicated to dealing with pupils who are in danger of being excluded.
When pupils are given a fixed term exclusion at Darlington’s schools, instead of being sent home for the period of their exclusion, they are often taught within their school’s own internal unit, away from other pupils.
This alone has seen the number of fixed term exclusions fall from 1,377 for the period September 2006 to May 2007 to 599 for the same period 2007/08.
That equates to 3,717 of school days lost through exclusions in 06/07 compared with 1,480 in 07/08.
As well as working with secondary schools, Darlington Council is also introducing new measures to address behavioural issues at primary school age.
A new primary turn-around unit is opening within Red Hall School building, which will be dedicated to working with pupils from across the Borough, who have behavioural problems, in a bid to address issues before the children reach secondary school.
Pupils will be taught at the unit for the morning or afternoon and at their original primary schools for the other half of the school day. This will allow the children to maintain links with their schools so their return to mainstream education is less traumatic for them, hopefully preventing further behavioural issues.
As well as this, the Council and schools will work with the children’s families and provide counselling where required.
Darlington Council’s Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Chris McEwan, said: “We knew we had to improve our record on exclusions.
“It is excellent to see that the work we have done in partnership with our schools is paying off. These figures show a massive improvement, but there is more work to do.
“Our aim is to have no children excluded from school – that’s the ideal. We have more to do, but we’ve made a good start. It’s very encouraging.”
Figures for truancy have also improved. In 2006/07 there were 482 pupils who were persistently absent (missing more than 63 school sessions) for Autumn and Spring term, compared with 261 for the same period in 2007/08 – a reduction of 221.
The reduction is as a result of the Council’s education welfare officers’ work with all secondary schools to reduce the number of truants by having individual case conferences.
The case conferences are for parents to go into school to discuss attendance issues, and work with the school to create an individual action plan, with targets for their child to meet. The action plans are reviewed regularly and tailored to meet individual pupil needs.
This model of best practice is what the Government’s Department for Schools, Children and Families recommends for schools it identifies as requiring action to tackle truancy.
In Darlington this policy has been adopted at all secondary schools and is now also being provided at primary schools to provide them with a similar service. The case conferences are expected to be used in all primary schools by next year.
Schools have also introduced their own competitions to encourage pupils to attend school, such as classes competing against each other in a league.